End of Spring

One of the greatest things in this world is impacting the life of another human being. It also happens to be one of the scariest.


I'm currently at the calm before the storm with regards to my final semester here in Korea. This week I have two days off due to holidays. Well, not really holidays. I have monday off because it's my university's birthday, and everyone has Wednesday off because it's election day. After that, it's finals and all the goodness that comes with them (end of the year papers/projects). In between this and my last blog post, I talked about all the performances I'd be doing. I shall now elaborate on those.

I ended up performing throughout the day for the global festival that my university hosted. Every university usually has a big spring festival, and during ours, the international students had booths to promote their home countries. Some countries even put on performances showcasing their culture. I ended up performing and working the booth. I also performed twice (first performance I did 3 rounds, second performance I did 2). However, the place where they put the international booths was in the back of a popular building. The big problem to this is the "in the back" part. No one goes there. Which meant we never really had a big crowd...ever. Add to the fact that I had a problem with the sound (played from laptop speakers?!) and you have an unhappy performing Kevin. The fact that I did a total of five rounds by myself being out of practice is irritating enough. Add really quiet sound and a very small crowd (least for the first performance. The second one they tried to fix the sound problem and rounded up more people), and I almost didn't do it. The second performance was alright though. Anyways, following the festival I had to go to the southern part of Seoul for another performance.

I was originally told that I'd be taking part in this next performance. Then I was told that I would just be a guest performer. Then I was told that I'd just be a spectator. Then I was told I could go out and dance at the end. All of this information was delivered to me in the span of less than a week leading up to the performance. Man was that annoying. When it was all said and done, I realized what the true story was. The person who invited me to this performance is someone well connected with the dance society of Seoul. I actually have no idea how or what this old dude does, but I do know that he knows EVERYONE. I first met him at my performance last semester with the ballerinas. He ended up getting my number from my professor of that performance. Anyways, basically what the truth of the story was, was that he invited me out to this hip hop/bboy performance more as like his ambassador, and at the end of the performance, the performers had an open cypher (where anyone was welcome to come out and dance). Only it wasn't really an open cypher. The only people that went out and danced in it were the performers and some of their crew members. However, I would have been much more inclined to jumping in the cypher had I not been dressed semi-formal. I was under the impression that this wasn't a typical hip hop style performance based on the information I had received. Turns out it was, and everyone except for the VIPs were dressed comfortably. As a result, I was on the other side of the table so to speak (I was part of the VIP section). It was very weird to be on that other side. It was also rather uncomfortable, and part of me felt like a traitor haha. Anyways, not being one to let things go to waste, I ended up trying to learn as much as I could from interacting with these rich old dudes.

Two of them were professional dance critics. One of whom was an asshole. The other of which was pretty cool. Another old dude was a retired actor, who had been in some famous drama back in the day. I don't know who two of the others were (never talked to them), and if you add me and the old dude who invited me then that makes a group of 7. Anyways, being curious as to what credentials these two old dance critics had, I went about trying to see what exactly they knew about bboying and hip hop. The jerkoff old dude ignored me pretty much the entire time, but the cool old dude talked with me. He also asked for my own perspective, since I'm an actual bboy. Being satisfied with the cool old dude's thoughts, and after a couple of free beers, I peaced out and headed to meet one of my friends for her birthday party. The performance itself was pretty dope, despite not being able to interact with the performers afterward (at least not in bboy Kevin mode. No one gave me the respect they would have had I shown I was a real bboy. Instead I was the Western VIP).

The next day after that, Friday (keep in mind I'm fairly exhausted and am starting to feel the onslaught of a cold), while I was out drinking with some friends, I got contacted by one of my former students and friend from State, Eric. Turned out he is on an Asian study abroad for Urban Development. I asked him if he wanted to battle because there just so happened to be some battles going on that Saturday. Seeing this as our only opportunity to battle in Seoul together, we decided to cancel any plans we had and head off to that. It was a 3v3 but we were a team of 2. Sall good though. We had a blast AND we made it past prelims into the top 16, despite being exhausted. Following our victorious adventure, I proceeded to meet the other Spartans on his study abroad and go out and drink with them. It was amazing getting to relax and kick it with Spartans again. Very refreshing. I ended up crashing at Eric's dorm (he was in the guest rooms, which means it wasn't really dorm size. lucky bastard) because of the curfew (most universities have curfews over here, my dorm does not. One of the reasons I picked it too).

