Hey y'all. I haven't updated in a while because I've done literally nothing the entire month of September. After the Jeju-do trip and concerts in August, I spent every weekend this month doing things that are free. Like sleeping in and marathoning episodes of Friends.

The weekend after I returned from Jeju-do, I took a day trip to Seoul to see the surround viewing of the EXO concert I went to back in May. Another one of the perks of being a kpop fan in Korea - you can go see a concert, then a few month later go to the theater and watch a special cut of the concert DVD, then a few months later buy the actual concert DVD with all its extra footage and photos. I'm spoiled.
I took two more trips to Seoul the last weekend of August for concerts. Saturday I went to Itaewon to see FTIsland and Sunday I went to Olympic Park to see Taemin.
FTIsland was great - they always are - but the concert was their 10th anniversary concert and was being filmed for a DVD, so security was super strict about cameras. The Taemin concert was unreal. It was super difficult to get tickets and I ended up only getting mine 3 days before the show. I got a floor ticket, so I wore heels and hoped I'd be able to see the stage. I wasn't prepared for how close I actually ended up being. I was the kind of close where it's almost awkward. Like I didn't know where to look, because making eye contact with him was like looking into the sun. Taemin's performance was so good that Kai from EXO was in the seated section right behind me and I didn't even care.
I went to Seoul /again/ the next Sunday for a concert, but I went early to get some other sightseeing in. First was Namdaemun, one of 8 gates along the Seoul fortress wall that surrounds the city.
Next was Deoksugung, a palace in downtown Seoul. I got in line to get a ticket and was approached by a girl who asked if I'd like a tour guide to walk around the palace. I was about to say no, then I realized she was a student and I asked her if it was for a school project. It was, so I wanted to help her out. We walked around the palace together and she told me about its history and taught me how to say things in Korean. We took some pictures together for her to use for her project and afterwards I filled out a survey about how she did on the tour.
I killed more time by walking along the Cheonggyecheon and getting dinner at On The Border. That meal, after not having Mexican food for like 7 months? Incredible. Not that On The Border is really Mexican, but ya take what ya can get.
While standing in the lobby waiting to get into the concert hall, a woman came over and basically asked me how I knew about the band. I wasn't kidding when I said they're little-known. I told her about my love for Korean rock and named some of my favorite bands, which were also apparently her favorite bands, so we bonded over our excellent taste in music. She told me she was from Los Angeles and she and her husband were in Korea on vacation and visiting family. She left her husband at the hotel and came to the concert. We were definitely like-minded people.
The Thornapple show was less like a concert and more like performance art. There was a square stage in the middle of the room, so the crowd surrounded the stage, and in the middle of the stage was a metal structure around a light display. There's 4 guys in the band and they each stood on a side of the square facing inward. Which was probably for the best, because I was 3 people away from the stage so it was another too-close, awkward-eye-contact situation.
So that was my last exciting weekend. Since then it's just been my one room apartment, my cats, and seasons 1-4 of Friends. Wait, that's a lie. I did go to Seoul about 2 weeks ago to meet up with some other foreigners. My friends and I ended up ditching the big group to go shopping on our own, and I scoured Hongdae for a t-shirt I had seen a girl wearing that says, in a Trump-esque font, "Make America Goth Again." I did not find this shirt, but I will. I must have it. We ended the night at karaoke, where we snuck in beer and ice cream and sang until the microphone battery died.