So when thinking about this party and all the people I wanted to invite, I started leafing through my old photos. One picture particularly stuck out was a picture Madeline took when I had a fireworks party at my old Gwangalli house.

Gwangalli Fireworks party 2009

What stuck out about this picture is that all of those friends are gone! Well almost all are gone, there are still a few floating around such as Ben-Straight, Choi-oni, and Mina. But everyone else has departed. Depressing to see when you’re planning a going away party. Although not to worry I have made some new great friends that will come to fill my house tonight. But it does make me miss all the people, some of which it is doubtful that I’ll ever see again (at least anytime in the near future), unless we are talking about the California kids then I’ll see them in 3 months.

Party on Garth…

Anyways, some memorable stuff from the weekend:

• Meeting Parsley and Mattugi for lunch (Parsley is really starting to show her pregnancy…really cool)
• Getting my groove on with Yeye, MingMing, Heath, and Mijin
• Seeing Justice, Fatboy Slim, etc… play live
• Getting to stuff myself full with some good food at the concert
• Stopping some presumably British guy (judging by his accent) from continuing to get his ass kicked after picking a fight with a Korean taxi driver (FYI: don’t mess with the cab drivers)
• Staying up all night for the KTX (I was so freaking tired)

So naturally since my friends were aware of how close I live to the beach they took to liberty to plan being at my house before I announced that I was going to have a party. To paint them in the proper light though, they aren’t as indecent as that sounds, they waited for me to say it was a go until they made their plans…they were more just hoping (I did get cranky at Mina which was a mistake, 미안합니다 미나). I called the party on after some semi-sober rooftop inspections of the view with Mijin, noticing that it was not possible to lock the rooftop hatch for my building (the hatch cover isn’t even attacted to the building), and some temporary worries about the troll security guard that terrorize the foreign tenants of my complex. All that was left to do was to clean the apartment and wait for Saturday to roll around. Why is it that I also feel the compulsion to clean my apartment right before I have a house party that I know will result in my house being 10 times dirty than it was before I cleaned, just to have to clean it again…but I’ll save this for another time.

So the Saturday that the party was on was a normal Saturday on Gwangalli Beach until about 5pm, that’s when things changed. Literally looking out of my window I could see countless people jostling down the street with nearly ineffective traffic cops (dressed to the 9s in the most fancy traffic cop attire I have ever seen) attempting to control the herd. Then a little bit later the peoples started to arrive at my modestly small apartment with only two couches, two chairs, and my bed all in one room. As you can imagine my place rapidly ran out of room for people to sit which meant we went Korean style and sat on the floor. At some point there were upwards of 30 people in my studio apartment, just getting to the bathroom or the fridge meant hurdling multitudes of people while cautious trying not to step on hands or knock over drinks. Luckily, it wasn’t long before it was time to hit the roof for the big show.

So everyone made the trek up to the roof which involves a minorlly harrowing ladder climb to a very dangerous section of the roof top with a fifteen story drop. Also the fifteen story drop is only protected by a wall that is less effective as a protective barrier as it would be just ensuring someones death if they were ever to collide with it, because the wall is oh about 1.5 feet tall. Tall enough to ensure that if your leg should hit it that you would descend head first into the abyss on its far side. After dealing with that minor adrenaline rush it was off to join all my friends and Koreans from the building who congregated on the rooftop to enjoy the spectacle.

Calling this a spectacle is an understatement, I have never seen a fireworks show that could compare to the magnitude or quality that South Korea pulled off. First off the setting is phenomenal! The show takes place over the Gwangan bridge which is covered in lights that constantly change to different colors over time. The fireworks are shot from barges that are anchored in the middle of the bay which allows all the fireworks to reflect off the eerily still waters of the Gwangalli Bay almost doubling the effectiveness of the fireworks when viewed from a lofty vantage point such as the roof of my apartment building. The bay wasn’t the only natural landscape that added to the show, because I also particularly enjoyed how the mountains behind my apartment complex would reflect the percussive booms from the fireworks. All this coupled with the choreographing to music, the shear size, length, and unusual assortment of fireworks that were used definitely created a lasting memory of one the best fireworks shows I will ever see! By far the most impressive pyrotechnic delights I saw were the remote controlled flamming phoenix like fireworks that recalled memories of the Dragon firework from Lord of the Rings and the hanging lantern fireworks that would lazily drift through the sky for distended amounts of time.