Having been so busy with all this stuff and more, I realized I need to get back on track with classes. I need to utilize this week in order to be ready for finals. I'm starting to reach the end of my candle wick for one of my Korean classes. My teacher almost got her third strike. It was more like she fouled on two strikes. I missed Tuesday's class because I was sick. It was the first time I went to the health center (had a really bad cough). Interesting thing about the health center, I got everything for free (including medicine), except for my excuse for class. I had to pay about 3 bucks if I wanted that. Since classes here have an attendance policy I decided to pay up. I gave the slip to my teacher. Shortly after she points out that I went in the afternoon. I asked what's the matter, and she went on to point out the obvious, that our class is in the morning. I asked what's your point, and she asked me what I was doing during class time. Realizing she wasn't wanting to accept my slip I simply explained that I was sleeping because I was sick, and that after I got up I went to the doctors and then went back to my room. I'm not sure whether it was her realizing that if she proceeded down this path she would be dealing with an incredibly pissed off kevin or if it was me just sitting down to end the conversation, but I do know that it's possible she didn't accept the slip because I didn't go the same time as class. Which, by the way, is partly impossible because Korean classes here are the earliest classes in the University. So early in fact, that they start before the health center even opens. I don't know anyone who wakes up early when they're sick just to go to the health center unless it's a life or death situation. Most people I know try to rest until they're able to go to the doctor if needed. This is the same teacher that, when I questioned her quizzes, justified putting vocabulary words that were future chapter's vocab words in the sentences because it was in a book that no one but a handful of people used had they taken a certain class during the winter vacation...if that sounds confusing then I've made my point; it's bull.


I've written enough for now. I could write for another hour and still not cover all the stuff that's happened this past week. My biggest problem at the moment is trying to figure out where I'm living over the summer. I found out I was waitlisted for the dormitory during the summer program. The reason being they're only accepting 20 students in the dorm...ridiculous. Despite this, things are going great and I have confidence that I'll finish things even stronger.

Spring

So summer is quickly approaching and for some reason I continue to have this pattern of being super busy one or two weeks, and then having some down time. I'm currently in the middle of two busy weeks. Last week was busy, and this coming week will be even busier. I have 3 big performances coming up (Wed and Thurs), but if you count how many actual performances I have on Thursday, then altogether I have 5 (4 being on Thursday alone). SO these next couple of days I will be back to sessioning like a maniac.

In other news, I absolutely hate my Korean class. First time in my life I don't like a language class. It's the format of it though that's the source of my woes. Especially my reading and writing class. There's no point in going to it. All you do is show up and listen to the teacher read from the book. Waste of time. The speaking and listening class isn't as bad, but I still want to pull my hair out.

My other classes are going well though. I destroyed a presentation in my premodern korean history class. And although my Culture and Religion in Modern Korea class is slightly redundant and boring sometimes, these two classes compliment one another fairly well. But the teacher for the religion class is just talking out of his ass like 70% of the time. It's still entertaining however.

I haven't gone to the gymnastics class in quite some time. Not just because I got busy, but also because there were times when the class didn't even meet. So I guess I used those holidays and canceled classes as my opportunity to simply stop going. I wasn't really in need of learning how to twirl a ribbon anyways.

I went "camping" a couple weeks ago on the holiday called "Children's Day." I say camping because it was a very camping like environment. However, it was also a picnic in a sense because we didn't stay overnight. It was an early morning to early evening expedition. A lot of fun though. It's also the first time I ever started drinking alcohol so early. It was nice to go out to a river in the mountains and just relax. I got to climb and play around, thus earning the title of "wild man" but I suppose this isn't much of a surprise to my friends that have hung out with me in the wilderness before. I attribute my nature skills to the native american blood running through my veins. But thanks to the fact I look nothing like a native, I got pretty sunburned hahaha. Sall good though. I need a good sunburn in spring if I am to survive summer.

My ballerina friend had her big spring performance this past week. She did an amazing job and it was interesting to watch. This time around, my ex professor (the choreographer) utilized a different western guy (also american though) in her dance. Unlike me, however, he has a masters in Ballet. It was somewhat interesting to see a male ballerina. But at the same time, it made me glad that I wasn't taking part this time around. The outfit that guy wore...good God. I can't see myself wearing anything like that. It was interesting to compare the two dynamics as well. Bboying is pretty much the complete opposite of ballet. And in ballet, the guy has more of an assist role (the girls do all the work). I met him at the after party and he seemed like a pretty cool guy too. And he definitely didn't fill any stereotype at all (not just dance, but white guy in korea too).

The after after party was at this mansion of a karaoke room. It was fun, minus the fact that I knew like zero songs, the odds of them knowing the English songs I liked were slim, and that I can't sing. I did, however, end up singing 3 songs in total. The first two I did a fairly miserable job of, but my finale was pretty good. I had to go to my failsafe song: Elvis Presley, Can't Help Falling in Love. Had to pull that one out of retirement. Pretty sure I killed it though. So I felt a little bit better by the end of the night.

On my way back home, I randomly ran into a professional bboy crew and found out about a competition that was yesterday. Got invited to come out and I made a pretty good impression on them (even though it was like 5am). I'll see if I have the time to follow up with them. I did go to the competition, and the crew that I am already friends with ended up winning. So that was cool all around.

The semester is drawing to a close and I'm not really sure how I feel about things. I think the main thing on my mind right now is "am I doing all that I could be doing?" Some things have popped up to annoy me recently (especially dealing with certain types of people), but on the flip side, some really dope and amazing things have popped up as well. So currently I'm focusing on those and trying to regain a solid footing in order to launch my attack on the remaining time I have left. I'm not at the final stretch yet, but I don't see it hurting me to get ahead of the race while I still can.