map the seoul

It's been a few weeks since my last update. I haven't forgotten about the blog, I swear! I've just been a really boring person lately. I've gone to a few concerts, but since photos aren't allowed during the shows and y'all probably don't want to read my rambling feelings about Jonghyun's stage outfits, I've really got nothing to post about them.
In early June, my friend Leigh and I went to the Korean Folk Village which is in our province. It's set up to look like a traditional Korean village with replicas of how towns and buildings used to look. They use the village as a filming location for historical dramas and movies. Here's me with saeguk Kim Soohyun. The fact that it looks like I'm holding his hand was totally unintentional and it's great.
There was also this 7-Eleven with a traditional-style roof. Unique.
On June 17th, Jonghyun had 2 back-to-back concerts and I went to both. I was on the lower level for the first show and in the front row on the balcony for the second. I could write 3 paragraphs about how he looked right at me, but I'll spare you and just say that it was a great day and he's an amazing performer.
It's the standees that were at SHINee's 9th anniversary party! Except here I didn't have to wait in line to get a picture with them.
I have a Sulbing addiction. At this point Leigh and I are on a mission to eat everything on the menu and we're making good progress.
On Friday my coteacher and I left school right after lunch and went to an elementary school in my province for an open class. I had my open class a few weeks ago, where people from the Ministry of Education and other native English teachers came to my class to essentially evaluate me. We sat in on the class and then had a meeting where we talked about what we thought of it. Afterwards, all of the teachers at my school went out for dinner as a going away party for two ladies from administration who are moving to new schools. It turned out to be quite an evening.
First round was Samgyupsal at a Korean BBQ restaurant. In Korean drinking culture when someone pours you a drink you basically have to drink it, and Koreans "cheers" to EVERYTHING. By the end of dinner everyone is quite drunk. My principal spilled an entire glass of makgolli that had just been poured for him. I was sitting right next to him and grabbed his phone so it didn't get too wet, but his entire pantleg was soaked. I was like, "In America we would say, 'You're flagged.'"
Round 2 was at a sul-jib - "alcohol house" - a few blocks away. The art on the walls of the sul-jib was amazing, but by far the best picture was this one of Bob Ross. I was laughing at it and got up to take a picture and my coworkers wanted to know why. I was like, do you know who he is? No one knew, so the picture wasn't funny to them.
 Round three was at a noraebang - karaoke room. I originally wasn't invited. They were like, "Okay we're going to noraebang. Not you, though," and I said, "I like noraebang! I'll sing!" So I sang two songs in Korean at noraebang, then had the realization that I had to face everyone in that room at work Monday morning. I have some regrets.
Yesterday (Saturday) I went to Seoul for a concert. It was a Japanese and Korean rock festival with 5 bands. I was there to see Miyavi and FTIsland, but the other 3 bands were certainly interesting. Like, I used to listen to a few Japanese rock bands who did visual kei, but that was almost 10 years ago. I didn't know Japan was still doing it. Then one of the groups, Codomo Dragon, came out and I realized I was wrong. The normal-looking guy in the middle is my guy, Miyavi. All the other guys are doing the visual kei look, and I seriously spent their whole performance watching the drummer because he was sitting all stiff like he didn't want his headgear to fall off. I was into their music though.

