Buzz Korea Awards

 So I am going to talk about my time attending the 2013 Buzz Korea Award ceremony. I was invited a few weeks back by my fried David, whom I meet at the filming for After School Club that I did way back in September (He is the really tall guy who was on my team during the games). His friend was up for an award and was able to get us in to the event for free, meaning we did not have to apply for tickets and were able to just go in.

We were going to meet up at Wangsimni station, but we had a little mix up of communication because they were at a different part of the subway than I was. I waited around for about 20 min and even called a friend of mine (the wonderful Kaitlyn) to be my ghost writer on Facebook to see if we could get in contact with them, before I decided to go top side and find a cafe so I could use their WiFi. I ended up getting a small hot chocolate from the Dunkin Donuts in order to get the WiFi password and eventually was able to find out where they were and meet them at the platform. I meet up with David, Yin Suen, and Hibaq (more ASC film mates) and their friends from their university here in Korea. We eventually made it to Jamwon station were we go off the subway and were able to take the free event shuttle to the location of the award ceremony.

I had passed this place before when I had visited the Han River before, and was really excited that I was able to go inside this time. The event location was inside of a lounge, cafe area that was built of a floating block in the river, connected to the shore by a long gangway. Since we had to split up the group because of room on the shuttle bus, the first group and I went inside and checked in and got our tickets/wrist bands. After checking in we were ushered upstairs and let loose upon the buffet while we waited for the awards start time. There was a really good all-you-can-eat Korean buffet that had a lot of the traditional food and drinks like bibimbap, ddeokgalbi, and even some traditional rice cake desserts. There was also an open free bar that was serving jager bombs and Orange Juice ( I am thinking that Jagermeiser and Red Bull may have been sponsors because we were also allowed to take full cans of Red Bull if we wanted--found that out later after it was too late). Our other friends arrived a little after we got our food from the buffet and it really turned into a party-- and by party I mean that we all stuffed our faces full of free gourmet Koran food and super delicious western desserts until we literally could not eat anymore.

free Jagerbambs

My dinner, the first plate of about three

the mouth watering sweets and free coffee

Thankfully, before I went back and stuffed my face with more cake and macaroons, the staff members come over and told us that the awards were starting and that we needed to go back to the second floor and head into the auditorium (same floor where we checked in on). The hall was like the size of any small ceremony hall. When we had checked in we were given wrist bands with table numbers and seat numbers, so we split up to go find our tables for the night. I was at table 8 (there was a total of 20 tables I believe) so I was really close to the stage.

the program for the evening

The MC for the event was Ricky Kim, a really famous model and actor here in Korea ( he is from Hawaii originally so he was perfect for the all English award show!) and is a major hottie if I do saw so myself.

 The show started up with a few opening words form the Director of Buzz Korea, Mr. Shin. and then lead on to the performance by female group Dal Shabet. They performed about 4-5 songs and then at the end of their stage, they had a drawing from a questionnaire that the guests filled out when they checked in. The winners were given a signed copy of their new album. My friend David was the first winner that they called, which is funny because he was the one that was telling us to go downstairs and fill it out while we were all enjoying the buffet--I did not go down, I was too busy stuffing my face and taking pictures! 

My friend David

After the opening dance performances, there was the actual awards ceremony. The awards were given out to bloggers and people who actively promoted Korea and the Buzz Korea website. I really did not know any of the winners, but it was still cool to see the get awards for their blogs and activities. After the awards were over, there was a drawing for three winners from the audience to win some really cool things. The three prizes were 1) a necklace and earring set from a really poplar TV show here in Korea (the Master's Sun) 2) A signed sports jacket from ZE:A's new clothing line  3) and a backpack that was worn by a popular idol in some TV show. Non of us in my group won anything but we still had a great time cheering on the winners and holding our breathes to see if we won.

After te drawings, we had a performance from 8 of the 9 members of the boy group ZE:A (Kwanghee was at another schedule and could not make it).

You sing it Kevin!!

The one on the far left is also acting in a really popular drama right now in Korea called "Heirs"

They were really good and performed about 4 songs as well as two encore performances. They also had a give away of signed CDs, but to win these the fans had to go on stage and be one of the top dancers from the fans in order to get a CD. One of the girls who was in our group (who is French btw) went up on stage and worked it! Sadly, she did not win, but everyone said that she should have been one of the three winners that were chosen to get the signed CDs.

After the ZE:A performance, the awards where done and we were asked to start heading out the back where we would be able to get cake and also our goodie bags (I think they are referred to as "Swag Bags" nowadays...). My group staid back and were one of the last to leave, because we wanted to thank David's friend for inviting us and it also allowed the crowd to thin out for us.

After collecting our swag bags, with was a box filled with generous sized samples of Korea Beauty products, we caught one of the free shuttles back to the subway and then headed back to the dorms.

the venue as we were leaving

Remember when I mentioned that one of the girls was French? Well she had meet up with three other French girls at the event who happened to be heading in ht same was as we were. They were talking up a storm on the subway, and i was able to follow most of it. But the cool thing was when the rest of the French group got off and there was one of the girls left, I struck up a conversation with her about her time here in Korea and such. My French still flowed like water with a few hiccups, where some of my Korean would pop in, but I was really happy that I was still able to talk to people in French. Even though there are a lot of French speakers here at the dorm (they tend to hang out amongst themselves or the other Europeans, not really meshing with us Americans) I have not really gotten the chance to talk to any of them and practice like the way that I would like to. Hopefully soon, there will be a small pocket of them that will stay so I can practice my French over the winter break!