Dirty Pop

To start this one off I just want everyone to know that this whole blog thing is actually pretty awesome.  I get to take a step back, think about my experiences and share all the best parts.  I really enjoy writing it so I have to make sure I make this time I have in South Korea a story worth telling.  I hope you're all enjoying it so far.

Sparky

On October 15th all of the EPIK teachers were given free VIP tickets to The Asia Song Festival which was a concert put on at the Daegu World Cup Stadium featuring a bunch of pop bands from around Asia.  Some of the names of these groups and their members make you wonder who the idea-man was behind their formation and take you back to the days of boy-bands and Spice World mania.  They like to capitalize seemingly arbitrary letters in the middle of their name to make it cooler.  X5, RaNia, ChoColat, AprilKiss, HITT, leeSa, G-Na, Perfume, Miss-A, Super Junior, Girls Generation, and Beast all performed a couple of songs each.  While I wouldn't really consider it my style of music, I went along with friends, never wanting to pass up an opportunity to see a live show.  The tunes they sang were infectiously catchy, and usually accompanied by group dance routines.  It's the kind of music you can't help but bob your head to so many of the foreigners that wanted to get up and dance were given a swift telling-off by the security team that pounced on anyone whose bum left their seat.  It was really funny to see an entire crowd all sitting in their chairs, denying themselves the chance to move to the music.  Our seats were on the grass field but turning around allowed you to see all of the manic fans in the stadium seats waving little flags emblazoned with their favourite group's name all in unison.  At one point, an entire section was able to spell out BEAST with the glow sticks they were holding in the air.

One thing that I've learned about Koreans is that they don't like getting rained on.  Taking the two minute stroll to school the other morning without an umbrella was considered a cardinal sin by my co-teachers.  They think that the rain will make my hair fall out.  I promptly took the opportunity to teach them the idiom "I'm not made of sugar" and accepted their offer of a spare umbrella for the walk home in the afternoon.  At the concert, it began to rain a bit towards the end of the show.  That's when all hell broke loose.  The umbrellas popped up, the plastic poncho salesmen showed up out of nowhere, and a lot of people fled the area screaming.  Naturally, many others took the chance to get closer to the stage creating complete anarchy and clogging up the aisles.  It was mayhem.....and all because of a little shower that lasted ten minutes.  Being pushed back by security guards who were trying to restore order made me think back to just this past summer at Lollapalooza Music Festival in Chicago when torrential rain made the third day an absolute mud pit complete with belly slides and wrestling.  To think, two months ago I was watching the Foo Fighters in a downpour with my friends, covered in mud along with thousands of others, crammed together in Grant Park....and loving it.  Now I am being herded into my seat by security guards that had to call in reinforcements and stop the show momentarily for the announcers to tell everyone to calm down.  It was surreal.

In other news, I got to attend a Community Dog Walk with the Korean Animal Protection Society last weekend which was fun.  I miss having a dog in my life a lot so it felt good to let them stretch their legs instead of being in their cages.  A lot of the dogs were yappy little lap-dogs that I can picture my father tripping over accidentally on purpose. Most of them had been abandoned when their owners got sick of them.  One poor little poodle had been died purple by it's previous pet owners (say that sentence 10 times fast, I dare you).  It was sad and hilarious at the same time.  I called my dog Sparky most of the time but really went with the first thing that came to mind at any particular moment since he didn't have a name.  He was a little white puppy that was full of energy and a lot of fun.  After the dog walk we were offered the chance to visit the "cat house" which was nearby. The very idea of a house full of cats left some of the female volunteers squirming in their flared jeans and running-shoe combos.  I could picture a lot of them in ten years being those crazy cat ladies that dress their cats up in outfits and talk to them in high pitched voices as if they are human children. I politely turned down the offer and went on my way.  It could have been a house made of cats for all I know.

That's all for now folks.  I am trying to spread out my posts a bit more so that I don't run out of material to write about and also to can keep the readers coming :)  I like tracking the amount of views I get after each post is published and seeing where they all come from.  It's a good example of the world-shrinking potential of the internet and social networks.

My girlfriend Louise recently got confirmation of a three month position in Daegu working with Save the Children.  She has accepted the position so I will be welcoming her to South Korea in a week's time! She had been planning on making it out here eventually but we didn't know that it would come about this fast. We are really looking forward to the adventure ahead of us!

Much love

D