Hongdae

This weekend was both magical and amazing all at the same time. In fact, I might have had one of the best nights of my life on Saturday night. Let's start with Friday.

For those of you that read my previous post about purple tentacle soup, you know that I wasn't feeling so hot on Friday. Long story short, I stayed in and got some needed rest. This also meant that I got a little cleaning done as well...which was more than needed.

Saturday is when the adventure started. After waking up around nine, my building-mate Daniel came up and asked if I wanted to join him for a run. It was the first really nice day since I have been here, so I couldn't refuse. We started out running around the streets of our city until we made our way to the river. There we found a private bike and running track running along side the river that went for miles. I must say it was one of the most enjoyable runs of my life.

After getting home and taking a shower, my co-teacher came and picked Daniel and I up in her car for some shopping at E-Mart. Seeing as it is kind of a pain in the ass to get groceries back to our apartments from E-Mart, the car was a very much appreciated change of pace. I would also like to take this chance to let everyone know that my co-teacher, Young Ja, is an angel.

Getting to Jongno was the next thing on the schedule. I headed out there to meet a few friends (Andy, Gabe, and Nathan) for dinner and an arcade. I don't know if any of you know about the awesome arcades that exist in Asia, but this was one of them. We mashed buttons, shot plastic guns, beat drums, turned tables, and punched bags to our hearts delight. One of the more memorable games was mashing buttons while an old creepy guy took pictures of young anime girls on the screen. Have video, will post.

Once we had our fill of Asian arcade heaven, we made our way over to Hongdae. Hongdae is a magical placed filled with people from all over the world, clubs as far as the eye can see, and has as much noraebang (karaoke) as you can stand.

Our Hongdae adventure began with drinks at the most indie dive bar I have ever seen. $3.50 jack and cokes was the main attraction here. Later we moved on to our first dance club. This consisted of buckets filled with blue liquor and lots of dancing on stages / poles. We then moved on to a club named "500." This place was A.mazing. The entire bar is modeled to look like a cave with a dance floor / band / DJ in the middle. Folks, I danced like I have never danced before. Pretty much the most dancing fun I have ever had in my life.

We (Andy, Ryan, Gabe, and I) ended the night by crashing at my friend Andy's place who lives way out west in Seoul. He has a super nice pad that was just built, so it was a fantastic place to lay down for the night. All in all, I couldn't have wished for a better night. I will definitely be doing it again...soon!

PS a big thank you to Andy for letting us crash at your place!