May I have this silent dance? *Korea Silent Disco*

Hongdae, one of my favorite neighborhoods in Seoul, Korea, is known for being loud and full of music. Every night you can count on the area’s public spaces to be full of spontaneous and talented performers and one can not ignore the deafening beats blaring from the many clubs that line Hongdae’s narrow streets. But one random night each month is reserved for a different kind of party.

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My friends grew tired of me trying to coordinate our plans so that we would be in Hongdae for this infamous soiree. After a few missed dates due to conflicting dinner plans and bad weather I thought it just wasn’t meant to be. With just over a month left living and teaching in Korea, I eyed my Korea Bucket List with satisfaction and shrugged off the 2 scribbled words in the bottom right hand corner: Silent Disco. You can’t do it all… Or can you?

And then, as life goes, when I wasn’t looking I full on stumbled into a quiet mess of headphones, swaying bodies, balloons, and all sorts of dancing.

The Korea Silent Disco is widely known in the city and has helped to make the Hongdae playground a fantastic meeting place for friends and those looking to enjoy the fresh air, the talented local performers, and of course the cheap convenient store beer and soju.

The Silent Disco is not exclusive to Korea. This type of party is widely known around the world and it is a disco where people dance to music listened to on wireless headphones. The DJ’s music is broadcast via an FM-transmitter and the disco-ers wear headphones that pick up the signal.

We found our way to a small booth where a handful of Korean women, who I swear were K-Pop stars, took our money (about $4.00) and IDs and issued us bulky headphones.

For the next few hours we danced and admired the diverse crowd of dancing Koreans and foreigners. Each disco participant seemed to have a different style of dance, but no one seemed to mind. Between every few songs I managed to let the headphones slip down to my neck and I relished in the peaceful party that surrounded me. It’s a very strange feeling to experience a full-blown dance party with no sound. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the disco, I believe the oblivious people passing by got the real show. They curiously laughed and pointed at us and some dancers kindly allowed the strangers to wear the headphones for a brief few moments.

Toward the end of the night the disco leader led the party out into the streets. We followed him as he dodged inbetween traffic, past packed restaurants, and through the busy shopping alleys of Hongdae for what is called an ‘open air love parade’.

This night was a quiet one, but one I will surely not forget anytime soon. Make sure to check out the Silent Disco Korea Facebook page for their monthly party dates and times. I promise, you have room for this one last thing on your Korea Bucket List.

Preparing for a Korean Goodbye: Don’t leave my friends out of this.

Time is running out, so please stop saying, “Yeah, we will have to do that some weekend.” I have exactly 6 weekends left in Korea and each is pretty much full from 8pm on Friday until late Sunday afternoon. I am lucky in that many of my friends in Korea are also leaving close to my departure date. Most of us are in a rush to eat lots of kimchi, find Psy socks to bring home and most importantly soak up each others awesomeness before some depart for homes scattered all over the globe and others remain in Korea. And oh yeah, I still have to find the confidence to make a jjimjilbang date. Umm, a little help please?

So, here is my list. I believe if I write it, it will happen. Isn’t that how the saying goes? Please comment with other things I must do, see, taste, try or buy before I leave this fantastic country I have loved calling home.

I hope to…

1) tour the MOCA. I recently learned that Seoul’s National Museum of Contemporary Art offers free admission for select exhibits on the 4th weekend of each month. See you there?

2) have one more epic weekend adventure with my favorite SHG guide. If you are moving to Korea or are here already I strongly suggest you check them out. But only if you like to have fun. Otherwise, forget I mentioned it.

3) stock up on my favorite Korean cosmetics. Great timing Sheryll, I was getting worried I would leave before you shared this.

4) finally suck it up, strip down and visit a jjimjilbang. If this story doesn’t make you want to visit one, I’m sorry.

5) get lost at the Korean War Memorial and Museum for an entire day. I am proud to say I am related to the late Captain Joseph McConnell Jr. who was a leading jet ace of the Korean War. I hope to learn more about him and the war.

6) norebang with my favorite girlfriends in Uijeongbu one last time. The first night my friend voluntarily put on Call Me Maybe I knew I was going to be just fine in Korea.

7) pretend to know something about electronics and peruse the Yongsan Electronics Market.

8) Stuff my face with one (or two?) Casablanca Moroccan chicken sandwiches. I visited HBC a few weeks ago and almost cried (like real tears) when I found the storefront dark and closed for renovations. A Twitter friend swears they are reopening before I leave. She better not be throwing fake promises around the Internet. You know who you are, and I know your Twitter handle.

9) finally make it to a Hongdae Silent Disco. Check it out.

