So, for anyone wishing to have a pretty down-to-earth example of my personal take on Heaven and Hell, read on.
Hell will be sitting in your apartment, supposedly your own private refuge from the terrors and evils of the outside world, a place all your own, where you find solace and sanctuary in the arms of loved ones, surrounded by the familiar and the comfortable, while just outside and a block away, an enormous sound system blares into the otherwise beautiful and unsullied Saturday morning the abysmal sounds of Korean men wailing like clubbed seals and skinned banshees to gut-wrenching Karaoke tunes, giving their heart and soul in exchange for what I seriously hope is either an unimaginable amount of cash or some semblance of immortality (otherwise it's just not worth it). It will continue for hours until you, who for so long have been a relatively peaceful, fun-loving person, with no desire to inflict serious, lingering, tortuous harm to anyone (or their pets and/or children) actively consider the consequences of purchasing several sturdy bamboo sticks and wreaking your own terrible vengeance, transforming you into something you're not, and bending you to the will of the almighty darkness that spawned that unfathomable beast: Karaoke.
Heaven will be when the music stops, and all that remains is the injured (but indescribably relieved and irrespressably hopeful) sound of the sobbing of those remaining, those who have survived the unimaginable and will learn from their history to go on to create a better world for their children and their children's children. They will arise from their downtrodden state to form a choir, their voices raised in perfect harmony and merciful unison to proclaim the victory of light over darkness. The sun will emerge from its place behind the sheath of clouds, and will bathe the scene in intangible gold, lending its luminescence to the very rocks and earth and metal, erasing from all the memory of that terrible day. And there will be peace.
*whew*
Now, I'm sure you've all noticed that it's only been one weekend, and there's another post here. I'm really trying to not get backlogged with this whole "keeping you people updated" thing, so here goes: the goings-on of last weekend.
Saturday, we went to Cheongnamdae, which is the name for the Korean President's summer retreat home (mansion), to watch a group of people do a belly-dance routine. We originally went as a favour for a foreigner friend of ours, who is going out with one of the dancers, but we actually had a really good time. After the dancing, there was a university Tae Kwon Do group who had loads of really cool tricks and stuff. Regretfully, I completely failed to remember a camera on this outing, so we are pictureless when it comes to the specific tricks, but I'll recount a few of my favourites for you.
1) three people stood in a row, each holding a breaking board at a slightly higher level than the person in front of him, while a fourth guy ran up, jumped, and successively broke all three boards before hitting the ground again. It gave it a really cool Matrix effect of him running up the boards and breaking them at the same time.
2)Some guy broke a stack of about 7 boards. With his face. It was cool.
3)At the end, this one guy got an apple and a knife and walked to the centre of the performance area. He put the apple on the end of the knife, then held it up in front of him. The he picked up a bell and rang it. At that point, we saw a blindfolded guy stand up, wait for the next bell, and then proceed towards the knife-apple guy. Then, after a few more bell rings, he jumped up and did a spinning kick, knocking the apple clean off the end of the knife. BLINDFOLDED! It was nifty.
Anyway, after we got back from that, we had a nap and then went to a local flower festival that we had been given tickets for, and thus felt obliged to check out. It was actually a fair bit cooler than it sounds (cause it would have to be). We saw acrobats:
and magicians (whose picture we didn't take). There was also a Russian fiddle/cello trio there performing.
When we first got there, we realized just how serious they were about their no-smoking policy.
It was a REALLY BIG SIGN!!!
Oh yeah, and the festival had the single worst name of any officially sanctioned festival. EVER.
Don't believe me? Look.
Still don't believe me? Look closer:
Yeah. Apparently it's supposed to be pronounced "rappay" but they're still a bunch of tools for not looking it up in a dictionary. Unbelievable.
On our way out we saw these kids playing on really cool contraptions that were similar to those little horses or other animals at the mall where you put in a quarter and it bobs back and forth for a few minutes, except these ones were driveable, and the kids were riding them around. We were really impressed, until we saw one from the front, and realized that they were obviously just the vanguard of an invading alien robot army.
ARE YOU SARAH CONNOR?!?!?
So that was Saturday.
On Sunday, my friend Jae-in invited us to his father's 60th birthday party. In Korea, the 60th is the biggest birthday and they go all-out, so it was at a banquet hall and had a bigger variety of Korean food at that one meal than I've seen, probably in any given month in this country. It was really cool.
So it was a really good weekend, all in all.
This weekend (it's Saturday today) we're going to Songnisan with a bunch of foreigners to go camping, and then on Sunday we're going up to Seoul. Our band entered a contest where we recorded one of our originals, sent in the CD and then waited. The second round, which we got to, is where we go to Seoul and perform that one song live for a panel of judges. The championship round is a couple weeks from now. The final winning band gets 2,000,000 won and a championship belt! No kidding.
Should be good times. I'll keep y'all posted.
Buh-bye!!