Days 11 - 13

Day 11 (Saturday) - "SNSD" & Papa Gorilla

For breakfast I had bad tasting traditional Korean porridge. The taste is sort of absent, and inside there is lots of soft beef fat added for some reason.

For dinner I got my first glimpse at SNSD. Many celebrities wrote messages after eating at this place, where you have to BBQ your food yourself. But if you do nothing, they do it for you.

Famous Norae bang / Karaoke place - I want to go there some time

Nice place for drinking

Today I went to a Korean club for the first time, Papa Gorilla in Hongdae - there is also Mama Gorilla and Baby Gorilla. I noticed at night in Hongdae there are many foreigners compared to other places.


The atmosphere was really different from Amsterdam. Everyone was happier, the music was better (pop) and people danced better. There was especially 1 cute girl but it looked like she only wanted to dance.


Day 12 - Sincheon

I booked a new hostel in Sincheon. I think it’s better to stay in each place max 2 weeks because that way I see more of the city.

While walking around I met a weird homeless Korean guy. He stood in front of me and started doing some Indian ritual on me. He was moving his arm around in circles in front of me while saying some kind of “uh, uh, uh” all the time. I don’t know if he couldn’t really speak Korean/Indian or that he was drunk, or he was trying to speak English. I should have taken a picture of this!

The same street turned out to be a wedding street - bigger than the one I had been in before. It was in this street that I discovered that the prettiest girls are in Sincheon. A cute girl coming from the opposite direction looked at me in such a curious/happy way. Then I realized I usually meet the prettier girls in this area ;) I think the girl from the club yesterday must have been from Sincheon too :)

Day 13 – Finding places, cameras & the most beautiful Korean girl

I asked a girl in English where a subway station is. She looked at me almost in a defensive pose with her arms, then I asked the same thing in Korean. She then opened up; she told me how to walk and she looked up what route I should take on her phone. She was a really pleasant and friendly person but if I hadn’t spoken Korean to her I would have felt like she thought I was some homeless person trying to talk to her. Later I asked her why she didn’t speak English. She said she didn’t learn it in school.

Arrived at City Hall subway station I tried to find the Sinsegae mall. For the first time I asked 2 guys for directions. Although I spoke to them in Korean, they mostly spoke to me in English. “Walk, then go right”, the first one said. While he was explaining where I had to go right, his friend said it was left. It was raining so the smoking guy asked me how I wanted to go there. I said I would walk and he said “It’s OK?” in informal language (which he’s not supposed to use). I walked straight where they said I had to go right, but since I didn’t know exactly where to turn, I asked again and some other guy told me to go left (which was the right way).

While walking to the left, I found a street with a lot of camera stores, maybe 20. I had made a list of the top 5 camcorders but no store had those cameras. Many stores didn’t have Sony. In the Panasonic store they didn’t have the Panasonic I wanted but they did have the older model.

At night I went to the Ho bar (I think nr 4 or 6) with 2 Japanese guys and 1 American guy. Later on I think I saw the girl from Papa Gorilla in the Sky Lounge.

In the Sky Lounge - which is only at the 5th floor

But I soon forgot about her: when I left the Sky Lounge, I saw the most beautiful girl Korean girl I had see so far. She looked somewhat like IU but really beautiful, maybe even more than SNSD Taeyeon, Yoona & Jessica. Her face was so pretty and clean. This was level 1O!

IU

IU - the girl was hotter than this

Taeyeon - I would choose the other girl

Day 8 - 9 - 1O - Gorilla Crew Dance Practice

It was finally time, I was going to practice with the Gorilla crew!

Moon told me to be there at 2 so I was there at 1.4O, waiting outside. It was sunny but I didn't mind going to the basement for the dance practice :)

Looking at the audience from the ground stage

I entered the theater, but nobody was there yet. So I got on the top stage to see what it was like to look at the audience. When one of the dancers arrived, he told me it would start at 3. So I put on my outfit and I started to do some warming up. From 3 on, only 3 dancers were there. Their routines started with a lot of stretching, especially their legs. I also did some stretching, and after this they started practicing individually. I asked one of the dancers to show me a simple move. His English was not so well so another dancer showed me a simple move to practice. Basically, fancy side stepping.

Later on, more and more people arrived, and Moon showed up too. He had one of the dancers teach me the swipe. This guy didn't speak English, but I knew what I had to do. I tried to copy him (jump with left and kick with right) and he showed me it was important to keep your hips/abs tight because you have to keep your back straight when your back is facing the ground.

