And the Good Days Go By...

Tonight I went to see some traditional Korean music and dancing. It was at a theatre near Seoul City Hall. The whole show was pretty much geared toward tourists, but since I'd not seen any traditional Korean performance of any kind, it was interesting for me. The show featured seven different kinds of performance. My favorite had to be Gayageum Sanjo. This involved a row of about 8 women. Each woman was surrounded by 5 drums, two on each side (the other sides of which she shared with the women on either side of her) and one behind her. The women wore beautiful costumes and drummed in unison. The drumming patterns caused the women's movements to be incredibly dance-like, making the performance both visually stimulating and percussively awesome. My second favorite was Pangut and Sogochum, men dancing and playing instruments with long streamers on their hats. They moved their heads as they danced and played, in order to make nifty shapes and patterns with the streamers (think rhythmic gymnastics, only exponentially more whimsical and enjoyable). Good stuff.

Things have been fab. Having made it through my first full week of crazy dance shows, I treated myself to some falafel (inferior to the stuff in Israel, but a reasonable facsimile when it's all you can get) and a Thai massage in Itaewon. The massage straightened out my aching muscles pretty well. I was definitely in some pain after an intense week, but the shows went well, and I really, really enjoyed myself, in spite of the excessive sweat and relative exhaustion. I'm looking forward to diving back in tomorrow morning. Yay!


Some other highlights of the week included a show of crazy bar tricks at the going away gathering of a couple of friends...


AND, a trip to the Rosenbraeu. The Rosenbraeu is a place in La Festa (the "hip" bar/shopping district in Ilsan). It is trying pretty hard to be a Biergarten, and actually the beer, which can be purchased by the yard, is really pretty good for Korea. The real draw, however, is the Filipino cover band pictured above. They are beyond awesome. They do songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, followed up by "Let's Get Retarded" by the Black Eyed Peas. They have a FOG MACHINE. It goes without saying that Dylan Thomas and I love this place. When we went last Friday, we got to hang out with the band. That's right, we're vip all the way.

The fourth of July ended up being lots of fun as well. It was determined that bottle rockets were small enough not to get us invaded, so shoot them off, we did. Also, there was much drinking, merry making, guitar playing and singing/belligerent shouting of songs. Rumor has it the night ended with bottle rockets being shot off from behind the English Village "Hollywood sign." Sadly by that point I had already headed home for some Zs. Ah well.

Thus far, it seems as though the rainy season here hasn't been gathering much steam. At the moment, however, I've got a nice downpour to which I'll finish my book and drift happily off to sleep. Yum, yummy yum.