Glow Sticks and Conversational Forethought Required....

    Keara: "You'd think it would be bigger since they had the Olympics here." 

    Laurie: "They had the Olympics here?!"

    Rachel: "Really, Laurie??? It's called the Olympic Stadium!"

    Brianna: "So you didn't see the giant Olympic Rings on the outside of the stadium then?"

    Laurie: "Ah. Right. Point noted. Thanks."

    Don't you just love those times when you say something completely ridiculous and all your friends poke fun at you for it..... and then they say something just as dumb 5 minutes later??? Well, that is how I spent my Saturday.
    This weekend was the Asia Song Festival at Seoul Olympic Stadium (which apparently is where they held the Olympics in 1988.... just to clarify). 

Go ahead. Laugh.

It's an event that was held in anticipation of the upcoming G20 Conference. In case you are unfamiliar with the G20 Conference (like I was) here is a little info from their website:

"The Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors was established in 1999 to bring together systemically important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy. The G-20 was created as a response both to the financial crises of the late 1990s and to a growing recognition that key emerging-market countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance."

    Soooo, in order to get into the spirit of helping the world, Korea organized a charitable concert headlining various Korean, Japanese, and Chinese music groups, and all the proceeds were donated to UNICEF. Prime tickets on the stadium field near the stage were, I'm assuming, where most of the money came from, but seats in the actual arena were free for foreigners, and not being the types to turn down free entertainment, Rachel, Keara, Brianna, and I decided head on over. So Saturday afternoon we made our way to Seoul and were pumped to see our first Korean concert and a couple of our new-favorite K-Pop stars in action! Between the four of us girls, the crazy Korean-isms, the not always good but always entertaining music, and the hundreds of middle-school-age Korean kids we were surrounded by, it was a hilariously fun night!
    As soon as we got off the subway, the sidewalks were lined with strings of street vendors selling binoculars and glow sticks. Cart after cart of men and women yelling to us in Korean and waving neon in our faces. Being the experienced Americans that we are though, we simply kept on walking because we all know that only cheese balls buy glow sticks at concerts, right? Right. 
    We decided to arrive fairly early since the tickets were free and therefore we didn't have assigned seats, but rather just a section, and we didn't want to wind up sitting behind a giant pillar in the East Buddah Nowhere nose-bleed seats or something. 

At least it's not hard to figure out where you should be.....

So when we finally got inside and claimed our seats, we still had about an hour until showtime. We took the opportunity to chit-chat, people-watch, picture-take, and soak up the whole experience. 

Hooray for free tickets!

    About a half an hour before the show, they started the sound-check. Now, you would think that in modern East Asia, land of technology, things in this department would be ship-shape-top-notch-amazing right? Wrong. To be perfectly honest, we were less than impressed with the overall functioning of technology for this show, but first and foremost, the sound quality was horrendous. I'm not sure who was in charge there, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a foreigner!

    Rachel: "They better fix the sound before it starts because I can't understand anything they're saying."
    Brianna & Laurie: "Umm..... it's in Korean! You couldn't understand it even if they fixed the sound!"
    Rachel: "Ooooh. Right."
    Aaaand payback! < Enter stage right >

    Even though the sound was poor and the jumbo screens kept skipping and shorting out, they made up for it in pyrotechnics. From fireballs shooting up from the stage to fireworks exploding intermittently throughout the performances, there was always something to keep you on your toes and grab your attention just as you were about to fall into a language-barrier-induced boredom patch. This stuff didn't start happening until about half-way into the show, though, so the first time a firework went off it was both startling and exciting.

    Brianna: "Aw man! Fireworks and I didn't have my camera ready! Why didn't they tell us that was gonna happen?!"

    Laurie: "They probably did tell us...... in Korean."

    Brianna: "Right."
    Ah, the sweet sounds of karma...

    When the sun went down, the whole stadium lit up, and not because of the stage lights. No, no. The entire arena came alive with.... glow sticks. Everyone, I mean everyone, had a glow stick. Everyone except us, that is. Hmmm... who are the cheese balls now?? Fail. But the upside is, things like this are easy to shrug off as an expat in Asia because it's impossible to blend in anyway. What's a glow stick gonna do? Make you look less like the duck in a flock of swans? Doubt it. So we got over it pretty quick. And then it became less about wanting to have a glow stick and more about wanting to know why everyone and their mother had them ...but then the first song started. 

See??? Everyone.

