First Bang at the Noraebang!

About the pics:

Rice wine with cider - you drink this from a bowl. I almost wanted to reach for a spoon thinking it was a cold soup. They usually use spoons for soup here.

Noraebang (karaoke room) fully equipped with disco ball and surround-sound along with a bar host right outside the door.

Our sad attempt at karaoke.

The worse you are, the better your score. We did, however, get a few scores in the 50s, so you can imagine how amazing those sounded.

Beth and Chase doing a duet perhaps.


Last night, Beth took me out with her friends from last year. We went to a restaurant in Wolbae (one subway stop over from SangIn, where I live) where the group of friends frequents - I would say they are definitely friends with the owner now. They continued serving us endless kettles of rice wine mixed with cider. It was a bit of a strange taste at first, but I fared alright. I'm not a big drinker as is so it was a bit more challenging with this beverage. We had a couple spicy dishes (of course): veggies with rice cakes that have a similar consistency to a penne noodle, but solid all the way through, and a soup with tofu, tuna and kimchi. I wasn't crazy about either, but it was alright. I'm still most fond of Korean BBQ of chicken (dak) or beef (sogogi) with veggies and rice.

After hours of socializing and having drinks at the restaurant, the group stumbled next door to a noraebang - private karaoke room. Korea is absolutely full of these places. I have no idea how much it costs, but it must have been very cheap. They also just add on more time to the machine timers when it runs out and apparently don't charge extra. There's a disco ball, big "u-shaped" seating, two microphones and surround sound, and you can get alcohol there as well. Some Korean guys that we met at the restaurant joined us for a few songs. We have similar places in the states, but this was a totally different level. It was definitely a fun and interesting night. We must have spent two hours there, and let me tell you - these places don't fill up until 3am or so. It's not exactly a place where you start your night... I'm sure I'll spend some future nights in one of these again.

Open Mic Night and a Heart-Shaped Pizza

About the pics:

Heart-shaped, build-your-own pizza from Italy, Italy.

Anthony the Brit at Wednesday Open Mic night at Commune.

Beth and 2 of our co-workers.

Anthony and Laura hanging on the monkey bars.

Korean high school-er audience of the jam session at the park.


It's been kind of a slow week, but nice nonetheless! Earlier in the week, the rainy season was making itself known, but now it seems to have temporarily dwindled off - the heat is still here though!

Two friends from our school played an open-mic night at a bar called Commune. The other acts were pretty dreadful, but my friends were quite good, honestly. Wednesday appeared to be a pretty slow night for the downtown scene, and at about 2am we headed back to a Sang-In area park where the boys continued to play guitars, ukulele and harmonica and sing classic covers. Shortly after, a group of high school Korean boys showed up and grabbed themselves some seats within viewing and listening distance. They made sure to give a loud enough applause for us to hear after songs that they were fans of. I couldn't help but go up to them and snap a photo. They loved it.