On Parties

What do you do for fun in a foreign country? Well, some days you can go hiking in a park, visit ancient palaces, or look at cultural curio shops. However, you can not do those things every weekend. So, what do you do when you can’t do touristy things. Well, that’s easy…alcohol and alcohol related activities.

After getting off of work at 9 p.m. on Friday, my roommate suggested going out to a live music event at a bar in the nearby town of Ilsan. I had never been to the town or the bar before, but it was quite a bit of fun.

The event was located at a German bar, Brau Hoffen (there is an umlaut in the Brau and possibly the Hoffen, but I’m too lazy to search for the double dot thing). The bands (there were about 4 of them) were all Filipino. I’m not exactly sure how many bands there were because they all looked the same. And, that is not a comment on Filipinos all looking the same. The bands literally looked very similar (I have a feeling they were a family group). Anyways, they played a variety of Korean and American music. The American music was from the 80’s and later. The Black Eyed Peas, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Justin Timberlake were a few of the artists covered. The variety was actually pretty good and the bands did a good job overall. Although, all of the girls with the exception of one were just eye candy rather than good singers. The exception was still eye candy, but at least she had good pipes as well.

So, there in Ilsan, Korea, there were 8 westerners drinking beer out of gigantic beer glasses (I mean these things were literally 3 feet tall and those were for one person; okay, well, I don't drink beer, but I had some comparatively pathetic glasses of gin and tonic) listening to a Filipino band playing American music in a German bar…only in Korea.

After getting home at nearly 5 o’clock in the morning, I had just enough time to go to sleep for a couple of hours before it was off to a Korean wedding… Ahh, wonderful life in Korea.

--Matthew