So being over here in Seoul means that I am not really getting all of the normal holiday celebrations that I am used to doing back home with my family in the States. Like it was the first time for me to be away from my family for Christmas, but I had a blast in Hong Kong. I still had some of the familiar Christmas two days later on the 28th when I opened my presents that my parents, aunt, and grandmother had sent me a few months before that I had kept wrapped until I came back from my trip. I had wanted to open them with my parents and sister on Skype, but because of complications had to live texted them through Facebook chat. Got a lot of good things and some food that I had been craving!
The same goes for New Years as well. Usually for New Years, I am helping get our house ready for the New Year. I also usually have to go pick up the Chinese food and then go off to either a friend's house for the countdown or stay at home and watch the ball drop with my family. But because I am halfway around the world from my family and friends I had to spend it a little differently than I normally do.
I had made plans with Ida, a really close friend of mine and also one of my fellow teammates that I met when we did the live filming of After School Club way back in September. Ida and I are both official Melodies (fan club name) for BTOB, the boy group that we were in the filming with. BTOB was going to be having a stage on the end of the year concert performance for MBC Gayo Daejaejun. They were going to do the live performance as well a a prerecording that they allowed the fans to go to. So Ida and I brought all our fan merchandise ( Me: membership card, album, and slogan; Ida: card, slogan, and light stick) and headed out to Ilsan to get to the venue. Well we got there by 2pm and were able to get a good spot in line. But then the waiting started!!! We had to wait until 5:30 for them to organize us in lines. So from 2pm to 5pm we were moved into different lines depending on where the fan staff told us to go, all while we were freezing as the wind started to pick up.
But once 5:30pm showed up, the fan staff came over to us and looked at our cards and gave us numbers, We were in!! So we went into the building and were then told to wait for another hour while the other performers were finishing their runs. We saw Nicole, another friend of mine from Germany there and we were texting her telling her what was going on because we were in front of her in the line. She was amazed that we were able to get in and have such high numbers because we only had three of the four fan merchandise requirements! So Ida and I were really luck to have even gotten in, much less have really high numbers!
When we got into the auditorium, my group was place right at the right side of the stage. I am not going to go too much into what happened, because I am not exactly sure if I am allowed to talk about what went down during the recording because after we left there was a post in the fan cafe saying that we should not talk about what happened during the recording until a certain amount of time passed or fans would not be allowed to attend pre-recordings any more. Let me just say that it was a really good stage and I loved the dance break in the middle that they added to the dance.
BTOB had promised a high five event for the Melodies that showed up to the recording if we were about to have more than 500 people show up; we had 600!! So as we were leaving, we were allowed to high five the band members and thank them and wish them a Happy New Year. My group was the last to get released from the little pins that we were in, so we were being told to hurry and quickly leave the stage area so that they could set up for the concert later that night. So I was quickly going down the stairs when suddenly a wild Sungjae appeared! It was Sungjae, Ilhoon, Hyunshik, Eunkwang, Changseob, Peniel, and finally Minhyuk. Since we were being really rushed, I don;t really remember everything that happened, but I do know that Eunkwang recognized me and that most of them were wishing me a Happy New Year or just slightly bowing.
After we were released form the studio and made it back to our side of Seoul, it was already 9pm, so Ida and I went to the Noodle Box to go eat noodles, because I had told her of my family's tradition of eating Chinese for New Year Eve dinner so I normally eat Lo Mein noodles ( I having them for as long as I can remember). The Noodle Box in Edae is really good! We both ordered the Pad Tai and omo it was super delicious! But we had to eat fast because they closed down the store at 9:30, so not pictures of the noodle-ly beauty that was our dinner. Because Ida had paid for our dinner because they had a discount for Edae students, I paid for dessert at the Bubble Tea shop that I like near by. At that point we really did not want to head back to our dorms so we hung out in the student union building on the Edae campus, but they were closing that down early for the holiday so we then moved to a 24/7 cafe near the subway stop.
I got some cake and coffee so we could stay in the warmth and wait the hour and a half that was left of 2013. We talked a lot about our families and the various traditions that we do back home for all the plethora of holidays that we celebrate. We both had in common that family is a really big part of what we miss about not being home for the holidays. One of the traditions that she told me about was that her family and her all stand on chairs and the couch and jump down when the clock hits midnight; jumping into the New Year. I thought that it would be fun if we did that for her since we had noodles for me.
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| My super delicious red velvet cake and Moroccan Mint Latte. Sweet things to start of the new year! |
So once the clock got to 11:58 pm, we packed up our things and went outside to the stoop. Since we did not have a count down clock, we watched Ida cell phone until it changed to 12:00am. As soon as the numbers changed we jumped off of the stoop and into the New Year! It was really fun to jump in the middle of a deserted Edae, because there was no one there and the few people who were walking bye just stared at us crazy foreigners giggling and hugging each other. While walking back we were talking about what would happen in the new year and how excited we were. I have a feeling that this new year is going to be amazing!
So here are my goals for the New Year:
1) Create and maintain a fitness plan
2) Be more frugal and spend less money on the things that don't matter
3) Reduce my time on the computer for non- school related things (aka Tumblr and YouTube)
4) Journal everyday and put out one blog post per week
5) Make at least two Korean friends who are not affiliated with my program or my language exchange.
6) Order take out in Korean before I leave to go back to the States (trust me, it is harder than you would think)
7) Smile more
8)Curse less (more so in writing than speaking)
9) Be more positive
and lastly
10)Say at least three positive things about myself every day
Ok world, here are my goals! Let's hope that I meet them and that I have good health in the New Year!! Here is to a great 2014!!
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