Day 65: Mentors Club Halloween party

Welcome to Korea where you party on a Thursday and take your exam on a Saturday!

Tonight was the night of the Mentors Club's Halloween Party, one of the (I think 3) big events held by the club.

From the moment I knew that I'd be living in Korea during Halloween, I'd been looking forward to celebrating it here. I knew it wouldn't be like in America but having watched some Youtubers' videos on Halloween here, I knew that I could expect loads of people to dress up - which meant I would have an excuse to dress up as well!

In short, I was excited.

This is one of the posts that I've had to come back and write weeks after it happened because I simply was too busy during around this date to write blog posts. I apologize for it not being as detailed as the other, more recent posts but I'll try my best!

So like I said, I had been excited about celebrating Halloween. Celine and I had considered going as zombie Luigi and Mario but as the days leading up to today went by, we weren't either simply too busy or just forgot to buy the things needed for those costumes. As an easy last resort, we decided to be vampires for tonight!

After media class today, I went down to Sinchon to look for some dark make-up and fake blood.

After a while, Hajun joined me too!

It proved harder than I'd hoped to find fake blood so we ended up walking around the Sinchon and Ewha area quite a bit.

On our way, we ran into this memorial statue made for the Korean girls, who were taken as sex slaves by Japan during the Japanese occupation. Since we hardcore studied this topic last semester, I wanted a picture.

I'd been successful in tracking down the eye shadows I was looking for, the most beautiful cool, wine-red lipstick, and fake blood thanks to Hajun's help. Now it was time to return to the dorm to get ready with Celine.
Although I hadn't been able to locate any stores selling fake teeth, I think we turned into some pretty decent bloodsuckers. 

And off we went!

The party was to be held at club Octagon in Gangnam. Octagon is a pretty well known club and a place I'd wanted to go to since I heard of it. It seemed like such a must-do thing that I'd actually added it to my do-to-while-in-Korea list.

People took it pretty well seeing two dead-looking foreigners walk around in Sinchon and we didn't get too many looks but I did hear two older men down in the subway mutter that we were scary ㅋㅋ

When we got off at 학동역, a group of foreign guys saw us and I heard one tell the others: "We could have done something cool like those two!" before coming our way and asking if we happened to have brought some of our 'cool make-up or fake blood stuff' that they could borrow. Sadly, we'd only brought red lipsticks. Oh well. The guys asked if we were going to the Mentors Club party and told us we could just follow them if we felt like it. Celine felt it was better to walk alone so we stayed behind for a couple of minutes before exiting the station. I don't think it was for security reasons but more so because some of the guys seemed to have had something to drink already and were being pretty loud. We don't want to be looked at as 'one of those annoyingly loud foreigners.'

The club was not hard to find and soon we found ourselves waiting in line outside with countless other people. The line barely moved at all and we were stuck with a group of 5 obnoxious girls behind us, who were loud to the point of screaming to each other and who almost hit our faces several times with their big arm movements. When they finally moved (by skipping ahead in the line), we got new queue neighbors - two girls, who were holding their lit cigarettes unnervingly close to us. 

At least we didn't have to stand there for long before we were finally given arm bands, had our armbands stamped, and little angels cut out in the corner of our tickets (angels because 'everything is cute in Korea').

Our experience inside was meh. And to our surprise, people smoked inside! A lot!

It felt weird to be standing in the very back, dancing, so we tried moving closer to where the DJs were. It was a long process and on our way, we danced into:

1) A couple that could have passed as zombies seeing how eager they were to devour the other's face.

2) A group of VERY tall guys, whose favorite move was to lean far back and into Celine.

3) One guy that kept spilling his beer on me.

The face eating couple and beer-spilling-guy followed us all the way. The guy of the couple got so into running his hands over his girlfriend that Celine got a good back rubbing too since we were all packed like sardines on the dance floor. The guy with the beer proceeded to spill on me 3 times more but we made it! We made it to the front!

All of the time, we hadn't been fans of the music. It was really hard to dance to but we tried anyways since we'd spent so much time preparing for today's party. While we were standing there, a guy decided it was time to rub his lower body part against us. He started off with Celine and put an arm around her shoulders, them around me too! He was basically leaning on us from behind while we were awkwardly figuring out how to get away. Our plan to make a quick spin and take a step away proved successful. 

Almost the entire time we'd been on the dance floor, we'd held hands to make sure that we wouldn't get separated. Well, not long after having shaken the guy off, another small group of guys come closer. This time we just had our hands grabbed; Celine's was thrown up and mine was held (and our fingers interlaced) for a moment before the music came to a drop and we could do a *wuuuuuh!*-wave to make them let go.

After this, it was getting warm and boring so we decided to step outside for a moment for some fresh air.

While we were standing outside the club, still figuring out if we should go back inside or try to figure out how to get home, an Asian-American guy came up to us.

"Louise?"

he said and faced me.

"Yea?"

I said, a little taken aback because he knew my actual name although I go by Lucy here.

"Oh? You don't remember me? We met in Hongdae last weekend. You were with two of your friends," he said.

Now at this point I didn't recognize the guy at all but I had recently been in Hongdae but didn't remember if it was the previous weekend or the weekend before that.

"Sorry I don't remember you"

"Oh, sorry! But you are Louise, right?"

"Yea?"

"Maybe you were a little drunk after all. You told me you were from Hawaii?"

"Noooo I'm from Denmark"

And then we both realized that I was not the Louise he had met. His eyes grew really wide from embarrassment before he apologized and we all laughed at the misunderstanding.

After this little incident, we looked at each other and agreed that it probably wouldn't get any better tonight and to just go home. There were loads of taxis parked outside Octagon but the first taxi I went up to waved me away. The next one told me that he couldn't take us to Sinchon because it would be too expensive for us. When I asked how much it'd be, he told me 40000₩ (≈ 230 DKK / 36$) and the reason being that it was close to Halloween.

"No way we'd pay that much!" we thought to ourselves and headed towards the station in hopes of finding a cheaper taxi, which we did. And it only cost us 16500₩ (≈ 95 DKK / 15$)!

Don't just accept pricey taxis here, walk a little and find something more affordable!

Back in Sinchon, we stopped by McDonald's. It's something my friends and I do at home as well after a night out. While we were eating, a foreign guy in a suit came in. He was dressed in a suit and had a sign around his neck saying 'Nude model on strike.'

Amazing.

The last interesting thing to happen today was while we were walking home. Seeing as it was a Thursday night, few cars were out in the street at this hour. We'd just crossed the intersection and were walking below a bridge when an open sports car with two Koreans inside rolled up beside us (we still had our dead-looking make-up and fake blood in our faces).

"Hi! You are uhm.. pretty!"

they said with the most Korean accent before making a u-turn and driving back the way they came from.

아이고 we have the most funny experiences with Koreans sometimes ㅋㅋㅋ