Saturday and Sunday :-) Whales, karaoke, beatings, and beaches.

I think some of the best weekends are one where there are virtually no plans and definitely no sense of directions :-)  And we had one of those weekends this weekend.  It was the usual suspects.  And this is how we began the night, on the way to the Whale Jam Concert:

Good times, good times.  I think we had all had the right combination of not enough sleep/cabin fever.  It was time to find some music.  Komini got to come along this time!!  :-)

The Whale Jam Concert was supposed to be at Ulsan Grand Park, but it was a bit rainy so we were off to find the alternate location, which wasn't anywhere near as close or as easy to find.

I was pretty sure that I knew which bus to take, but then again that never ends well.  The bus of course didn't come to our bus stop, so we went on a different bus, which is a great idea when you actually don't know where you're going.  We went to Samsan (which was, for the record, probably the craziest bus ride I've been on so far) and took a cab out to Shinae, where the concert was supposed to be (somewhere. . .)  Shinae is really cool (not sure why I didn't take pictures, I because we were lost and really trying to find the concert)
  but it was very cool, we'll definitely go back there to check everything out.  We got so lost that we literally went to a PC room to look up directions (the guy who was working there was so sweet and didn't charge us)

We finally found it.  :-)  It was a small space, but there were some really great bands :-)

This is the band that was playing when we got there.  They were a lot of fun.  :-)  Can't be a ska jam band :-)

This band was amazing!  He sang a lot of songs from home, and did them fantastically well! 

There was one band of all Westerner's but we all enjoyed the local bands much more!  They were so much fun!!

It wasn't a very long concert, though, so it was no time at all until we were out and lost again :-)

So, after another cab ride we were back home and headed for a Nori Bang.  :-)
I had never been to one before and had absolutely no idea what to expect.   We went to one that had fun Disney writing called EverSing (I think. . .) and proceeded to have the time of my life.

But, I shouldn't get ahead of myself.  On the way to the Nori Bang we heard quite a commotion.  Honestly, downtown here on a Saturday night there's always a bit of a commotion, but this seemed extra special so we went in for a closer look.

"Is this kid tied up??  What's going on??"

One of his friends ran over and told us that it was his birthday and it's tradition at Ulsan University for the birthday kid to get tied up and smacked around.  She begged us to hit him too!  "No, no, I could never hit a kid that was tied up!"  but, she insisted, so who were we to argue?? 

Here's the official vid:

Looks like he survived, and truth be told I think we were more shaken than he was.  But, we were on a mission.  Nori Bang.  Now, I'm not entirely sure what I thought it would be like.  I guess I thought it would be like karaoke night at a bar where you pick random things and sing in front of whoever was there.  It wasn't like that at all.  It was fantastic, and looked a lot more like this:

I guess they're all a bit different and this one was quite a simple one.  It's a small room with a screen and books filled with thousands of songs. They give you mics as soon as you get in there and you lock yourself in and have a blast for a couple of hours singing your heart out!  :)

I guess there are some that are more elaborate and bring you food and random stuff like that, but this one was very simple and I had an amazing time!

Pretty sure this was Ting Tings "That's Not My Name!"  :-)

I don't remember this one. . .but it was something awesome :-)

Ting Tings, Flobots, Abba, Celine, more Abba, more Ting Tings, 3HIO! and many, many more!  We sang until we were hoarse.  This was an amazing thing to do, I was absolutely shocked at how fun it was!  I may be an addict now.

We were there for a couple of hours and then called it a night with tentative plans to go to the beach, or somewhere, the next day.

FFWRD to the next day . . . .. . . . .  :-)

So, the next day we got on a bus and went off to find another adventure :-)  Ilsan Beach.

The bus was incredibly crowded and someone got on with, I think, a lifetime supply of squid (is that an accurate measurement, what on earth is a lifetime's supply??) so, Lindie was attempting to climb out of the window.

But, we made it, to lovely Ilsan Beach.  As soon as we got there it looked like it was going to rain, so we decided to explore the town a little bit.  It only took about six seconds for us to find street machines to start taking our money. 

I became an actual expert at picking up everything at this machine.  This machine was an expert and dropping everything when the claw got to the top.  Stupid machine.

We found arcade after arcade after arcade and we needed to see them all!  :-)

This one had a batting cage!  And lots of claw games!  :-)  It also had a shooting game. . . .

I actually shot something!!  But I guess you had to actually knock it forward. . .fun times. 

Albert was the picture of concentration.  He also won nothing :-(

Better watch out for these two!!  :-)

After getting our money stolen by cute machines, it was time to eat.  There was a bbq place that Lindie and I found (I should say smelled) when we were here last and we decided that we had to try it out.  Albert went to the Pine Forest (it ended up being a gorgeous day!) and therefore missed out on the following magic:

Lovely day!  Our waiter was so sweet, we asked him to take a picture and he rearranged our whole table and everything before taking it.  :-)

All of the side dishes that came out before we even ordered!  There were a lot of different leaves, onions, salad, radish, little meatball things, cabbage, all sorts of things!!

Look at that!!  Pork belly ribs!  Smoked!  And delicious! 

Don't you wish you could have been there?  Yes.  The answer is yes.

So, after we split an entire pig between the two of us, we decided to take a walk on the lovely beach. 

This is the view from the restaurant. 

Isn't this a beautiful place???

This was Mini Gomini's birth place, so we had to take a photo to commemorate.  :-)

on the beeeeeeach :-)

We were walking along the beach and this guy comes running up to us and says "sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!" and starts dancing.  We had no idea what he was doing so we asked his to do it again.  He did.  :-)  And here it is.

It was pretty random :-)   (Revision:  Apparently, this is from a music video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAWqnA8PdcY Thank you Sally for telling me!! I mean, it still doesn't completely explain why he ran up to us and did it, but it does make a little more sense!  Now how I know how the rest goes, we should have made him do more!!)

Then it was about time to go home.  We stopped at HomePlus on the way to check out laptops for Lindie,and we found really awesome things like this:

Also, we found some incredible Winter things that are going to make cold weather amazing!  I can't even wait!

We didn't find one there, so we were off to E Mart back at home.  So, we got on another bus, sat in the back, and talked about all sorts of random things, then this really nice guy that had been sitting silently next to us while we were being random asked us if we were exchange students and was therefore roped into our group for the next 45 minutes of our bus ride.

Meet Nathan.  He helped us with our Korean homework the whole way back.  And by us, I mean Lindie.  And by "helped" I mean, "got quizzed by" it was awesome :-)

After helping with the homework and chatting for a while about his exchange in Alabama, we asked him where E Mart was and he said "right there!" so, it was off the bus again for us!

E Mart is pretty impressive.  It even had a vet office/pet shop in it.  Lindie found her laptop (YAY!) and it was back on the bus to a nice shower and some sleep before the week started all over again.

Pretty awesome weekend all around :-)