The last memorable sight I saw was the flood of humanity that poured like a river down the streets in mass exodus from the beach after the show. I found out later the next week that there were an estimated 1.7 million people on the beach…1.7 MILLION!!!! That is such a crazy amount of people that it is almost unfathomable. Literally the streets were building to building, shoulder to shoulder, chest to back packed for over an hour in all directions. I have never seen so many people at once let alone attempting to vacate an area. Some of my friends and I just sat on that precarious fifteen story drop and watched people flow down the street like they were leaves in a rushing river. Very astounding but made me very glad that I wasn’t down there with the herd shoving along instead of sitting on my lofty perch looking down at so much activity. After that subsided it was down to the apartment for more partying then to go see Ben’s band One Drop East play.

Highlights

• Massive amount of good and fun peoples in my apartment partying
• Fantastic Fireworks show
• Not getting in trouble with my buildings management (and in effect my work)
• Mina doing semi-topless push-ups for breaking the rules of King’s Cup
• Seeing everyone have such a good time together…I love my friends!

There are loads more photos out there but I haven’t been able to collect them from friends yet so this may be updated from time to time. So if you are one of those friends with photos let me know so I can steal them from you!

Also this was Allie’s last night here in Korea for family reasons…we definitely miss her so…

To start this years festivities I had to do something I have discovered that I absolutely dread, school parties. I now know why my teachers all my life were more happy just to hold regular class and dispense with the festivities, because they are fucking exhausting! Really just think about trying to entertain literally hundreds of children for 6 hours on end. It will destroy your will to live trying to contain children en mass with sugar highs bouncing off the walls like manic bouncy balls. This round I was doing some arts and crafts which was fun but man my fingers hurt from tearing paper for hours on end for pumpkin mosaics, but the mosaics turned out pretty good…made me feel some teacher-esque pride! After the shenanigans of Halloween festivals with the students it was off for a going away dinner for Mr. Jung with the coworkers. There will be way less flash, shiny suits, and all around Korean Popstarness at the front desk of KJC Namcheon with his abscence, but his replacement Mr. Ye seems like a pretty nice guy. The company dinner was super fun but I got a little too drunk and sadly Mattugi got food poisoning. Although a good thing that happened that night was some lingering issues got worked out with an old friend…this made me very happy!!!!

The next day, it was off to try to find a last moment Halloween costume. Luckily, Tyler Cerro gave me an idea which actually required me to be in my own natural element, a nerd! It was so easy for me to pull together since I readily have so many nerdy things at hand like Rubix Cube that I bought early in the week with Jake (alas not as a prop but just because I really wanted a Rubix Cube), a Tri-Force pendant, jubilees of pens, and finally an inextinguishable ability to chat about nerdy things like math, video games, philosophy, nerdy cult classics, computers, etc…. Last thing to pull it all together the very marvelous and wonderful YeYe helped me pick out some nerdy glasses and mat my hair down into a grotesque nerd style.

Then we were off to Kyungsung University Area for a pub crawl which took the work crawl too literally. Walking into any of the bars meant that you would be walking at a crawling pace. There were so many people in all the bars there was only real solution…The Apex! Also known as Family Mart, which I have written about before. Basically, the crew and I posted up there and we just let the fun come to us and it did especially due to Jake and Lauren’s ass exposing rendition of Adam and Eve. They have reached 15 minutes of fame as minor celebrities with the foreigners of Busan. I have overheard people saying things such as “did you see that guy in the green thong in KSU on Halloween?” “Yeah that was my boy Jake.” Jake’s costume I think was just to much for most of the Koreans walking by that had no idea it was Halloween, let alone that they would see a near naked man walking the streets! Anyways I think everyone had super fun playing dress up and having a good reason to celebrate on a Saturday night!