I did the move a few times, but I just could not spin far enough. He showed me the technique a few more times, and later on he even grabbed my leg and moved it the way it was supposed to fly in the air ;) I kept practicing this move and got it right 2 times, except I was supposed to do the move 2 times in succession.

The next day I kept on practicing the swipe. I was better at it and I felt like I understood the concept better now. I also started practicing the freeze. Because the swipe and freeze hurt after a while, I had to take breaks regularly. During these breaks I noticed again that some people concentrate only on themselves. There was one guy who was rehearsing his acting part. He did many facial expressions, acting shocked and moving around, getting a lot of emotion in his face. It was weird that one time he looked at me, but he was so into it, I think he didn't really see me :)

Some dancers doing hip hop moves were just facing a wall and with music from their ear phones they practiced their moves. It was as if the outside world also did not really exist for them when they practiced. Like yesterday, this one girl kept dancing in quite a simple way. She just moved up and down a little bit, like she was trying to perfect some small thing that an outsider couldn’t see.

The control panel

Friday Gorilla crew dance practice started late. When I arrived only the sound engineer was there. He asked me if I was hungry and I said I was a little. So he gave me 6 vitamin C candies. He wanted to go to Amsterdam some time, and other places in Europe. He studied English at home with Rosetta Stone (same method I use for Korean) and I must say, that he does that is pretty admirable. To do that when it’s not really something he learns in school and just to advance his life. Although his English was better than my Korean it was bad but I hope he’ll be able to learn good English and go to Europe to see what it’s like soon. Because if you delay dreams, new dreams will come and then they get delayed too and then you have nothing. I believe I made something like that up some day.

This time I kept practicing the swipe and the freeze. I asked a dancer if break dance always hurts. He helped me do the freeze and this time it was much easier. The remarkable thing is that when I do it the “left handed way” I seem to be much better at it than when I do it the way that seems easier. It hurt but I liked that this time. Because it’s actually a luxury to feel that I’m progressing so quickly.

Later they were making promo videos for a TV station. Some of them showed off their dance moves. The girl who always dances in a simple way showed off her moves too. Her performance was... not so interesting. Her left arm stayed in almost the same position and she only went up and down a bit, moving her right arm. Her facial expression was sort of uninterested. It was dancing but I really felt like she was holding back a lot. I think I had seen her dancing during the show and then she was much better.


So, maybe I can replace that girl in the show soon ;)

Day 7 - Sinsegae Department Store

I went to the area called Myeongdong in the city center where there are many tall buildings. I went to Sinsegae, a department store. There are 3 big department stores in Seoul and they all compete with each other: Hyundai shopping center (with blazer girl), Shinsegae and Lotte department store.

My new shoes

On the way to Sinsegae

When I approached Sinsegae from far away I already saw it was a very tall building. Although it only has 11 floors, it has high ceilings and each floor is quite large too. So when I entered the building I was struck by the same feeling that I had when I first entered the Hyundai shopping center. So much shininess, so many things to see. Since the place was bigger than the Hyundai shopping center and somehow it looked more expensive, I thought how can Hyundai win from their competition?

Shinsegae in the evening, when I left

I walked around a bit on the first floor but since that’s always the make up floor I went up higher. I immediately noticed the personnel behaved differently than in the Hyundai shopping center. In the Hyundai shopping center the sellers greet you when you walk in/near their store. So I was expecting the same thing here. But they usually didn’t do that. They were talking amongst each other or they were busy with administration or something, but they didn’t seem to have as much attention for customers somehow.

After dinner I went to a hallway with a sign that said Culture hall. There was some weird confusion as the 2 girls there couldn’t explain to me what culture hall was or even where it was (this happened in the culture hall). One of the girls asked me "What's your culture?" so she could call a translator to help me. She was surprised to find out I was Dutch ; ) Luckily on the top floor I met the nicest girl of the day, who was actually not that special.

My dinner

View from the restaurant. Check out the roof.

On the top floor you can take all kinds of courses: dancing, “fashionable cooking”, things like that. So I asked her what kind of dance courses can I take, but unfortunately she couldn’t speak real English. She did seem like a nice person but I didn’t get to know her.

Before leaving I went into the basement where there were was a supermarket and a lot of food stands. I remember “always say yes to anything” and I tried some drink that was quite spicy, like hot chewing gum. That was the only thing I bought in that mall.

Before leaving I asked this info girl about the tax free shopping situation. It took her relatively long to explain to me how it worked. I guess they need to communicate better in this mall. I can see how Hyundai shopping center can stand up to this place. So I should check out the Lotte department store soon.