10) dress super classy and do it up Korea Style.

11) successfully order takeout to my apartment.

12) not go overboard, but add a few more key pieces to my arsenal of Korean fashion. I can’t help myself, I WANT EVERYTHING.

13) You tell me.

I have a lot to do, but I am grateful to spend these next weekends with friends who have kicked it with me in Korea for the past 11 months and have put up with me and my geeky love of planning. Last week we had an early Saturday morning outing scheduled and more sites to see in the afternoon. Friday night rolled around and we found ourselves at a favorite local bar enjoying cheap drinks, stories of teaching mishaps, college card games and a few sloppy rounds of darts. As you can guess, we didn’t make it to bed until the early morning and our plans were scratched in exchange for recovery rest. My Saturday was spent sleeping and Sunday was also quiet with a friendly coffee shop session and a long walk in the evening. Our lazy weekend meant I had to rearrange my planner notes, but I promise, no one is freaking out.

I am impressed with my long list of Korean adventures accomplished in the past year, but just like “감사합니다”  and “안녕하세요” will disappear from my daily routine come March, so will my friends who quickly became family in early 2012. So please, recommend your ‘Korea must-do-see-taste-try-buy’ item for my list, but if my friends aren’t down then I may give it a miss.

My 2012: While you were busy Googling ‘What is a Gangnam?’…

Any worries I had about ‘losing touch’ during my year abroad in Southeast Asia were quickly shattered one July night while I lay in a hostel bunk-bed in Taiwan. I opened my iPad to find an adorable yet slightly chubby Korean man decked out in hip glasses, a funky suit and an irresistible smirk busy bombarding every one of my bookmarked websites. That moment and many more in the following days and months reassured me that my move to Korea would not hinder my mission to stay relevantly informed about all things social. I could in fact keep in touch with friends, family and my growing passion (slight obsession) with social media creation and strategy. Gangnam Style gave me a slight home-court advantage. While most Americans were busy Googling: ‘What the heck is a Gangnam?’, ‘Where did K-Pop come from?’ and ‘Who is Psy and is that his real name?’ I had time to catch up on my backlogged and favorited Tweets from Mashable, Gawker, Social Media Examiner and more.

At first my fellow teacher friends in Seoul eagerly posted the horse-dance video, just for kicks, to all available social wall space. Then, when the YouTube view count refused to plateau, I casually mentioned the video in Skype conversation with a friend who was enjoying the summer in New England. She giggled at the elevator dance scene and commented, “Wow Devan, Korea looks like a fun time.” A week later a second reply was digitally served, “So, you know that video you showed me? It’s here. It’s everywhere. It’s blowing up.” And although I scoffed at my real-life and Twitter friends who continued to miserably misspell ‘Gangnam’ in posts and had never been out clubbing in the song’s swanky section of Seoul, I was proud of Psy and the small yet fiercely determined, extremely successful, technologically advanced and warmhearted country that I chose to call home in 2012.

As I prepare to return home to NH in the next few months and further my career in social media strategy and communications, many details are uncertain. Job searching is a job in itself, but throw in 7,000 miles and a 14 hour time difference between you and your target professional setting  and it becomes almost as challenging as mastering the horse-dance while fumbling through a few Korean lyrics about “a girl with that kind of twist”.

I know some may question why I up and left a marketing job in Boston to move to Korea to teach ESL and eat kimchi at every meal. I don’t think I will be able to answer this question fully for another few years, but I can say I am happier now than I was a year ago and I spent 2012 in close proximity to one of the year’s biggest social media stories. My time in Korea will always and forever be smack dab in the middle of ‘The Year of Gangnam Style’. Or maybe I have that mixed up: Psy’s year of fame just happened to occur during ‘Devan’s Korea Quest.’ Please, just for now, let me believe the latter to be true.

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Seoul Santacon: So be good for goodness sake!

There are few times in life when I believe it is appropriate for a group of friends to wear bright and matching outfits, disregard the personal space and solitude of others in public and obnoxiously sing childish songs while moving from one drinking establishment to the next. One of these times would have to be Seoul Santacon.

A few short weeks ago I made my way into Seoul along with a couple hundred other holiday revelers to socialize, sing and sip soju for an evening. I thought I was festively prepared donning a red scarf and Rudolph ears, but I was surprised to find most people decked head to toe in Santa garb. After a few drinks at Beer O’Clock in Sinchon, Seoul’s center of young nightlife,  a sea of red and white slowly made its way to a nearby subway station where soju was shared and merriment had. Koreans armed with smartphones proudly captured the chaotic scene of Santas singing off-key and sometimes incomplete Christmas songs. I never thought Rudolph could be butchered so gruesomely. With a group so large, some songs were commenced and quickly forgotten when other lyrics drifted onto the scene. The caroling petered out when the subway reached Hongdae and we made our way to the appropriately named HO Bar (“Ho Ho Ho!”) where we danced, mingled and listened to Mariah repeatedly inform us of her Christmas list.