Anyways my birthday in Korea was definitely up there as one of the better ones that I have had. I guess I’ll just break this one down chronologically even though I think that is such a boring method to recount events…it will help it stay short and sweet this time. Also as usual, another failing I have like getting blogs out on time, is that I am absolutely horrible about planning any sort of event. In the past I would be lucky enough to have a girl in my life that would assume this roll since I am so helpless at this, but this year my friends pulled through for me and helped me with the details; Thanks guys you really are the best!!!! All I was capable of planning was a baseball game and going to a bar afterwords…which worked out great, but the people who went were what made all the difference.

1. I got a package from the family back home with some postcards, photos, clothing, a rad fedora, and kick ass new rucksack backpack (that proved itself awesomely on my 2 week trip to Thailand). Also a very lovely mix CD from Ms. Anne back home.
2. My actual birthday fell on a Friday but said baseball game party wasn’t happening till Saturday. So Mijin, Heath, and Lauren found that absolutely unacceptable, bless their extravagantly large hearts. So they took me to a bar in Kyungsung University with giant long-neck beer mugs that have refrigerated beer cozies that keep them indefinitely cold. They even brought me a cake and crazy Japanese dude complete with a red cowboy hat and sequined silver cowboy boots. He even would sing a song that went like, ” Diejaboo Diejaboo, Diejaboo Diejaboo…It’s ALRIGHT!” and would end it with a little spin and thumbs up (Lauren loved this guy).
3. The next day was my first time attending a Professional Baseball game and on top of that I was attending it in Baseball crazed Asia. Well aside from the local team, the Busan Giants (yeah that’s right I’m a Giants fan here in Korea too), whooping the opposition there was an even more memorable event for me. My buddy Ben, a man that has so many tricks up his sleeve and in his hat that I am sure David Copperfield is green with envy, sang me Happy Birthday in Korean in front of the entire baseball stadium. When I say in front of the whole stadium, he went on stage, was on the big screen, and also unbelievably got literally thousands of Koreans to sing me Happy Birthday. It’s on the top of my birthday song list with Jake’s Happy Birthday played on bagpipes to me a few years ago. Oh and Ben gets recognized on the street sometimes now as the foreigner who sang Korean music and Korean Happy Birthday at the baseball game on the street sometimes.
4. Finally, my friends all got together and helped me have an amazing bash starting at the Rock n’ Roll Bar in Haeundae (cool bar with a birds eye view of the beach, pool table, beer pong, etc…) and ending at one of my favorites, Kino-Eye in Kyungsung for some dancing! Mijin, again, 감사합니다 for the cologne, I get compliments on it whenever I wear it.

It was hands down a birthday blast that I will never forget. To much fun with so many peoples that I have grown to love over here in the Land of the Morning calm. Cheers 친구s!!!! (still need to work on my Konglish skills ㅋㅋㅋㅋ).

After playing in the mud we went back to the motel to shower and get a little rest. I definitely desired more rest but it absolutely did not happen because I couldn’t let Mudfest pass by (in my guidebook Mudfest is listed as 1 of the 25 things you cannot miss in Korea). So I showered and shared some awkward moments with sharing a motel room with a girl who is very much not in my favor (Len said something to the effect that it brought the rain clouds into our motel room). So we more or less bounced to get some coffee and hit the town in the rain. Despite the Monsoon rains the party was raging on in the streets with dancing to live music, covered in mud, and good friends. I sadly lost Len (who had my phone so I couldn’t call him) but luckly before I lost him I found Mina, Ben, Sandra, etc…. So we hit the Noraebang (Karaoke Room) then went out for some dancing in the rain and mud. During which I decided to go get a bite to eat and proceeded to fall asleep at the restaurant, which was when I knew it was time to hang it up for the night and turn in. The next day our bus left early because of how the terrible the weather was, which in my tired state was not wholely unwelcomed. It was an awesome weekend just wish I was more awake…Next time I guess, but here are some pics for now.

Pics by the SacBee