After leaving I walked around randomly and I came across a nut stand/vehicle. A 45? year old man was selling 6 types of nuts from some kind of vehicle. We talked a bit and there was one kind of nut I didn’t know (black nut?), it grows in Korea. Unlike in the Seyeogae mall where the food sellers were just trying to sell stuff, this guy just talked to me. Despite that we were only talking in Korean, I could talk quite well with him.

But Sinyeogae is not a bad mall, except the floor that’s almost exclusively for golf and the expensive stuff they have there. I mean, I wouldn’t buy most things there because of the price. I did buy the black nuts from the man outside. Instead of a spoon-type thing, they put the nuts in an open wooden box and that's 1 unit. When I said I wanted half, he just took out half with his hands, that's how they do in Korea ;) - 4OOO

What I would buy at an inflated price were some SPAO pants I saw later. Walking into the store I saw a poster of Yoona, and Soo Young & Taeyeon posters were there too. But the training pants I wanted to buy had a zipper near the ankle so I couldn’t buy it. Tomorrow: dance practice ; )

Day 6 - Blazer Girl

I set out to do some things today: ask out the Hyundai shopping center girl, buy new shoes for dancing and buy pants for dancing.

I had breakfast in Paris Baguette. It was not that luxurious inside since you had to take the stuff yourself on a tray, like a buffet. After that I went to the Hyundai shopping center.

When I entered the shopping center I knew what to say to the blazer girl to ask her out. First tell her about my performance the day before and that I’m going to practice every day now, after that tell her she’s cute and after that ask her name and ask her out to the Han river to ride bikes there.

B1 of the Hyundai Shopping Center - lots of foods. I asked if I could take a pic, and the woman said yes and she leaned against the window. So I thought she wanted to be in the pic too. When I aimed the camera at her too, she ducked down and she said she didn't want to be in the pic. Cute ;)

To avoid running into her after I asked her, I had to buy shoes after all, I first went a few floors higher to the shoe department. I bought new shoes for dancing, red ones, they are very light weight. I often wear heavy shoes so these felt like super light weight. Anyways, it was time to ask out the blazer girl. But for some reason I had gotten hungry so I first went even higher to the second highest floor to have Chinese gold noodles.

After lunch I did it. I walked up to her store. Her store was in the back against the wall of the building with a big pole in the center that you have to walk past to get in the store. I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable so I preferred to talk to her more out in the open.

I entered the store and there was nobody. I waited for a few minutes, but nobody came. What bad customer service this was! So I guess she didn’t work today so it wasn't her fault ; ) I left the building and walked around, even through a tunnel.

Try going to that address

That is not a huge McDonalds building, the top floors are something else

After an hour or so I got hungry again. It was dinner time, and maybe she worked a different shift. So I went back to the Hyundai shopping center and I had dinner – Korean or Chinese or Japanese. I think it was Japanese because it was called “Bento”, there was wakame seaweed and the chopsticks were Japanese, but the pork was cooked Chinese style, the tea was Chinese but then again there was kimchi and I was in Korea. I guess it didn’t matter since it was the best thing I ate since arriving in Seoul.

I didn't find her. But this is only day 6 out of 1OO, so who knows who I will meet next. With my luck, it will be someone amazing ;)

Day 5 - Gorilla Crew!

3 things happened today:

1 I went to the Gorilla crew show in the B boy theater. It was amazing.

2 I performed on stage as part of the show, it was super fun!

3 They filmed it for TV.

4 Moon invited me to train with them anytime. So that’s 4 days a week! (Sunday’s show is at 2 so idk how that will go).

5 I can’t count anymore but then I went into a shoe store to buy new shoes ;)

Thanks to the small box office girl who first gave me the 275OO discount, got me the best seat and asked me to take a pic with them, she’s amazing & the friendliest Korean I’ve met so far. So the nicest girl of day 4 and 5 is the same girl ;) although one of the dancers was really sexy so...

This is only day 5 in Korea. What is going to happen next? Girls’ Generation? haha

Ok, so now I’m going to ask out that Hyundai shopping center girl.

Day 4 - movie, photoshoot, music, puppies

Today I decided to just walk around randomly and avoid areas that I already knew. So from the Bluguest house I took a different route – I went right. I quickly found another big street with big buildings on the other side in the distance. Samsung and a few other things were written on them.

It was snowing! Not much but this was unexpected. There was also a somewhat strong wind. I passed some kind of wedding and asked an old man standing there what kind of building it was. I didn’t really know what he said but it looked like he wanted me to walk on. I told him my Korean is not so good and he explained something in a friendlier way but I still didn’t understand.

