This past weekend was our friend, Stu's, birthday. He a pretty cool dude and makes fun of how frequently and improperly Americans use the word "awesome". He a Brit from Essex. Since he's pretty cool and funny, we thought we might celebrate his birthday. He is only 5 days older than me. We went to one of the many little outdoor restaurants nestled in the woods, along a stream at the bottom of Mudeung mountain- kinda Fern Gully-ish and sweet.
Afterwards, we headed downtown and watched the Chungchang-ro 7080 Remembrance Festival. It's supposed to a festival for nostalgia of the 1970s and 1980s in Gwangju. I'm not exactly sure why those decades are commemorated with a large festival, but it was fun nonetheless.
Here we are enjoying a strange combination of Disney, Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and more characters I couldn't identify all dancing in some strange show. We also found these marred-up mannequin heads, which actually were the source of a lot of our fun that night. Below is a mannequin head puppet show with Korea's booz of choice- soju!
Stu walked through the streets of downtown, bent like an old man and turning around to scare young Korean girls. This one girl below was particularly impressed with this shenanigan. I'll say that many others were not impressed at all.
We went to a few of our favorite drinking spots and ended at Speakeasy- the foreigner bar. A few of the gentlemen decided that the stairs were too conventional of a way to enter a bar- my dearest included. They scrambled in, knocked off a few bricks, and were scolded laughingly by the management. Speakeasy is the black hole end of many nights in Gwangju for a miguk.
Is Korea College: Part II? Some weekends feel like it. But hey- college was fun.
Next weekend- MY BIRTHDAY! That post will surely be nothing, but wholesome, good, grown-up, responsible, 24 year-old fun. PS- I'm sharing a birthday weekend with the classy gentleman in the photo above. His birthday is the 18th although he says we have the same birthday because he was born in South Africa, which I'm not sure makes sense. His name is Kent and in the right light can be mistaken for Val Kilmer.
2 comments:
Hey Ashley,
My name is Lisa and firstly thank you for blogging in public, it has been an inspiration, you guys look like your having an awesome time and the school and Gwangju look great. So much so that it encouraged my boyfriend and I to sign a teaching contract with Avalon/Reading Town.
I am from Ireland and Shane is from Texas, yeah I know random but it works. So I am crazy excited and terrified at the same time, our arrival date is around the start of December hopefully.
If you get a spare minute i'm sure i've a few questions for ya- pegasus_LK@hotmail.com
Hope to hear back from you, I guess we'll see you in Dec!!!
Cheers,
Lisa :p
Ash,
You sure seem to have way too much fun!
Mommy
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