here’s why!

so the day started out pretty normal, woke up, fiddled on the computer, took and shower, and then met Gavin before work. He tells me about his adventure last night, meeting some artists in Hongdae and how they were having a performance art thing and then an after-party and i was welcome to come too. Naturally, i jumped on the idea of going to it. So i grabbed my favourite dress shirt, folded it nicely and put it in my bag and left for work.

work was standard fare, I got bored and concocted a fake conversation between me and Gavin over MSN by typing from his computer, running upstairs, typing on my computer, running downstairs, and so on. On my trips up and down between offices, I have to pass through my boss’ boss’ office. So inevitably, i started talking to her. She was editing Alix and Britt’s photos in Photoshop, so i asked why MY computer didn’t have Photoshop. She then went on to tease me, asking oh, you can do this stuff? okay, then i don’t have to do it. Can you answer the phones too? And then she showed me my embarrassing photo and said “I tried to remove your mustache (I have a mustache? is that even possible? me? facial hair?!) so I did and you looked like a girl with a boy haircut, so i changed it back.” How flattering is that? I already hated the photo, but now apparently, when you remove the “mustache”, I look female-ish. Thaaaaanks. I’ve discovered that Koreans are very blunt.

So anyhow, the kids were tolerable today. nothing to really report, except that my EAS 4 kids thought my feet were dirty, because my socks had lint balls on them. *sigh*

okay so on to an awesome evening:

I get changed in my classroom after class, meet Gavin and we take a bus to Samsung Plaza to meet Leah. from there, we took a bus to somewhere, I forget where, but thereafter, we took a cab to Hongdae subway station, exit 4. Leah had drawn a hilariously crude map, but we got there eventually, only to find we’d missed the performance by about 5 minutes and the after party was basically an interview with the artist and stuff. i can’t even describe it, it was just really interesting walking in on the aftermath. burnt scraps of paper on the ground, a man speaking Spanish and covered head to toe in i think chocolate. and chocolate smears on the walls, a giant cactus, a big scroll of paper, some branches….just crazy. They had a video camera going. If we see those people again, I want a copy of it. 

So the 3 of us went exploring for dinner and ended up at a Korean barbecue place. I had Soju 😛 

but the rest of the food was awesome. 

I’ve decided Hongdae is my most favourite place ever. EVERYTHING has so much character! everything’s just so interesting there. I took a photo of this store, that’s basically someones garage. there’s even a car parked inside it, but they have clothes on the walls, and the door at the back of the garage leads in to the actual store. Ridiculous. 

Now as we were walking, we just happened to gravitate to this tiny sign for a bar that was downstairs. Walking down, we discovered the most amazingly chill bar ever. We sat down on the floor, pillows everywhere in a small room with red walls and patterned silk drapery things hanging and the place was just super amazing. there was a bathtub in the middle of the main room, with leaves and branches growing out of it, and a low hanging chandelier. The girl running the place was just sitting at her computer playing awesome relaxing music like Elliott Smith and Cibo Matto’s Sugar Water.

So after a most relaxing drink in the most relaxing bar, (I had a jack and coke, i think Leah and Gavin had vodka somethings. or maybe Gavin was drinking gin and tonic? i forget.) Gavin showed me this strange abattoir looking place with white lamb legs hanging on the walls, and insane ink paintings. I wanted to stop there, but they’d been there yesterday, so instead we moved on to another amazing looking bar. This one was much bigger, and is characteristically almost always full. the place was set up very interestingly. The back of the bar had one of those BIG ladders that rides on a rail, and up there was a DJ booth, and shelves gong all the way up to maybe 20 feet, the tallest was the longest shelf, and the lowest was the shortest, and each shelf had bottles of liquor. We saw the bartender slide the ladder over and climb all the way up to grab a bottle a few times. Again, i had a jack and coke, Gavin his gin and tonic and Leah had a vodka lime.

it’s funny, as you enter or leave this place, all the staff, no matter where they are in the place, yell “Annyeong Haseo” as you come or go. I found this hilarious for some reason. Anyhow, we left, they said bye and off we went to find another bar! (remember, this is a Tuesday night) and so we take a stroll around, just soaking up the amazing Hongdae nightlife. full of musicians playing random stuff and really crazy graffiti. 

Anyhow, we eventually end up at this random looking really crazy fusion bar. it had such a moody atmosphere, tiled floors with fountains everywhere and hanging chandeliers and tiny rooms with small tables and tons of pillows on the floor. It had the atmosphere of a Hookah bar apparently. Super chill, but massively expensive. so Leah and I had a beer while Gavin had a very stiff gin and tonic. Leah also showed us a Russian handshake, and we also devised another handshake which involved the itsy bitsy spider thing and some weird butterfly hilarity. I’ve decided Leah is an awesome person and i need to hang out with her more for the simple fact that she comes up with such hilarious and random shit.

Oh and something i like about these bars: they give you free snacks! the first place had square animal cookie things, the second had seaweed strips with some sauce and the last place had these fried sugary things and also what i can only describe as candied green beans. TASTYYY!

So as we were all falling asleep on the pillows in this place, we topped off our drinks and headed out for a cab. 

also, on the cab ride home, I kept hearing some beeping noise. Now remember how i mentioned I keep stealing shit from my kids at school? well today my kid Kyle, brought a timer thing to school and it went off during class, so i took it. and of course, forgot ALLL about it, until I spent the cab ride going “what the f. is the cab driver messing with? constant beeping!!” and then when i got home and emptied my pockets, i realised it was me and the kid’s timer. the driver must have been thinking the same thing, hahaha anyhow, that’s it! Altogether, amazing night. I loved it. this should happen EVERY Tuesday. I’m getting to love this place more and more. (but also missing everyone from home more and more!)

Bye guys!