Although the night was one of this winter’s coldest (so far) and we spent most of it inside bars and clubs, I most enjoyed the short half hour of travel from Sinchon to Hongdae via the Seoul Metropolitan Subway. Being an expat in Korea can sometimes be a bit lonely, but a tipsy and merry song and dance to and through the subway with a  family of fellow foreigners leaves one feeling joyous and determined to spread the holiday spirit. Because we all know: The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.

I would divulge more detail of the social movements through the bars and clubs of Hongdae, but Santa told me to be good for goodness sake…

How To Travel: Santa sans Sleigh

Step One: Make sure you pay your way…the other Santas know if you’ve been bad or good.

Step Two: Wait around until a responsible looking Santa steps up and leads the way through the station.

Step Three: Try to enjoy the ride, Rudolph is loving his night off. 

It’s your party, but please learn to hike first.

With about 70% of the Korean peninsula covered with mountains, the hiking culture dominates the the Land of Kimchi. I went for a short hike up Mt. Dobongsan near my home a few weeks ago. I have a ways to go if I want to start calling myself a “hiker”, but here are my thoughts thus far…

Hiking in Korea is reminiscent of attending an epic college party.

It is imperative that you…

pre-game. (Who wants some morning makgeolli?)

dress to impress.

(Leave your sweats at home and make sure your gear is from this season.)

show up at the right time with drinks to share.

(Koreans hike early in the morning and are generous with their drinks.)

move at the right pace.

(You don’t want to rush ahead and fall and be ‘that guy’ that your friends have to take care of, but you also don’t want to fall behind and miss the fun.)

conserve enough energy so that you can make an appearance at the after party.

(Fact: Korean bbq tastes 100x better after a hike.)

at least attempt to conceal your grin on your way home on the subway while jealous onlookers admire your post-outing glow.

(“Yeah, I just hiked for 5 amazing hours and it’s only 12pm. What have you done today?”)

See you on the mountain…unless I was at a party the night before…and in that case I will be sleeping instead.

“Like, what should we do this weekend?”

As an English teacher in South Korea, when Thursday rolls around each week I usually itch for my upcoming weekend plans. I have learned to take full advantage of my weekend time in Korea and I hope to continue with this new approach to my free time when I return home. I love the tired yet accomplished feeling of a Sunday night following a jam-packed weekend of experiencing new things and people in Korea. When I find myself without plans midweek, I use the following 5 resources to find inspiration for weekend outings. I hope you find them helpful and please feel free to comment with alternative ideas. I promise, armed with these resources you won’t find yourself uttering the annoying answer to a friend looking to have a memorable weekend, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”

1) Expat Websites and News Sources: Some of my favorites include Groove Korea, Seoulistic, Chincha and 10 Magazine Korea, but there are many more. This past weekend I attended a rocking block party in Hongdae that was hosted by Chincha. I had a blast: I met some interesting people, enjoyed great live bands and had a bit too much fun with the prop-packed photo center. Today in 10 Magazine Korea I read about all the Halloween events happening in Seoul.

2) Twitter: Many of my friends continue to make fun of my Twitter obsession, but it has proved to be a helpful tool in Korea. Even if you don’t want to Tweet, if you follow the right people you can stay informed about events going on in Korea. I can thank Twitter for letting me know about the free Psy concert I attended a few weeks ago. Thanks Twitter.

3) Travel Groups: Before coming to Korea I remember how comforted I was to find a Facebook page for Adventure Korea. Because Korea is a popular place for foreigners, there are a handful of companies that focus on planning excursions for this demographic. I have gone on three trips with Seoul Hiking Group and I can not speak highly enough of these mini vacations. After a week of teaching it is lovely to go on a trip that is completely organized for you. Who didn’t love field trips when they were younger? I have seen some great places in Korea, including Jeju, and I have also met some great friends from all over Korea. When In Korea (winK) is another great website.

4) Personal Blogs: I did extensive research before making the decision to move to Korea to teach and I believe a majority of the helpful information came from personal blogs. I felt reassured reading about real experiences from real people living and teaching in Korea. I know each person has a different story to tell of their time in Korea, but there are many shared experiences that I have encountered in blogs. I remember finding an extremely helpful diagram of a Korean heating panel on a blog back in February when I was shivering and baffled by the 4 buttons near my light switch. I have a list of about 10 blogs that I check weekly. There are some talented bloggers in Korea who are informative and also put a creative and comedic spin on the Expat experience.

