Korea: One Epic Weekend

So the whole weekend kind of blurs into one. It continues on the very next day after when my previous post leaves off (If you haven't read that one, this one still flows just fine, no worries):

Friday I woke up with one single goal: get an outfit for the Lady Gaga concert. Operation Sparkly commenced. Megan and I (and Christina was supposed to join us but for some reason didn’t) got lunch and went shopping. Some of the things Korea has just make me laugh. Take a look:

Go Boston Red...wings? Close, Korea, but not quite.

In case you can't quite tell, that's an American flag bow
with a Queen Elizabeth coin in the middle. For those  of
you still wondering, I am, in fact, from the US, not Canada
(or South Africa, or Romania)

This one made me laugh and think of you Madd Dogg

Finally it was time to head to the Lady Gaga concert. This, by the way, was my first legit concert. SO much fun! But silly me, I was wearing heels and Lady Gaga was only the start of my evening. She performed most of her most recent album and all of her classic songs (Judas, Poker Face, Paparazzi, etc.).

(I will insert a picture of my outfit later as no good ones were taken, and while it would be fun to put a not good picture up, it was a not good picture of me and Crystal, and that just wouldn't be nice.You'll just have to trust me on this in the mean time)

After Gaga I met up with Megan and Christina in Hongdae for clubbing. I navigated my way off the subway and into Hongdae, which was about as much as I could remember. It had been about 2 months since I had been there and I always had someone else leading the way before. So it turned into me on the phone with Megan trying to navigate my way through Hongdae while neither of us had any similar landmarks. Finally, just after midnight, me in heels, Megan looking awesome (I can’t remember what she was wearing but it was awesome) found each other and made it to the club. Right in time too, as Christina was holding our place in line and was maybe two people away from the front.

And so begins hours of clubbing. If you have ever tried to dance in heels for 5 hours, you understand that it is not easy. I made it through though. And when I say 5 hours, I’m not exaggerating. We were actually out until 6am. My feet are still a little numb.

In the hours of clubbing, Christina and I managed to learn the Korean dance to virtually every song they played, and heard each one about 5 times. We split our time between two clubs which were right across the street from each other. By the time we came out of the second club the sun had risen. Mission: accomplished. We had stayed out until the subways were open. But instead of taking the subway we just grabbed a cab because it was 6am and I was walking slowly in my heels.

We got a few hours of sleep and then met up for lunch in Insadong. Megan had heard of a vegetarian buffet for Avery so we ventured to it. They had broccoli and apples. It was amazing. So simple, but I don’t think I had had so many fresh fruits and veggies since coming to Korea so it was exciting.

Afterwards we returned to Yonsei to get ready for the evening. Megan had managed to get us all on the guest list at one of the top 3 clubs in Seoul, Club Answer (Seriously: http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/drink/seoul/top-3-hottest-clubs-seoul-496115). I was so tired I almost didn’t go at all. But then I figured, I have this new outfit (I bought two choices for Lady Gaga) so I at least need to join them for drinks. Parth, his friend Maria, Megan, Christina, Avery and I went and got fruit soju (because drinking regular soju is like drinking nail polish remover, gross!). Then I obliged to join them at the club.

We took taxis because the club is in Gangnam which is on the other side of the river.  At first there really wasn’t anything special about the club other than having expensive drinks. But as the night wore on we realized that this club is absolutely ridiculous. I seriously felt like I was in the future. And if that is what the future is like, I’m okay with it.

There was a section of the dance floor that periodically rose. At first I thought I was having depth perception issues, but no. I would just go up for a while so it was like dancing on a stage. Meanwhile, there was a heavy amount of smoke (or smoke like substance) wafting through the club (for the effect, of course), and a laser light show.

Here are a couple of pictures I found on the internet since I was too in awe to take pictures myself:

This was all well enough and if that was all there was to it I would have been satisfied.

But then they cleared everyone off the stage and brought some Korean dancers out. After watching them do their thing, they started throwing things (I don’t know what, but things) into the crowd. Pretty fun.

But it gets better.

About an hour later they raised the stage again. This time a robot came out shooting smoke, lasers, and flames. EPIC. AWESOME. RIDICULOUS. There was a flame & laser shooting robot. Like seriously, where does this happen?

KOREA.

And the night continues.

At one point Avery and I ran (slash got sardine squished) into Eddie from our KLI class. We were all pretty excited about this (mind you, Avery, Megan, Parth, Christina and I are all in the same KLI class to begin with and the class only has 13 students). We made our way off the dance floor, found Megan and Christina, and got drinks. Then it was back to dancing. Somewhere along the way we had lost Parth and Maria, but on our way back to dancing we picked up Parth again.

The next thing we know they were throwing money (like real money not just Monopoly play money) into the crowd. Ummm, how awesome is this? Take me to the future now please!

Around 4 in the morning we decided that it was time to leave. Eddie had disappeared, and apparently Maria had found some other friends, so we squeezed the other five of us into a cab and made our way back to Yonsei where we all slept for hours.

And so ends the most EPIC weekend I have ever had. Slightly more epic even than that one time we went to Japan.

Coming soon: the story of my Korean homestay. Stay tuned!