    So, you know how when you go to a concert in the states and the music starts, people tend to dance and move with the music? Not in Korea. Here, no one dances, they all just shake their glow sticks to the beat. It's. Hilarious. I looked out over the stadium and saw hundreds of glowing lights bobbing to the beat of the music and I suddenly felt like I was on an episode of "Seoul Shore." It was the most enormous demonstration of synchronized fist pumping I have ever witnessed!  The kind of display that would put Vinny and Paulie D to shame. Step aside Guidos, cuz clearly these people have been beatin' up the beat for years. 

    Keara: "This is like an episode of Jersey Shore! I gotta GTL tomorrow."

    Brianna: "I don't think they do tanning in Korea..."

    Laurie: "You're right, they don't. Here it's GBL. 'Gym, bleach, laundry!'"

    Aside from the fist pumping, we also noticed that no one applauds here. When a song is over at a concert in the states, the crowd usually erupts with applause and cheering. Well, in Korea, there is cheering most definitely, but no applause. People simply scream and cheer and wave their glow sticks! Yet another reason why it is imperative that you have one.

    

    Now, I haven't yet done a post about K-Pop (aka Korean Pop Music), but it's pretty awesome. The beats are great, songs are catchy (especially when they have English in the chorus), the dancing is usually pretty amazing, and I love the fact that most of the songs are really sweet and innocent (compared to the states that is...). Here are some examples of the groups we saw...

B2st 

(pronounced "Beast" even though it looks like "Batoost." Which really confused me for a long time because it didn't make any sense! But I finally figured out that it actually does make sense if you speak Konglish because the word for "two" in Korean is "ee" so.... "B-ee-st"
I will still be calling them Batoost, however, because it sounds awesome.)

Rain

(Rachel and Brianna were screaming like middle school girls over this guy!)


And then there's J-Pop (which is Japan's version of K-Pop).

This is AKB48. 
It's like dying. Slowly. 
We had to listen to this whole song.... live.... with no stop button available. It was like a never-ending, nightmare-ish version of "It's A Small World". 
Oh, and did I mention this group has 48 members???

    Once the show was over, we all were starving so we hopped on the subway in the direction of home and began deciding what we wanted to eat. After being out in the night air for several hours, the crowded subway car seemed outrageously hot in comparison. So by the time we arrived at Seohyeon Station and found a place to eat I was totally over-heated. Knowing that we were going to be outside that evening, I had planned my outfit accordingly and decided on something that I felt to be perfectly acceptable attire for late October evening weather - a tank top with a sweater over top and a light-weight scarf. Now, tank tops in Korea are apparently incredibly vulgar, offensive, and inappropriate as I very quickly learned when I first arrived because I have never gotten more dirty looks from grumpy old Korean women in my life! Forget about the girl standing next to me whose skirt is so short I am pretty sure I can see her booty, my shoulders are showing! But anyway, I stopped wearing tank tops unless I had something over top. Never did I foresee needing to take off my sweater for this outdoor evening, so I figured I was good to go. But after that subway ride, I just couldn't help myself. My cheeks were flushed, my neck was sweating, and I was on the verge of hangry* so I decided to throw modesty to the wind and lose the sweater. Look out ajummas, here come Laurie's shoulders.

    Keara: "Well, are we all finished? I think we have to pay at the front."

    Rachel: "Yup. Let's go."

    Laurie: "Ok, well I'll wait and walk behind you all because my shoulders are showing...."
    Brianna: "Funny! But seriously though, probably a good idea."

    After dinner we decided we all needed some dessert, so we headed over to the nearby Dunkin Donuts. We walked in, thoroughly perused the display, and made our selections. I was really impressed when I first got to Korea by how many Dunkin Donuts they have here. It's like 7-11 or Starbucks - one on nearly every street corner! I'm pretty sure they need to change their slogan to "Korea runs on Dunkin".

Clearly this company's marketing department is not properly tuned in to its target audience.

Anyway, I was just havin a good ol' time, completely content to be at Dunkin Donuts. I think I even mentioned to one of the girls how impressed I was with how many Dunkins there are in Korea. So imagine my surprise when I looked over and saw two guys sitting at a table with two large boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts....

    Laurie: "What are they doing with Krispy Kreme donuts at Dunkin? What is the point of that?"

    Rachel: "We are at Krispy Kreme, Laurie!"
    Laurie: "Aaaaaand that's the last time I say anything tonight."
    Curses! Foiled again!

I did manage to make it back home to Rachel's without any further space-cadet comments, so that was good. And, all-in-all, an amazingly fun and fabulous night! Thanks, ladies!!!


*A state of unpleasant disposition brought on by heat. A blending of "hot" and "angry."
Also commonly manifested as a result of severe hunger, taking the form of a blending of "hungry" and "angry."