It's been A WEEK, y'all. I attended 3 (THREE?!) concerts. Let's start from the top.
On Saturday (May 27) I headed up to Seoul to see one of Jonghyun's solo concerts - he's doing a series of 20 shows, I got tickets for 4 of them. I had heard that the merch lines were insane, so I got there super early... and waited in line for 3 hours. Exciting stuff. I made friends with a Japanese fan who was near me in line and spoke English really well. She flew in for the weekend to go to the show. While we waited in line, they handed out papers with all the merch items listed on it and we were supposed to check the items we wanted to buy so we could just hand the paper to the person when we got to the register. My Japanese friend was laughing at me because I kept asking to borrow her pen to add to the list of items I was buying. They were sold out of the kazoo by the time I got to the front of the line ;~;
After the merch line, I only had time to go downstairs and buy a coffee before it was time to go in for the show. There were no camera or phones allowed during the show, but it was 2 and a half hours of perfection.
Jonghyun spent 3 years as a radio DJ and he had a segment on his show where he would read letters sent in by viewers and give them advice or comforting words. He did a segment like this during the concert - fans in attendance were able to submit letters before the show and he read a few of them on stage, found the fan who submitted the letter in the audience, and talked to them about what they wrote to him. He also asked if there were any couples in the audience. There was one couple up on the second floor, so he interviewed them and then dedicated the next song to them - and it was what's known as the Cockroach Song. It's essentially a song about how everyone has someone they're dating but he's totally single and bitter about it. During the song the couple in the audience were on camera / on the screens and the production crew gave them cockroach heads - it was really cute.
He sang Love is so Nice and I cried? It's not even a sad song? I don't know what happened. Jonghyun sang Just Chill while laying on a sofa, wearing a robe, acting cute, and you bet the crowd was going wild. He had a remote and was pretending to change channels on an imaginary tv. The remote fell off the sofa and he had to pick it up to use it again later in the song. He also put an eye mask on for part of the song. The crowd was not okay.
Handbells and kazoos were sold as merch items because there were songs where he had the audience play along. He has us play the handbells for Gloomy Clock and kept changing the pace to tease us, then during the last song, Beautiful Tonight, Jonghyun had different sections of the crowd play different melodies on their kazoos while he did this insane kazoo solo. I was kazoo-less ;~;
I had Shake Shack for dinner! It was exactly like in the US and honestly more than 3 months was far too long to go without a burger. Ate dinner and caught a bus back home.
Sunday I woke up super early and was at the bus stop at 8:30 to go back into Seoul. One of my students was ALSO at the bus stop... and I literally hid behind a pole so he didn't see me in my street clothes carrying a lightstick. (It worked - he never saw me.) This time I was going over to Jamsil to see EXO at Jamsil Olympic Stadium. I was there by 10am and got right in the merch line which thankfully only took about 45 minutes to get through. They didn't have the shirt I wanted, so I went back to COEX to get a different EXO shirt and walked around COEX mall for a bit to kill time. I was allowed into the venue at 3, then just hung out until the show started at 6. For future reference: they don't have concessions inside the venue. So if you don't want to drink sink water... like I did... buy a water bottle outside and bring it in.
The next show I went to was on a Thursday night. Jonghyun again. I get home from work around 5:45 and the show started at 8. Traffic getting into Seoul was bad, and I actually hopped off the bus a few stops early and speed-walked the rest of the way to the venue, but I was in my seat at 7:57 so I'd consider that a success.
I think this show was even better than Saturday's - partially because I was in the very last row in the theater so I could dance without having to worry about blocking someone behind me. AND there was an empty seat next to me so I had even more dancing room.
Jonghyun changed the setlist a bit for this show. We played the handbells for 2:34 and the kazoos were used for an extra song. There was another couple in the audience but they didn't want to be interviewed, so instead Jonghyun found a girl who was single and interviewed her, then she was a cockroach for the Cockroach Song. When he performed Just Chill he dropped the remote /again/ and he also had dropped his eye mask on the floor so when it came to that part of the song he couldn't find it and he covered his face with his blanket instead. He found the eye mask after the song was over and put it on anyway just to be cute.
There's a set in the middle where he performs Let Me Out / Elevator / End of a Day back-to-back and it's the most incredible vocal performance. During Elevator there's a break in the song and he extended that pause for what felt like forever and I was so swept up in it I think I forgot to breathe.
And I get to see this show TWO MORE TIMES ! And my seats for both of those shows are closer to the stage !

The fanmeeting was in a gymnasium on the grounds of Korea University. I found out the hard way that it's a giant campus - I trekked all across it looking for the gym and eventually found it after walking half a mile up a steep hill. It was a lovely downhill walk with nice views of the city walking back home, though!
I got there about 3 hours before the show. Bought merch, ate some street food, got some sunburn. There were so many people wearing SHINee blue and things with pineapples, I loved it.
I think my favorite part was when the crowd was split into teams to cheer the guys on while they played games. They played rock-paper-scissors to determine what their number was, then each member had different sections of the crowd on their team. My section was Team Jonghyun, of course. Staff brought out one of those arcade basketball games and the boys competed to see who could score the most points. Jonghyun did okay, but Onew won. Next, they played whack-a-mole. Onew won again! Apparently arcade games are one of leader's many talents.
They performed View and 1of1 back-to-back and it was LIT. It was my first time being a part of the Korean fanchants when it's on that level. Like at SHINee's USA show a lot of people did the fanchants, but at Korean shows it's EVERYONE and it is IMPRESSIVE. I, of course, did the American kpop fan thing of singing every word of the song as well as yelling the fanchants. That takes skill. Last song of the night was An Ode to You (너의 노래가 되어).