It was my birthday!

My birthday was October 18th, and in celebration I had a joint birthday party with my super awesome friend Amber on Saturday. About 20 friends got together for dinner - really tasty pork, yum! Ange and Young Soo brought cakes, double yum. After dinner about half the brave souls went to noraebang (aka the singing room) where we belted out tunes really off key for two hours. And then the really brave ones - me, Amber, Jessica, Robyn, Gina, and Aaron - went dancing. We danced a lot and probably stayed out too late, but it was a blast. Birthday = success.

Friends and food!

Our crazy table.

The birthday girls!

Korean Celebrities

Seeing as how real guys I talk to and associate with are totally lame, I've decided to give my heart to someone who is completely unattainable.

Meet Kim Hyun Joong (this is a Korean name, so Kim is really his last name):

He's got a killer smile.

He's a decent actor.
He's a pretty good singer.
He's a pretty good dancer.
And well, he's just plain pretty.

This is really when I fell in love with him:



Plus he looks really, really good in a suit and even dances in it. Bonus points in my book.

My Korean friend Chris told me that Hyun Joong's not a real man - he looks too much like a girl. I told Chris he's just jealous and all the girls are envious of Hyun Joong's skin. But Chris also has connections. He has a quasi-famous nephew (he's been in a couple of movies), who introduced him to an actress, Kim Ok Bin. Chris taught Ok Bin English. When I was out to lunch with Chris yesterday, he called her and gave the phone to me saying, "She speaks English, talk to her." She did not say one word of English to me. Our conversation was broken bits of Korean, and then the called dropped. She texted Chris and told him she was in the middle of a photo shoot - NICE! I now feel truly special - I talked to a Korean celebrity, kind of. Chris said he'll introduce me to her. Now if only I can get her to introduce me to Hyun Joong...

Andong

I like living in Seoul, but it's nice to get away every now and then. On Saturday I and five friends went to Andong - a smaller city three hours away by bus. The air actually smelled clean, and at one point there were absolutely no cars whizzing by. It was great.

Me and Amber - we are so adorable...

The Andong walking bridge we crossed over

Andong has an annual Mask Festival. This was to the entrance of the festival. At the festival we saw some performers, walked around the booths, bought stuff, ate, and enjoyed the activities.

Masks

One of many of the dancers we saw.

Epic Saturday

Some of my dreams came true Saturday night when I went to a Korean pop concert with Jessica and Amber. We went to see Taeyang, a beautiful man who can sing and has some sweet dance moves. It just might have been the best two hours of my life...

So, this is where the concert was held. Despite that it looks like a church, it's actually not - it's a concert hall on a college campus. We kind of laughed as we approached it. I said, "So we're going to a pop concert in a church? Awesome."

Posing with Taeyang before the show. Yes, he's shorter than me, but does that really matter? He is hot, and do you see the abs in the cutout in the back? Yeah, they really look like that - he took his shirt off during the concert so I'm a witness.

Unforutnately we weren't allowed to take cameras into the concert hall, so I have no pictures from the actual concert. But in retrospect I'm glad because we got to appreciate Taeyang in all his glory without having a cameras in front of our faces. I don't know how to describe the concert other than EPIC. He has a great voice, he had awesome dance routines, cool costumes, etc. At one point he brought a girl from the audience onstage and sat her on a couch, sang to her, laid in her lap, brushed her hair from her face, and kissed her cheek. Amber and I were going into slight hysterics from jealousy, while Jessica sat in awe. AND, our seats were three feet from and aisle way where G-Dragon and 2NE1 (other famous Koreans) walked by. I know I'm sounding like a 15 year old girl, but I don't care. It was sweet!

After the concert, super excited and waiting to stalk Taeyang with all the other teenage girls. We never actually saw him leave, but we did see a van that possibly had him in it...

Japan Wins

Why Japan wins:
1. People were nice and friendly, even when you can't speak Japanese. Take the nice bus stop attendant guy who helped us find our hostel - he spoke two English words to us "English" and "North". There was lots of pointing, hand motions, and map drawing - but he was sooooooo nice about it. And we did find our hostel.
2. The hair and fashion. Guys seriously have some awesome hair and fashion sense in Japan. We captured many with our stealth photo taking skills. It was nice to see people being individuals - here in Korea people tend to have the same style.
3. The vending machines. They were everywhere! There were drink vending machines, and beer vending machines, and even cigarette vending machines. Oddly enough we never saw a food vending machine.
4. The food. We had some good food - even though we didn't know what we were ordering half the time. It was an adventure that turned out well, most of the time. And it was nice to have something other than Korean food.

We of course did a lot of sightseeing and temple wandering. These were great as well - except for the gazillion stairs we climbed, and I don't think I'm exaggerating. There was an ill conceived idea to hike to the top of a mountain because on the map we had it didn't look "that far." The map lied - and it was pretty much vertical stairs the whole way up. And it was hot with I think 100% humidity. But these are slight things. We had a great time, walked a lot, and enjoyed being in another country for a short time.

View of Hiroshima with the Atomic Dome on the left

In front of the Shinto Shrine on Miyajima

Evidence of truly epic hair. Later we saw this guy driving a Mercedes with glow in the dark license plate - even more epic.

Sunset on Miyajima

The Golden Pavilion in Kyoto

Kyoto main drag

Fushimi-Inari Shrine. There were LOTS of orange pillars.

More orange pillars

Geisha!

Kiyomizu temple

Preparing to turn Japanese

In one week I'm going to Japan on vacation with Jessica. In preparation we spent Saturday having a "Japanese Day." This is what we did:

1. Researched and decided what we wanted to see on our trip. We're going to Hiroshima and Kyoto. And at the same time, badly mispronounced Japanese temple names in a creepy, old man Japanese voice.

2. Looked up Japanese phrases in Jess's book - none of which I can remember.

3. Watched a really sad Japanese movie online. Jessica blames me for picking it - it made us cry. It was really, really depressing.

4. Went and ate pork cutlet - because technically it's Japanese - and kimbop, and pretended it was sushi.

I can't wait for Japan!!!

The view

On Saturday Amber, Jessica, and I went to the top of the 63 building - one of the tallest buildings in Seoul - to check out the view. The elevator going up is glass so you can watch your progression, which freaked Amber out, but surprisingly I was fine. Then Jessica made some comment about how it was like the elevator in Willy Wonka and would fly out of the top and just keep going, to which Amber had to say, "Okay, stop!" Anyway, we picked a pretty good day to go, seeing as how it was sunny and you could see quite of bit of the city.

View #1

View #2

View #3

Jessica and Amber - oh how I love these girls!

It was also an art gallery of sorts at the top and you could take your "self portrait." I am cute. The End!