Those Crazy Waegooks, Club Opening Night

Friday night the Female Kiwi, Hooligan 1 and I grabbed dinner and then 'roadies.' Basically, if it takes you an hour to get to your nightlife destination you get a drink at the corner store for the road. Since it's completely illegal to drink in public in the states (or at least, all of the states that I've visited) Americans tend to get quite a kick out of this. I will admit that the novelty has worn off some after a year of roadies but the Hooligan is still new.

After a few stops, two ajeossis (elderly Korean men) were highly entertained by the three of us chatting away and drinking. They could not get over the fact that the Hooligan was just drinking soju straight from the bottle on the subway--without anju! Hooligan 1 and I didn't know what anju meant but the Female Kiwi giggled madly at us and explained that they thought we were weird for drinking with snacks, anju. So what did the ajeossis do? They pulled out a package of amazing rice cakes filled with bean paste and pass them over to us. We chatted awkwardly in Korean with a smattering of English until they reached their stop and got off. Hooligan 1 was also complimented on his fabulous-ness for going out with not 1 but 2 pretty ladies. I'm not sure the ajeossis quite believed us either when we said that we were just friends. Oh well, scandalizing Koreans is what us waegooks do.

Shortly after the ajeossis got off, a giant group of high school girls got on, still in uniform and 2 of them were carrying TAMBOURINES. And because Hooligan 1 never misses an opportunity to be ridiculous and silly he went over, borrowed a tambourine and played/posed with it for a minute. Which was fabulous...except for the fact that my cell phone somehow DIDN'T SAVE THE PHOTOS!!!!!!! Evil, absolutely evil.

That was the amazing part...my night was filled with laughter and happiness before I ever got to the destination. The new club, Womb, was alright. Good DJ, trendy atmosphere but here was my big issue: it's a big basement club and while spacious it didn't have a good ventilation system. Imagine several hundred smokers going at it for hours without a single window open. Smokey. I came home feeling like I had smoked a pack of cigarettes. Thank god I had put my coat in a locker immediately and it didn't reek too badly the next day. Ridiculousness: the PR people doing photography for the opening went nuts over us, taking our photo. For the first hour or so we were the only foreigners there and I guess it looked good having foreigners mixing with the locals at a big club opening. Later some other people that we met at the EPIK orientation joined us and by that time there were other foreigners and I didn't feel like I was under a microscope anymore. All in all, a good night out with friends.

Coming up next time: Alex goes to a temple on a cliff over the beach...