Checking In

I meant to make a nice long post tonight since it's been awhile since I've written, but it's probably not going to happen. My laundry machine is broken. I think. More than likely I'm just not pressing the right buttons, but I've tried everything I can think of. It filled up with water, started the washing process, and then stopped. I wasn't completely worried, because that happened last time too. This time though, I couldn't get it started again. I was out of ideas, so I had to pull all of my soaking wet clothes out, wring them out, and then hang them up on my drying rack. Luckily the rack fit in the bathroom. I've got the fan on them now, hopefully they are semi-dry by the morning (i.e. not dripping on the floor) and then wearable by tomorrow night. In case you are wondering - yes, I am deeming them "clean". They moved around in soapy water for awhile (actual time unknown) - they're clean.

So my lack of posting has been due to a combination of busyness, laziness, and watching about 30 episodes of Lost in about 3 days. Last weekend I went out to Exit again on Friday night, then on Saturday I spent all day in Seoul. I went with a few Suji people up to Yongsan to go shopping at the enormous electronics mart. I got some awesome speakers for my laptop for about $50, and my apartment is so much more fun for me now.

After that, I separated from those guys and met some people to do a wine making thing. It was pretty fun, we got to taste a bunch of wines, and decide which one we wanted to make. Then we actually got to toss the ingredients into a bucket of water, and in 6 weeks we get to come back and take our wine home. I feel like we cut about a billion corners on the wine making process (there were 5 ingredients: water, grape concentrate, clarifying agent, oak chips, and yeast), but we'll see how it turns out. For less than $30 bucks each we got to taste 10-12 wines, go through the wine making instruction, and then we each get 2 bottles of wine (we decided on a Shiraz and a Cab). Apparently we can also email a picture and they will put it on the label, so I'll take pictures of the bottles when I get them.

After that we all went to this cool little bar where the owner brews his own beer. For the first time in Korea I got to drink some decently priced dark beer. His stout was really good. While we there, I mentioned to one of the guys that I was planning on meeting some people from Suji to see Digitalism that night. Word started spreading around the table and after awhile about 6-8 people were down for going with me. I was pretty happy because I thought I was going to have to find the place by myself and I was worried I wouldn't be able to find my friends once I got there. However, the number severely dwindled when we found out it was 55,000 won.

Pretty soon everyone had made plans to go to a different bar, and I was just going to go with them - I wasn't even sure if I was still going to go to the show. But then 2 guys who I had never met and had barely spoken to that night said they were going to go, and they were just going to stay at that bar until the show started (Digitalism wasn't going on until 1am). So I hung out with them and had a really good time, they were really nice guys. Then we made our way over to the Ritz Carlton and went to the basement and entered Club Eden. The club was really nice, other than Vegas it's probably the swankiest place I've ever been to. And then Digitalism was ridiculous. It's a good thing I had been drinking all day, because I proceeded to dance for about 3 hours straight. Everyone who knows me knows that is a rarity, but hey, it happens every once in awhile, and I had a really good time. They played a lot of their own songs, but then also remixed a lot of popular songs. I can't remember all of them, but I know they played Bloc Party, and they also played the coolest version of "Kids" by MGMT I have ever heard in my life. I remember at the time thinking "omg how did they make this perfect song even perfecter?"

After I got out of there I went to a place to get something to eat because I had to kill time until the Subway started running again at 5:30am. I finally found a place that was open, and just pointed at something that cost 10,000 won on the menu. She gave me a really confused look and said "soup?" and I said "sure". She brought out 2 kinds of gross kimchi, and some other weird not-tasty stuff. Finally she brought out the soup, which was decent, but loaded with seafood that I did not recognize at all. I was really hungry though, so I finished it off. Korean food is about the worst drunk food ever. I was totally queasy after that. I got the bill and it was only 5,000, so I guess she was just looking out for me. I was probably trying to order an enormous 7 course meal originally. Too bad there's no tipping in Korea, or else I would have left her a good one.

So once the Subway started running, I had to go back to Apgujeong which was where I started the night at because I had left the previously mentioned speakers in a locker at the Subway up there. Then all the way back down home. It was about 7:30am Sunday morning when I got home, and I had the next two days off. I only left the house once between then and Wednesday morning, and it was to get pizza.

So I'm really stupid and I forgot to bring my camera that night, but I'll try to steal some pics from other people and post them. For now, I'm going to bed, and so glad this short week is already almost over.