6 To 6 in Seoul

So, the big weekend adventure...or perhaps a challenge. First some preface information - Our dorm, and more specifically the Yonsei program leaders thought it would be a good idea to have a curfew set for 12 pm. The dorm closes and you can't get in or out past that time until 5:30 am. I guess it is suppose to discourage us from staying out late but in fact, it just encouraged us to stay out ridiculous late.

The adventure/challenge: stay awake/entertain ourselves from the hours of 6-to-6.

More preface information: Friday night it was my friend Terry's birthday so we thought we would go out to the clubs and miss curfew. This Friday night also happens to be the "Club Night" in Seoul where you can pay for one club and get into a whole host of others for free.

The adventure began far too early at around 6:00 PM. We walked down to the iHouse (which fortunately for next semester does NOT have a curfew) to meet up with some of Terry's sister's friends. We then proceed to take the subways to an area called Hyunday, or something to that effect. One of Terry's friends wanted to go to this underground Japanese folk/electric singer performance which sounded cool so we all tagged a long (a group of about seven of us now). As with most entrances in Seoul the place looked dark and foreboding on the outside but once we went down a couple flights of stairs a door led us to this amazing cement/modern architecture performance space. The artists was crazy, but cool. He periodically played the guitar with everything from a shoe to his chin, and did a lot of hopping around the stage. Still the music was very impressive and he had some amazing guitar solos.

After listening to the music we found a quaint restaurant to eat, not knowing it only served seafood. I was feeling ambitious so I ordered 낮지 비빕밥, which is actually octopus with rice and hot pepper sauce. The octopus was not actually that bad, just a little slimy but what got me was how spicy it was. I only managed about half before my mouth was burning too much to eat more.

When we finished it was around 9:00/10:00 so we slowly started walking to the area where a lot of the clubs were located. The first one we stopped in was actually one I had already been to early this week, N.B. It was pretty quite at first because we were early but after two hours around 12 the place was jammed packed. A lot of Koreans, a lot of hip-hop, and an overall great time of dancing. When we left that club after three some hours of dancing we were amazed to see how much the city area had changed. Waiting outside of the club was a line of people that stretched a good 100+ people back waiting to get in and the streets were crowded with youngish Koreans going out. I guess the Club Day event is fairly big because the next five some clubs we entered were all equally packed and finally around 3:30 am we stopped trying.

By now we had met up with some other people from the Yonsei program who were also out and we decided to take a taxi back to the Yonsei University area to stop by the McDonalds which is open 24 hours. We arrived and ate a little but then four of us decided we wanted to do something beside sit for the next hour and a half so we walked a little ways to a DVD 방. 방 stands for room, so a DVD 방 is basically a business where you can rent out little rooms which consist of a big couch and a movie projector. We picked Bridget Jones II and all promptly fell asleep on the couches. That is all of us expect Chikae who was smart and slept from 5-9:00 PM before going out. When the movie ended it was about 6:30 AM so we took the bus back to the North gate of Yonsei where we meandered back to the dorms to crash.

Thus, I successfully completed my first night out in Seoul. Hopefully not something that is repeated too often because I am still recovering from the hours on feet and almost 24 hour no sleep. Oh...and I'll add pictures of the adventure once I learn how to use my cellphone.