Week 2

Well, for the most part I'm all settled in and rearing to go. If any obstacle comes my way, I'm setup to destroy it haha. I'm keeping real busy with trying to stay on top of things. I've established a pretty good routine for myself that balances Korean and Bboy practice. The trick now is figuring how to fit in the networking. I've met so many people and I can't remember half of their names. One issue I face is making sure I'm "known" by all the little cliques, but makng sure I don't get sucked in. Example: Most of the IS' like to party, a lot. I don't think that's a good use of my time and money. But I don't want to not have the option of chilling with them. So I make sure to small talk or w/e with them. I'm also trying to infiltrate the Japanese clique so I can practice my Japanese while here. That's going pretty well so far, mainly due to luck of just running into a huge group that couldn't speak English. So my options were Korean or Japanese and I threw both at them. One thing that's slightly bothersome is the fact that they're all girls (which is dope) but it means I have initiate ALL contact and followup. I've talked with my roomate some. His English isn't so great, but his Korean is really good. All he really does though is play computer games all day and night. I could try to get in with the Chinese guy clique, but that seems rather counter intuitive; playing computer games does nothing positive. I've got inside hookups thanks to my previous study abroad here 2 years ago. Which means I shouldn't have any problem hooking up with the native Korean clique. There's a hip hop dance club that an advisor gave a recommendation for me to. So I don't have to worry about being a foreigner AND a male. Just have to worry about speaking Korean lol. So to recap real quick, we've got the Peace Buddies (dope, but too easy to speak English), the Europeans (which can be further broken down), the native Koreans, friends from 2 years ago, and the Japanese. What I'm trying to point out, I guess, is that it's pretty tiring running around and making time to hang out with all these groups.

Now for the more fun stuff. I've done lots of exploring. Primarily shopping or meeting up for dinner with people. I've also gone to this really beautiful man made river park place. That was cool. I got convinced to go clubbing again, this time by a bunch of first time girls and one party girl. They had heard that I was a bboy, so they were pretty persistant in wanting me to go out with them. So while the party girl was...partying, I was lookinig after the newbies. Which actually turned out to be fun. Being the only guy in the group has it's advantages haha. Let's see, oh, I was also on TV at some point. While walking around one night, I got stopped in the street by some camera crew/interviewer and they asked me questions about what I liked to watch and why. No clue what it was for. Don't really care either lol. I just thought it was funny when they were asking me what my favorite tv show was and I listed them off. They had no clue what I was talking about haha. Ended up pretty much just saying I like comedy.

I also went to the UK Bboy Championship Korea Eliminations. That was sooooo awesome! One of my favorite crews ended up winning, so that added to it. Then to further add to it, I talked to one of their leaders afterward, Bboy Wing. He's the one that won the recent Red Bull BC One, which is a world 1 on 1 bboy competition. In other words, he's a sick sick bboy. They aired it on MTV at some point actually. But yeah, that was pretty awesome. He invited me out to their practice, so I'll be hitting that up. Pretty excited and nervous at the same time. After the competition, the crew that lost was upset so there was a callout battle outside the building (for anyone that cares, the final battle was Rivers vs Jinjo and there was a tie breaker overtime. If you count the callout battle then that's kind of like double overtime I guess). It was pretty intense. No music, no pads or anything on a dirty, brick walkway; just raw emotion. I took one of my friends with me and it was his first experience with bboying. He was pretty impressed and overwhelmed by it all haha. But it was good for him and opened up his perspective. Might have gotten him interested in it too.

I also had lunch today (sunday) with the family I tutored back in East Lansing over the summer. I got to meet the rest of the family too (the dad and grandma). They're really nice people and their place is really nice. They live in the rich part of Seoul, which adds to my experiences. Example: going shopping at ridiculously expensive department stores. They also invited over the woman I tutored's sister in law, her son, and 2 nieces (from a different relative). I also met another American named Kevin. I had heard about him from the woman I tutored. We referred to him as Other Kevin haha. So after hanging out with the main family, we got shown off to whoever else was available haha. I'm pretty used to it by now though. I'm constantly, constantly being stared at. Sometimes it's cool, sometimes it's weird. Cool example: girls saying I'm handsome in Korean, not realizing I know what they're saying and then I surprise them. Weird Example: Middle age man on the subway staring at me the whole train ride, then finally telling me my jaw accent was beautiful in English. Luckily my stop was next after he said that.

There's update two for ya. Enjoy!