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5)  Facebook (of course!): Facebook is not just for procrastinating. Facebook has helped me stay in touch with other Chungdahm teachers who live in different parts of Korea. With the help of Facebook I was able to plan a Busan beach weekend to visit a few friends from teacher training. I can also thank Facebook for a handful of friends in my city of Uijeongbu. In the first few weeks in my new city I came across a Facebook group for foreigners. I joined the on-line community, attended a weekly ‘Waegook’ dinner that was advertised on the group page and walked away from the first dinner with new friends. The Facebook group is also a place where people post event invitations and community information.

These are just a few resources I use. Where do you go for answers when someone asks, “What should we do this weekend?”

Korea Burn – Leave your wallet at home.

After spending a weekend at Korea Burn this September, I realized that although I have been in Korea for more than 7 months now, this country will continue to surprise me with each weekend excursion. On a Monday night my friend called an emergency meeting to persuade a group of us to ‘apply’ for last-minute Korea Burn tickets, Tuesday I enlisted the help of my co-teacher in purchasing a tent from a Korean website, Wednesday and Thursday night were spent texting my friends back and forth regarding our to-do lists of making matching costumes, finding glow-sticks and glitter and buying bug repellent and Friday night I found myself staring at an empty suitcase wondering what the heck one brings to a Burn.

Korea Burn was inspired by Burning Man, the annual festival in Black Rock City, Nevada. The festival in Nevada lasts for a week and includes art installations and performances inspired by the participants. The festival’s core values include participation, art, self-expression and experience. The festival in Korea lasted for only a weekend but everyone involved followed the main mission statement of Burning Man. The celebration centered around a constructed wooden man with arms open to the sky. The structure was set ablaze on Saturday night and this act brought all of the festival goers together to watch the fire show. The weekend participants were encouraged to follow these 10 principles:

1) Radical Inclusion

2) Gifting

3) Decommodification

4) Radical Self-reliance

5) Radical Self-expression

6) Communal Effort

7) Civic Responsibility

8) Leaving No Trace

9) Participation

10) Immediacy

(If you are interested, you can learn more at http://www.koreaburn.co.kr/)

I found the idea of ‘Gifting’ to be the most interesting. The organizers encouraged us to leave our wallets at home, or at least in our tents. How could a massive beach party of foreigners survive without the flow of cash? Even if we were willing to gift the snacks that we brought (soju soaked watermelon pieces cut into stars and hearts), could we really rely on strangers to bring the rest of the party supplies and also to be giving with them? I was amazed at how generous people were as soon as we arrived at Gijipo Beach on Saturday morning. As soon as we found a spot to pitch our tent (which is a story in itself – trust me), we changed into our Burn Costumes (Burn Costumes can be WHATEVER you want them to be, believe me, I saw it all.) and headed to the beach. One of my favorite gifting moments was when I traded an original poem for a crispy slice of bacon. It may have been the best piece of bacon ever. I think the rest of the weekend is best described with pictures. It was one of those weekends that will stay with me. And the fact that this took place in Korea is just icing on the cake. I traded a hand-knit scarf for this cake of course. Gifting is key.

 

We all deserve a ‘Spring Break’, yes even you. *Mud Festival*

The closest I came to a proper Spring Break in college was a week spent at my friend’s grandmother’s condo in Naples, Florida. We lounged on the beach reading books and soaking in the sun and we couldn’t help but overhear the older women surrounding us discussing the newest Dancing with the Stars scandal and which new sandwich recipe they were attempting for their golfing husband’s lunch packs. It was a fantastic week: we somehow scored a few Coronas, watched Lost on an old comical TV that distorted the characters heads, slept 9+ hours each night and bonded over the silly experience of living among the retirees of America. It wasn’t the Spring Break you see in the movies, but it was an escape from the reality of college exams and the bitter cold of northern NY. The Boryeong Mud Festival has been called the ‘Spring Break for foreigners in Korea’, and although I consider myself well beyond (gulp!) my college years, or at least maybe a tad bit more mature and less likely to party more nights of the week than not, I did itch to experience this alternative Spring Break – with a Korean twist of course.

