Saturday, May 31, 2008

First day out

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I'm a little late with this blog but my first day out was so crazy I needed a day to recover. It started off like any other day, I woke up, did some Thai chi, and Nun chuck training in this shrine area out said my sisters apartment. I soon meet up with my sister and her army friend to have lunch. We went to this place were the Catoosa eat (U.S Korean solders). The Food was great but restaurant was mad cold.

The next stop was getting a hair cut. I knew I was going out that night, and I didn’t want to go out with my hair looking WOPP DA FIED (slang for messy). So I went to this barbershop on base. The most interesting thing about the shop was how all the women were barbers. The woman that cut my hair was really nice and treated me like a prince. Haircuts on base were way different then what I’m use to in America. For 21 bucks the barberist cut my hair, give me a manicure, washed my hair, a facial, and a full body massage, and that does include finger and leg popping. It felt so good.

So after I got my hair cut it was time to meet up with my friend Jaewon from my freshmen year of college. Jae took me to some college fest in Pun-dan. On the way we picked up two of his friends (whose names I can’t remember at the moment) and headed off. The fest was pretty cool but at the time of arrival there were a lot of younger people at the university (I’m talking 9 to 12). Which took away the college aspect. It was really funny to so the different reactions I got from people. The most common face I got was the "wow was that a black guy" face. The best reaction of the night would have to be the ones from kids. For example a group of kids were asking my friend for some money, looked up, saw me and freaked out in amazement. One of the kids shouted, "YOU LOOK SO COOL" in Korean. I just laughed; my friend didn’t have the cash for the kids so I give the little rascals 10 bucks. Those kids freaked, and start singing praises to me as I walked down the steps. The coolest thing I saw at the fest would have to be the Brown Eye girl’s performance (famous Korean girl group). They were really cute and actually sounded good. I have never seen so many screaming kids before.

We left the fest early because Jae had to drop his friends off. Upon that we decided to hit up the hookah bar. On the way to the bar we picked up Jae's Seoul buddy Bing "Bling". The Hookah bar was pretty fun. We mostly caught up and had a few drinks. Well Bling and I had a few drink considering Jae was the DD, ha-ha. After the hookah and drinks settled it was time to hit up the clubs. We went to the big university club stop called Hun dae. Hun Dae was so cool looking; there were hip-hop stores, eateries, clubs and beautiful girls galore. We meet up with my friend Andy (DJ ANDRIZZLE I prefer to call him) at this club called The Velvet Banana. Andy put me on the list early so we all got in for free. The club was jumping and they were doing live hip-hop performance when we arrived. I was really impressed with this group Team Supreme (the best new lyricist team in Seoul). Andy also introduced me to all of the Disk jockeys, and they showed me mad love. After the live performances were over an old school hip-hop set begun. The music was a mix of ragga and hip-hop, so I was up for dancing. While doing some ragga dances one kid wanted to test my skills and we started to have a friendly dance off. Everything was pretty playful until the guy revealed he could do some break dance. Being that I do a little Pop N Lock I was up for the challenge. Seeing that a battle begun the club circled us, and someone recorded the whole thing. The guy I battle was actually pretty good, but in the end I was declared the winner. One thing I've noticed is when you can actually dance it makes girls nervous when it comes to dancing with you. So where I was getting mad respect with the guys, the Korean girls got nervous when it came to dancing with me. So we decided to hit up another club.

The next club we went to was a mainstream American hip-hop club. There we had a great time. I don’t think they had live performances but they did have two hype men shooting out the lyrics of the songs. This club was a pretty chill environment so we had a lot of fun. O and did I tell you, the girls was so fine. Since I didn’t battle anyone in the beginning the girls were not shy when it came to giving me some love (one the dance floor that is). I did still get a little popping done but at that point people just wanted to learn some moves. We actually got a really nice popping circle going.

Well we ending the night with eating at this Korean style fried chicken spot. It was pretty good and soaked up all the ALC (Elgin’s slang word for alcohol). I eventually made it back to the base at 5 in the morning. Needless to say I didn’t do anything today but sleep. One thing I learned from my first day in Seoul is Hip Hop only speaks on language. You can feel the love that pure Hip Hop brings threw language barriers.

Well that's all for now.
AHN Yeong

Thursday, May 29, 2008



I've finally made it!!! Korea is so grimy looking I love it. The 12-hour flight was really nice. All the flight attendants were pretty and treated me really nice. The food was so freaking good. The first time they gave me beef and noodles, and the second time I got chicken and rice. Korean Air really keeps you entertained on the flight with these touch screen monitors in the back of your chair. The monitor had music, movies, and games on it. I mostly watched movies, The Great Debaters, Bucket list, and some of Jumper, but then I started to get sick so I stopped.

My plane arrived 40 mins early so I was stranded at the airport for a while until my sister arrived. Everyone thought I was in the army, "thank God I'm not". I’ve never got that much attention from cab drivers but as soon as they knew what base I was going to they were all over me. Luckily my sister showed up and we went to the base.

The base is actually really nice, and right in the middle of Seoul. The base has 2 gyms, a driving range, hotel, soccer field, baseball field, many little shops, and fast food galore. It surprised me to see that Popeye’s delivers on base. My sister’s crib (slang for home) is small but cozy. I’m sure were going to have a lot of fun together. I’m really looking forward to some much needed bonding time. So that’s all I have to say for today, I have to rest up for tomorrow’s actitives. AHn Yeong

Friday, May 16, 2008

12 days till trip,

Things are going pretty good lately, I’ve been packing and studying up on my Hungul. My Korean Advisor Che Yeong Cha has been really helping out on my conversation skills. Today she told me I’ve mastered basic Korean. That really gives me confidence for this trip. Yesterday I bought a Korean dictionary and this 100 Korean word textbook. That’s really going to come in handy when learning to read. I found out Korean is actually easy to read; I only have to mesmerize a few characters. Well I go home on Saturday to visit my folks back in St. Louis, Missouri. Its really going to suck not seeing my grandma this summer, but I plan on taking her and my mother out to dinner. Well On-Nul Cu-Mon (Korean for that’s enough for today)
Ahn Yeong

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Awaiting the day

Wed, May 14, 2008 (14 days away)
So I have less then two weeks before the big day. Today I got a new suit case and plan on doing some designs on it to make it stand out. The bag is pretty dope and has a lot of space so I can bring crap back. Now that I have the case I just need to think of what clothes to bring. I don’t want to bring to much crap because I most deff want to shop while I'm in Korea. But I may need to buy a few pairs of shorts. I really can't wait for this trip and everything I'm going to experience. Tomorrow I'm going to meet with my Korean advisor to go over some Korean basic conversation. That should be interesting. Well im going to Bed
-Jal Ja