Koreanization

Yesterday was a pretty good Saturday. I knew I was going to be out all night so I forced myself to stay in bed until noon. I did some cleaning and got that, as Colin put it, "old sleeping bag," smell out of my apartment.

Then it was off to Hongdae. I was supposed to meet JoAnn and Lara at six so, being a guy, I got there at six. I was greeted by a phonecall. "Where are you? Oh snap! We're gonna leave in about 10 minutes...maybe 20." 45 minutes later, they arrived. Girls ;)

Apparently, when they got close, they were just going to start yelling, "We're looking for a white boy from Junggye! Has anybody seen a white boy from Junggye?!" but that idea got nixed at the last moment of the countdown by Lara. haha. They found me, and I was informed that I was about to be Koreanized. That included three basic parts. First, we went to Korean BBQ for Samgupsal (basically, thick cut bacon....it's delicious). That was nothing new for me, but next....oh next. We headed to the Noray Bong (translation: singing room). Basically, it's karaoke, but not in a bar in front of a room full of people. You pay to rent a room with your own personal karaoke machine. Koreans LOVE these things. Even in crappy, little Junggye, there are three of these JUST ON MY BLOCK! So we went to the Noray Bong, and I rocked it out with a little Johnny B. Goode, some Oasis, CCR, and the Beatles just to round it out a bit. JoAnn showed off her MAD rapping skills (does anyone know how to type sarcasm??).

After the noray bong, we walked around town for a little while searching for a sticker picture booth. Yup, it's just one of those photobooth things, but Koreans get so into it. Some girls will spend forever getting ready. We just kinda went for it, and they came out pretty good.

(left to right: Lara, JoAnn, Me)

Last was a trip to the Coffee Bean. I don't think this was so much being Koreanized as just hanging out for a while.

The girls left at midnight, and I headed off to Club Spot for the midnight show. My buddy Hwangyong's band, A Vicious Glare, was playing so I told him I'd come check them out. They put on a great show. Unfortunately though, since the subway shuts down at midnight, and I didn't want to spend $30 on a cab, we had to wait for the subway to start running again at 530am. It was a good night overall though, just long at some points when I started getting really tired.

I made it home around 630 in the morning. It was a good night.