The annual festival takes place each summer in Boryeong, a few hours south of Seoul. The first Mud Festival took place in 1998 and now more than 2 million people travel to the 2 week long celebration of mud. The mud is trucked into the Daecheon beach area from surrounding mud flats and is dumped into pools and wrestling pits, painted onto bodies, poured down slides and sold in popular mud cosmetics. My friends and I traveled with an organized group from Seoul and we arrived late Friday night, the night before the first official day of the festival. We slept for a few hours and were woken by our group leader at 8:30am with a breakfast bowl of watermelon soaked in soju (If you ask me, it was more like soju soaked in some watermelon…). We tried to shake our morning grogginess as he taught us silly Korean phrases and encouraged us to finish our nutritional breakfast. A half hour later we were dressed in our swim suits, no longer sleepy, maybe a bit buzzed, but ready to get dirty.

Saturday was a blur. I had a blast: I got muddy racing through obstacle courses, wrestling and slipping down steep muddy slides, swam in the ocean, drank a few too many beers + soju, ran into many foreigner friends from all over Korea and danced to a live DJ in a muddy mosh pit on the beach. As much fun as Saturday was, I woke up on Sunday ready to return to Seoul and take a real shower. Mud Festival was fantastic but I couldn’t imagine surviving an entire week of the Boryeong craziness. We dressed in our dry clothes and went to find our bus to head home. Walking back through the festival grounds I came across an older couple caked in mud, beers in hand and smiling all over. I asked to snap a photo of them and they gladly posed for my camera. Later on the bus as I scrolled back through my pictures the couple’s shot stood out to me and I realized they were enjoying their own Spring Break in Boryeong. We all need a Spring Break every once in awhile: a day or two to let loose and forget your age and your smart phone in the hotel room (It will get muddy if you bring it, I promise).

Breakfast of Mud Festival

Reunited with a friend from college!

Time to swim –>Daecheon Beach

I hope this is me in 40 years.

“You know this boogie is for real.” – a Children’s Day extravaganza

I start most of my classes with an introduction to the day: What day is it today? What day was it yesterday? How is the weather today?…you get the idea. So when I flipped the classroom calendar to May my kids were quick to fill me in on the most important day of the month. Children’s Day (어린이날)  is celebrated every May 5 and became a public holiday in 1975. The day is meant to “esteem the personalities of children and plan for their happiness” (Wikipedia), although what I gathered from my students was: presents, presents and more presents. Parents and grandparents give gifts to their children and spend time with them either at home or on an excursion of sorts (zoo, museum, movies, mall, etc).

This year Children’s Day fell on a Saturday, so sadly there was no day off to enjoy, but we still found time to celebrate in school. My principal informed us we were to have a “special day” and left the teachers to party plan. Because we have two different groups of students, some come M/W/F and others T/TH, we had one party on Thursday and one on Friday. I decided that Musical Chairs would be an active (Please don’t get too loud, too rowdy or hurt!), competitive (Don’t cry if you get out first and please don’t cheat!)  and overall fun (Please dance! Please dance! Please dance?) game…and it was… after a few “practice” rounds. We also played a calm game of ‘Simon Says’ to throw in some English conversation and let the kids calm down after dancing around a room of chairs. Lastly, each student was gifted a cute program t-shirt and a gigantic bowl of snacks and a juice box. Solid party.

*****

Secretary Clinton’s Message on Republic of Korea’s Children’s Day (2010)

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

Washington, DC
May 4, 2010

On behalf of President Obama and the American people, I offer warm wishes to all the boys and girls of Korea on Children’s Day. On this holiday, Korean families celebrate the joys of childhood and family life. This is also an opportunity to reaffirm the strong commitment that both our countries share to promoting childhood health, safety and education, and to ensuring that every child has the opportunity to live up to his or her full God-given potential.

Many thousands of American children from military families have lived in Korea over the last six decades, and thousands of Korean children have attended school in the United States. Our two countries are stronger and closer because of the cultural understanding and unique perspectives that these children will always carry with them. (seoul.usembassy.gov)

*****

 Most other academic days are highly structured and filled with reading, writing and speaking English, so it was nice to let loose and experience my students enjoying the party. I struggle with the fact that Korean children have little time to be kids. They are up each morning for school and then shuffle from one Hagwon (private academy – I work at one) to another (sometimes until 10pm) and then head home to finish homework and sleep before the next day. Although I wish my students had more time to play with imaginary friends and be “bored”, I wouldn’t be here teaching in a Hagwon if this was the case. I do feel for my kids when they answer my “How are you today?” with a “I’m tired teacher.” but all I can do is acknowledge their creative answer (anything other than “I’m fine thanks and you?” is considered praiseworthy), move on, try to keep the class animated and make sure no eyelids droop.

It was a pretty successful Children’s Day: the sweaty and exhausted kiddos headed home with gifts and thoughts of more  to come on Saturday, and I was left with the memory of some of the funniest/cutest kids I know showing off their dance moves to Jamiroquai’s ‘Canned Heat’ – priceless. 🙂

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