Falling in Love with Chicken

(I am currently writing this post in my living room after cracking open a mango beer aka girl beer)

Good new guys!! I Actually have my own pictures for you this time! Enjoy!

HAN RIVER AND CHICKEN

Beware of the Han river, all who go there fall in love. As did I, with a city called Seoul. I don't mean to sound sappy, because usually sentences like this make me want to vomit but now I'm being 100% real with yall. The Han river is a magical place that is usually frequented by couples and friends where they can enjoy chicken, beer, bike riding, watching street performers, and enjoy the beautiful view. Now on the topic of chicken, the Han river is known for chicken and beer, and oh do they not disappoint. The second you step even remotely near the Han you are bombarded with ajummas handing you flyer after flyer about chicken. No joke, we got 8 flyers in a span of 30 seconds. The transaction goes a little like this, you tell the ajumma what you want and give her some cash and next thing you know some guy comes and delivers it to you on the spot. I know right! And then there is the beer. The second I walked into the convenience store I found lines of people in front of the alcohol grabbing soju and beer. Literally everyone at the Han can be found eating and drinking some form of alcohol(since public open container is not illegal here). It's actually a really cool community feeling in a weird way, day drinking with hundreds of strangers. Kind of feels like a festival, but one that happens everyday. The chicken was AMAZING. WOW. I'm still dreaming about it. We got two types of chicken, pickled radish(quickly becoming one of my favorites for some reason), fries, cheese hush puppy things, and soda for 20 dollars. And it was a lot of food. We didn't finish it between the three of us so I took the rest home and ate it for lunch the next day. I eat a lot of meat here.. But surprisingly by some turn of events I preferred the spicy chicken over the not spicy! I'm becoming a real spice master! Ok not at all but I like to think I'm improving.

STREET PERFORMERS

Still one of my favorite parts of Seoul. I saw my fair share of street performers this weekend. At the Han river we saw a dance group made up of a little Korean girl in her teens and a few Korean guys probably in their 20s and damn! I always thought that musicians were attractive but there is something about men dancing hip hop that does something to ya. Let's just say us girls were drawing some attention from the male dancers which caused lots of eye contact and flirting *cough cough* ok lets keep this PG and move on. 

There are some hella dedicated performers out here. We stumbled upon some guys in Hongdae that had been playing for hours, we arrived and they were still going at 1:30am. What's even more incredible is since it violates a noise violation, every time the police would do a round they would literally unhook their instruments and run around a corner till they were gone and then come back to play some more.

At around 3 on my way home we found a guy playing on a street corner next to my apartment. He played almost all English songs and had really good pronunciation, I was really impressed. I need to get my own guitar one of these days. Also he was out there until 4am!!

GROSS FOREIGNER

I feel like I have a duty, as a foreigner, to protect the native people from other foreigners. Because these foreigners be a little crazy up in here, especially the horny military men, they're not fooling anyone. This is where I found myself when a very drunk white guy came up next to us and started talking to the girl next to us. We were watching some performers and it was around 2am and she was alone. And being the responsible person I am, I waited until he left her alone before I went anywhere. He got a little handsy, especially for asian standards, so I got in there real quick making sure she was ok. Turns out she was a Japanese girl visiting by herself for a few days for shopping(?? I know, that's a thing people actually do?? but also major balls for this girl to come alone) She spoke Korean and English and we made sure she was okay and good to go home before we left. 

KPOP TRAINING

Now many of you probably don't know much about the training that goes into becoming an idol(a kpop star). Koreans start as early as 12 and begin dance, singing, and even acting training. This training can go as long as 6-7 years before they debut and only a select few even get the opportunity to debut. Now that you have a brief idea of training let me tell you about a special program. I believe it is fairly new, but essentially you can pay to enter kpop training as a foreigner. This attracts mostly Chinese and Japanese teens who want to enter the business and whose parents have enough money to send for training. Usually Koreans are scouted and sign a contract into training rather than applying and paying to be trained. It makes sense, kpop is becoming more international and many groups have members hailing from Thailand, China, Taiwan, etc. Now imagine the surprise I got when I met a girl on the street, likely picking us out because we look foreign and likely can speak English, who is paying to be trained. Now heres the kicker, she's from South Africa and doesn't speak Korean. Yeah, I KNOW! I don't know what this girl is expecting as a 24 year old South African woman. Even though they train everybody who will give them money, lets be honest, a non asian kpop star is simply not going to happen.

GOOGLE TRANSLATE

I had fun this weekend hanging with one of my friends from my language class(we are both level one Korean although I know a bit more than her) who is Vietnamese. And here begins the google translate relationship. She doesn't know much English, so we conversed in the little English she knew, Korean, and google translate. Let me tell you, Vietnamese is a fucking hard language. She was teaching me words here and there but damn! It has more tones than Chinese(to my knowledge) and is wicked hard. But it led to some pretty funny conversations.

BLOOPERS
-we went to a bar this weekend where they literally give you the numbers for food delivery. Food delivery is really big here, literally a mcdonalds delivery man ENTERED THE BAR and gave these people their food!!!! WHAT!!!

-still struggling with the fashion here, every time I go out I feel underdressed, I sense a theme here...

-why is Korean food so good??? and everywhere!!!

-The bar we were at was literally playing pop music and showing spiderman in the background. Here is a clip where Gwen is casually dying in the background.

-Ordered a drink called "Adois motherfucker" I love Korea lol