james new brain

SOUTH KOREA – 2007.08.31 – DAY 04 (CONT’D)

Right, so tonight the rival Yonsei international-student / native-student mixing club, Mentors Club, threw its welcoming party for the fall semester. They rented out a big room on the 13th floor of a big skyscraper on the outskirts of Sinchon, overlooking the city.

Like IYC before it, I hit up the party late in order to avoid $20 entrance fees. Sorry IYC/Mentors, I still haven’t decided which of your two sororities I’ll be joining, so you’re not getting any of my money yet! Thanks for free beer though.

ALSO, TONIGHT I GOT TO DANCE. Which I’ll talk about in a sec.

Mentors gets props for bringing in the Yonsei Hip-Hop dance team to perform. They weren’t THAT good, however…

…they did have Shek-Shi Gul, who as you can see, was a pretty sexy girl.

Then they turned the dancing over to us. funTif you know, also with her is Amy, or AMES if you feel like it.

For some reason, whenever a group of Koreans come together with the intent to dance, they always devolve into a circle with the three Korean dudes who know how to break dance in the middle. It is a lot like entropy; fun-entropy.

Thanks Katharina Nemec for snapping this. The kid in the pin stripe hat is literally exclaiming “coorl!”

more shek-shi gul.

The number of Germans/Korean Germans/Koreans who speak German here is crazy. Here’s Nina and Hoe-Sen both from Germany. They are my way-to-cool older sisters. The guy is Jin, a native Korean who speaks fluent English and German.
I then left the party with some of my new friends, for more relaxed schmoozing in some bars in Sinchon…

This imported beer bar keeps a variety chilling in these pools at every table.

Here is a urinal, and the coolest thing about Korea, the Squater.

And so went my third night in Sinchon.

SOUTH KOREA – 2007.08.31 – DAY 04

But first some ice cream.

You don’t tip in Korea. Even better, restaurants and bars give YOU “service” which can be anything from free drinks and random other foods. This noodle place gave us a free ice cream cone. THANKS, exactly what I wanted.

NOW, about shopping.

So apparently I did this wrong, and you’re supposed to go shopping here only between like midnight and 4 AM. We went during broad daylight, just to check it out. Huge outdoor and underground markets, coupled with huge shopping centers / department stores.

The exterior of Doota, the department store we checked out.

Inside. Every floor is themed and stocking exclusively for a single sex, and made up of countless smaller private owned stores all packed together so that you can’t tell where one ends and another begins. It’s impossible to even pick something to buy because there’s so much in your face power overwhelming.

Outside every shopping center in the city there are music stages where pop acts are filmed for TV broadcast. We passed this pop group pretending to play instruments that weren’t even hooked in to loud dancy K-Pop music, and also saw a Korean nu-metal band with cheesy instruments but awesome iron maiden like vocals at another shopping center down the street.

SOUTH KOREA – 2007.08.30 – DAY 03 (Cont’d)

Yes, I did a lot today. I left the party in Hongdeh with some/alot of my new friends, and we returned to Sinchon to go hit a bar called FESTIVAL. Oh yea, this was my first night with Soju, Korean Rice liquor, so things get a little out of hand.

There are a couple of blocks like this in Sinchon just covered in multiple stories of bars. You can see the sign for FESTIVAL in the distance, left, 5th story.

That’s funTiffany. (That’s how I wrote her name on the little piece of paper in back pocket that night helping me to remember the names of folks I met the next morning) Big dude’s Jorn from the Netherlands.

We had two tables side by side, that basically got in to a how-many-bottles-can-your-table-down? competition. This was my table.

And…the rival table…Gambei!

ANYONG, from Arrested Development serves us Soju/Pineapple Juice cocktail. Add two more bottles of Soju at our table, and you’re set for drunkupace-time.

Jane Noona takes charge.

Evelyn, Tim, and Ryo

We hit a point where we were pretty angry at the Soju bottles that were trying to kill us. (Not angry at Jane Noona or funTiffany though!)

Reverse angle. Jorn is the only one who understands my pain!

Check out this poor table. Sorry table.

Whew, end of a long day. Thanks Derek and all my new chingus for help with the fun walk home!

SOUTH KOREA – 2007.08.30 – DAY 03 (Cont’d)

Yes. For me. So there are two Yonsei University clubs aimed at joint exchange student / native Korean interaction. One of them is IYC, or International Yonsei Community, and they hosted a party tonight in the neighboring burrow of Hongdeh at a rented out bar. Hongdeh is way nice! Check it:

To break the ice, drinking contest of course. Free beer is really all the ice breaker I really needed though.

Ryo you know. Meet Hannah of San Fran on the far left. Find her by clicking on me. Definitely one of the coolest folks I’ve met here yet. Oh, and those two white folks are the super famous German pop group Felix & Lissie. Voei es de yugendherburger?

Mix & Mingle.

More introduction games. This one is called Lady & the Tramp, I believe?

I did this on purpose

David, let me play please

Sujin, my Korean girlfriend for 20 minutes. She promised to take me to eat excellent DOG SOUP.

Yea these are some pretty awesome folks. Notice the couple with matching hats.

This night still isn’t over. See next post please for FESTIVAL.

SOUTH KOREA – 2007.08.30 – DAY 03 (Cont’d)

This is called Pat Bin Su (팥빙수) and it is de-li-cious. All sorts of (like TONS of) fresh fruit, some vanilla frozen yogurt, shaved ice, and most importantly: copious helpings of SWEET RED BEANsssss. Mmm i say:

Ryo and Jae Hee are preeetty preeeetty excited. (Imagine larry david saying it)