In short time, one of my ventures has come to fruition. Back in the day, I never learned to formally dance nor did I venture to far into the art. But in due time, I grew to truly appreciate over a number of things. YouTube crazed and intrigued, I tried to learn different styles at Yale. After going through a little mockery and a few missteps, I think it would fair to say I have grown from the novice level and reached beginner status. Playing it wise, I decided on to taking lessons in a country so famous for a number of styles but the question became what and where? So I decided to go back to my YouTube origins and found the studio of a champion popping duo known as the Blue Whale Brothers (BWB). To call them artists would be a bit of understatement, but innovators of movement has kind of a ring to it. Just check out how they won Korea’s Got Talent back in 2012.

Now that I have your intrigue, I decided to start it off light with my lack of popping experience and take up their hip hop class. Although already a taxing workout, the first week has been fun. Even though instructed entirely in Korean, I have managed to gain a slight hang for the fast speaking. As I progress through this venture, I’ll keep you posted on major updates.

Tim Kim and I offer many thanks to Dr. Young-Shin Kim. She is pretty legen-wait for it-dary. Although she will be taking her talents and wonderful work to San Francisco for the coming academic year, she managed to get us connected with autism work being done in Korea at the Rudolph Institute. On Tuesday, we went to the center to get oriented with summer work we would be doing there. As the groundwork for our research is being laid, I’m not at liberty to give full information on our projects.

But fear not, you get to hear about the rest of my week. 😉

On Wednesday, I got a little taste of 장마 (rainy season) in good ol’ Seoul. To put it lightly, a thick fog, accompanied by a roaring rain storm, rolled into the heart of the land. To describe it bluntly, I couldn’t see for s*** and the rain came down like the Great Flood, making me feel like a scared, little b****. Let’s hope that I fare better in the coming weeks.

Thursdays at Yale came with a comforting knowledge of what the day truly meant: Chicken Tender Day. A glorious lunch, repeated every week with consistency I shan’t forget. How do I keep up with that whilst abroad? 치맥 (chicken and beer), a equally glorious staple in Korea. So glorious, you can even get delivered pretty much any time of the day. I met up with Paul to take a break and chill with him before he prepared to leave for Spain in the coming weeks. Just awe at this fine platter:

Following our feast, we did some exploring of Yonsei’s campus. As you may recall from my previous post, Yonsei is massive. When you first walk through the front gate, you may be disappointed by the ample amount of construction going on everywhere. But if you dig deeper on your trek, you will discover the ivy-laden buildings and beautiful courtyard that make this school look pretty marvelous. What’s a historic school without an amphitheater? Wait, an AMPHITHEATER?

(Insert Photo: Paul is preparing his German rendition of a one-man “Hamlet”)

The acoustics of this outdoor stage goliath makes you wonder how intelligent the building engineers must have been. The echo reverberates in every direction and as you get more central to the stage floor, the more your voice dominates your own hearing to the point where you feel like you hear it re-echo a few times. We pulled a few shenanigans before deciding on heading back for some Oreo 빙수 (an Oreo-flavored shaved ice dish).

My weekend = Ultra Korea.

To expand on that, Friday started the two-day festival adventure. The line actually made me glad that security did their job in comparison to other festivals *coughElectricZoocough*. Although long, they made sure each patron abided the rules for as safe a festival experience as possible with EDM culture. (As a side note, I felt kind of wrong for raving out at an Olympic Stadium. Like, I am dancing like a fool to a bunch of remixes when like a little under 30 years ago people were being medals for extreme human feats of athleticism at the same damn place. Contemplate on that for a while.)  I engaged in some interesting conversations with some interesting characters, to say the least. Outside of festival goer trolling, I got to see a few acts for the first time including Nervo, the Australian female duo powerhouse, and Laidback Luke, who probably celebrated even harder after his countrymen’s victory over the Spaniards in the World Cup rematch of the decade. Steve Aoki was pretty cool, too, but only as cool as you can imagine after seeing him four times. What Friday even cooler was the fact that a friend I made over a Thanksgiving flight back home from Boston also happened to be in Seoul for the festival. Damon, a graduate of friendly rival school of mine that sounds like aardvark, works in Hong Kong at the moment. What happened post-Ultra that night is better discussed in personal conversation.

So onto Day 2!

When I finally got back home (I’m a tease, I know), I took a wonderful, reinvigorating, beautiful shower. Feeling alive, again, I managed to grab some lunch after a few errands and got right back to the festival grind to meet up with a new Yale friend, Tina. She attended the Saturday with her siblings and let’s just say her entire family comprises of a bunch of champions. So we went on enjoying both DJ sets and live acts. A few of the more notable ones: BeatBurger, a electronic performance group from South Korea; Blasterjaxx, another Dutch product of the EDM wave, and Far East Movement, yeah, they were just as fantastic as I hoped for. Outside of the pretty fun performances, they were ridiculous dancing robots with fog guns, fireworks, fire, and confetti to add a nice celebratory touch.

Good week? Hell yeah!