I had lunch in that street (I missed the official guesthouse breakfast again). Some business people were inside, I guess it was somewhat of a business street. While walking around in a connected street, I happened to walk past a movie set for a movie called My PS partner. When I asked a crew member what “PS” stands for, he said “porn sex”. But it was a romantic comedy.

In the same street I met a nice English teacher. She told me many Koreans speak English but they are afraid to do so. In my own experience it’s very different between Koreans, some have studied English and some haven’t. So when I start talking to someone, I’m not always sure what language to use. I prefer when the other person speaks normal-level English so we can actually talk, but sometimes like yesterday in the suit store I talked to the woman for 2O mins in "Korean" and it was ok. I’m thinking about visiting the Hyundai store again just for her. I mean if no other man sees how cute she is and doesn’t asks her out, I should, right?

Behind me in a side street was the movie set, the street parallel to the left of this street is the quiet street

The quiet street behind the movie set was different from other streets I had been in. Less commercial, no things to buy from the streets. It looked more calm and European. What was not European was the PC bang in the basement I went in for internet. The guy who worked there quickly helped me because he was playing some online game with 2 of his friends who were also there. I spoke to him in Korean, he didn’t seem to find it that strange. The seats were very big, soft, expensive and ergonomic. The screens were 22-24 inch but the computers were 1-2 years old already. This kind of place in Europe would not get many non-nerd customers, I mean playing video games in the basement :)

I went into a surf store. Apparently you can surf at Jeju island and something-yang. But there were no real purpose-build running shoes there so I decided to go shopping again some time.

I noticed I ended up in the same “business street” I started the day in when I recognized the tall buildings. This time I was walking on the other side of the street and I went into a place with the word “Wedding” in it. Inside, a wedding was going on. I asked the 2 young girls (1 had braces) what a Korean wedding was like. They said it was like a Western wedding. They were surprised that I knew about hanbok. Maybe I should have talked to them in Korean to really change their ideas about the world ;) Next to this place were more wedding stores. This was what my map called Wedding street (I knew my map said that without looking at my map).

Laugh!!

Somewhere I walked by a photoshoot. When I approached the group of ppl standing outside, a woman saw me and she kept looking at me, trying to recognize me. But she didn’t so luckily she didn’t make a scene. Later a woman holding her phone walked up to me from behind and said “Sillehamnida” (I think), which means “excuse me”. She saw my face and then she thought I couldn’t help her so she walked on to a group ahead without really saying anything to me.

When I was small I was always lucky. Whenever I took a chance, it happened. So I walked by a phone testing promotional stand. I tested a phone with the help of an interesting girl with a hat who couldn't speak English at all and only fast Korean. She said in Korea ppl learn English in school but she didn't. I got to spin a wheel afterwards to decide what I had won. And then the wheel stopped at a narrow colored strip :) What was it? A 1O,OOO gift card! The best price on the wheel ;)

I then went into some art building. On the 1st floor they sold all kinds of artsy stuff that was still useful, but less useful because it was artsy. There was a European influence: maps of the French, London and NY subway, maps of the railways in Europe. I went below grounds where there was some concert called "Green Concert". It was made by JinAir, an airliner, to raise money to give to environmental institutions that protect the environment. The concert is once a month so I want to go there in April and interview some of the artists. Upstairs was some Unicef thing where you can adopt dolls made by Korean celebrities. One of them was overly black, I guess that’s how some Koreans see Africans ;)

Back in one of the most popular streets in Hongdae it was time to get some food. Before I could do that I was surprised by some street event. For Mnet My Idol a group of 4 guys were performing on the street, I think to get ppl to go to a website and vote for them. It was fun to see their dance performance (not that synchronized, but it was cold), there were 2 stores also playing music on either side of their stage so that messed up their music a bit.

You need a cyworld account to go to that site, for which you need to have an Alien Registration Card or be Korean

After dinner, which I didn’t really have, I walked by the place in Hongdae where musicians play outside. The most popular group now had a cameraman filming the thing, maybe they were also part of the Mnet thing. Next to them were 4 guys doing exactly the same thing, all wearing big glasses, trying to make a satire of them. But they didn’t really have an audience.

I went to the B boy theater to see the show. This theater is also in the basement of the building. Why can’t they build higher instead? Although if you’re going to have a basement, you should better make use of it. At the ticket booth I found out the show had already started. Saturdays the show doesn’t start at 8… 1 ticket was 55,OOO but the girl gave me a 5O% discount coupon, “It’s a gift from me”, she said in her good English. She asked where I’m from. Apparently the best way to explain to ppl where Amsterdam is by saying it’s in the Netherlands (which everyone here knows?) or by telling them Heineken is from there. She talked with such energy and enthousiasm, she was by far the nicest girl I met that day ;)

Without having seen the show, I bought macarons on the way back. I never had them before. They had 7 different kinds but in their promotion you could buy 6 for 7OOO ^^ So I bought the same amount most ppl would buy. After this I went into an interesting building with many small restaurants. Upstairs & below grounds you could eat and have your nails done, and upstairs was a store where they sold puppies ;) but I took no pictures :S

Day 3 - Shopping in Sincheon

Day 3

Before I went out I borrowed an umbrella from the Bluguest House keeper. I asked him if he asked his cousin about that good bulgogi place that he knows, but he forgot to do that. So he asked if I wanted to go eat bulgogi with him next week.

My traditional Korean lunch (since I missed breakfast)

Today it rained the whole day so I went shopping indoors. To get to a place in Seoul is hard without being distracted by so many other things so I think I never made it to the center of Sincheon.

In the first street in Sincheon when coming from Hongdae I saw a music academy. I went inside and I met the head teacher there. It was a music academy for kids – piano, voice, violin. I got tea and we talked with help of my dictionary. I also met her daughter who is 1O, she can speak English.

On the way back down I passed a calligraphy studio. I went inside and one of the calligraphy experts wrote my name in a few different styles and he let me try it too. The rain made the paper a little wet :(

나탄스

The caligraphy expert - he also took a pic with his camera

I went into a supermarket and there was a coffee girl giving out free coffee. She was pretty and she couldn’t speak English. I didn’t have that much to say to her (I think she was not so smart actually). I asked her where the coffee was from and she said “Ethiopia” as if it was the first time in her life she said that.

Like I said, I went shopping. Across the street is the Hyundai department store. This is a big white building with black front doors. Inside there was a lot of activity going on. The floor, the ceiling, the walls, they were all white. I asked the 2 customer service girls where the man’s department was since the ground floor was very woman-oriented.

Every time I walked into a store, the employees greeted me in Korean and when I left they did the same. Also, their greetings were sincere and loud and that made the whole experience very likeable. I am not used to that since in Amsterdam that doesn’t really happen. What I also noticed is that many of the products are European, especially French and Italian.

On one of the floors I went to try on a few “coats for suits”. We were alone (the store was sort of separate from the other stores) and the girl who helped me was the highlight of the shopping center “Blazer” “Yeah” we said as we understood each other. Out of all the friendly people in the shopping center she was the best. She was pretty but besides that she was very sun-shiny. I don’t know how else to say it. She didn’t speak English but she really tried to understand me. I tried on a blazer and I thought it was too tight. “I want something more... stretchy”. “Stretchy” she repeated in a happy way. She knew that word :) It’s fun how little things like that are fun.

She helped me try on 2 stretchy blazers and I could not decide between them. We kept talking in Korean and somehow I knew what she meant without knowing the meaning of most of the words she said. Every time I put on a blazer she sort of arranged the back a little and she was always smiling as if she was having fun. Eventually I couldn’t choose between the black one which had a good “line” (she said that in English) and the light grew one which fit a little better but it was grey. Later on she said something I couldn’t understand. She called a translator who showed up in 2 mins. Then I spoke with her too and at some point the blazer girl said to the translator that I had a dictionary :) I didn’t know which one to buy so I didn’t buy anything.

Dinner – I asked a girl what was the best restaurant. She spoke native level English but as she was explaining to me that she was looking for a restaurant herself and she didn't know which one was good, her girlfriend came up from behind us and they started talking in Korean about what she was doing (with me). With no real advice I had bibimbap for dinner.

Actually, they did advice me to eat bibimbap because it was delicious. So why did they eat something else? :D

The Hyundai shopping center is connected with an airbridge to the U-plex building. At the bottom of that is an underground mall. It’s not that big though. And the U-plex is just a cheaper department store.

At night I walked around in Sincheon. So many places to go to, at every intersection you discover many more streets with lights and people. I must have walked 5 kilometers without getting an overview of the place!

Basically, the most common type of stores in Korea are: PC bang (internet cafe), Norebang (karaoke), coffee place (where they sell coffee and usually also sandwiches), restaurants (up to now the food is not as good as I thought it would be? Am I going to the wrong restaurants?), cosmetic store and phone store (but normal tourists can’t get a phone nr in Korea, or use a non-Korean IMEI).

On the way back I asked the way to Hongdae. This girl was wearing the most make up I had seen in Seoul. Her voice was like Nana’s voice in White Tears, I don’t know what personality that voice is related to but I think it sounded sort of high maintenance. But I guess she was nice.