Global Gathering....Korea Style

FOLLOWING in the footsteps of the 'Seoul International DJ Festival' back in May, Charlie, Kevin and I bravely ventured to Global Gathering Korea to see if it could top the enjoyable heights of our last trip to Namyeong Park which included getting home at 4am and for me, having to navigate the whole journey there by myself, makeshift bridge included.

Thankfully there were no antics of that ridiculous nature this time, but it is one of the evenings I will look back on in my time in Korea and remember fondly.

The week had passed by pretty quickly (I probably say this every week but in all honesty it was Thursday before I knew it!) Nothing really out of the ordinary happened in my classes. Kids were reasonably well behaved and I didn't have to send any members of one paticular class to the office because they were doing my head in which is always a bonus.

On wednesday we decided to try out a new galbi place which is just down the road from where we live. Since Kevin finishes at 9pm every evening we can never really be bothered to head to Suwon station after work so we're looking for a few more spots around Hwaseo-dong so that we can eat our dinner and it doesn't take all evening. We always eat at a restaurant right near there and decided to check this place out.

Since our regular restaurant, Mapo-gui, decided it was going to close it's doors (more on that later) we are still loooking for a galbi restaurant to fill the void. The place we went to was nothing flash but the food was pretty good as were the side dishes. We got the customary 'lecture' from the people who own the place about how to eat galbi, if only they had been paying attention and looking out of the windows more, they'd have seen we've been here for quite a while!
The best part of the meal probably came at the end when to our surprise for three servings of galbi and two beers we were charged 13,000 won (about £7.50) considering that when we eat at Craze Burger it costs us 16,000 won EACH, we were pretty shocked to say the least. Perhaps it was an introductory discount to get us to come back, but I'm pretty sure that there was a sign on the window which said that all meats they served were 9,900 won....

Perhaps it was a foreigners discount.

Anyway on Friday after we finished work I went off to the physio just down the road that I was instructed to go to every day by the Dr so that I could have therophy on my foot/ankle. Unfortunately because of the times that I work (10-6) and the length of time the physio takes (an hour and a half), after work is the only time I can head down there. This unfortunately means that I have to pay the after 6pm rate which is probably three times more than it is before the 6pm.

Even though the Dr told me to go everyday and I probably need to because of the 'messed-up-ness' of my foot. I really can't afford to be paying nearly 100,000 a week so this week I managed to go on Monday and Friday and next week I may also bookend the school week with a visit up there.
I have to be honest and say that it seems to be helping my foot a little as I can feel the swelling going down the following morning. The gel I have been using to reduce the swelling is hopefully taking effect too, and although I am still on a downer about the whole thing. I am slightly more confident that in two months time, I will have a fully working ankle and foot...just in time for Christmas!

On Friday, despite eating at a reasonably nice galbi place the week before we decided to try out the new mapo-gui 2.0 which has taken shape in just less than two weeks where our regular friday night haunt used to be. The place seemed pretty packed out (probably disgruntled customers that the other place had closed...like us!) but we eventually managed to get a table and ate whatever their speciality was, I think it was called 'calmegi', some Korean meat I've never eaten or heard of before. But considering I have never been one to notice the difference in tastes between two kinds of meats, it could have been from a dinosaur for all I knew.

The meal wasn't bad and although it wasn't as delicious as the place we used to eat at, for a debut, it wasn't bad. Whether we'll be heading back there every week is still undecided!

Feeling pretty tired after a session of running at football on thursday wiped all the energy I had away, I caught an early night on Friday deciding to start watching 'The Damned United' on dvd. After just finishing the book a couple of weeks ago, I decided to check out the dvd version in comparison as it came out just before I left the UK. It was actually pretty good, and I didn't mind waiting until Saturday morning to finish watching it.

Although we had done some research on Global Gathering throghout the week, it was pretty clear when it came down to setting off that we didn't quite have the route worked out, partly because we didn't know where the thing was actually supposed to be taking place. Scouring websites and blogs all week had given us nothing, and even with the aid of google translator we still hadn't been able to fall upon a set of instructions which would take us to the right place.

We set off from our house about 4pm deciding that we would get the Korail train to Seoul Station and then work out the rest later. A couple of weeks ago we discovered that there is a rather handy information line which you can call if you are a foreigner and they are able to provide instructions of give information to cab drivers should they not understand a word of what you are trying to say, as is the norm.

Picking up some tickets in the extraordinarily confusing mess that is Suwon Station, we went to our platform to wait for our train. Somehow the woman had managed to sell is three tickets that were in completely different carridges so I made my way to my seat and Charlie and Kevin went off to a different carridge, confident we'd all meet up at Seoul Station in the end.

When I got to my seat, some Korean guy had decided that his bag was going to sit in my place and although I asked him twice to move it and one went to move it myself he didn't actually respond until I sat down on his bag, forcing him to remove it from my seat. The train took about thirty minutes to get to it's destination in Seoul, most of which I spent sleeping until a bottle of water that someone (probably the rude guy with the bag) had left in the seat pocket in front of me started leaking on my leg and woke me up! Needless to say I wasn't impressed but as he got off at the next stop I had the space to spread out and enjoy another short nap before meeting up with Kevin and Charlie at the station.

We called the information line on 1330 and they told us that the Global Gathering was being held at a park near the World Cup Stadium. Figuring that his was the same Namyeong Park which held DJ festival we didn't have any problems navigating our way there. After a five minute search of which metro line we needed to be on, we eventually found ourselves wating on a deserted platform which would alegedly take us to the correct stop.

When the train eventually pulled up after fourty minutes of us waiting we boarded the train and expected that the train would soon be off and our troubles would be over. Sadly, things didn't quite work out that way as twenty minutes and three eighteen hole rounds of the golf game on Charlie's phone later, we still found ourselves sitting on the train, with the engine running, but not going anywhere.

The three of us, after initially doubting that we were in the right place were getting kinda of annnoyed at waiting so we decided to exit the train and find a cab which would give us a ride instead. Obvious as soon as we got out of the train gate, the doors closed and the train set off...typical!

Trying three cabs, we eventually found one who understood that we wanted to go to World Cup Stadium, and braving the horrible traffic we made it there for a pit stop and for some food. Quickly spying that there was a Pizza Hut in the vacinity of the Stadium we decided to head there and get some food.
Putting away an extra large peperoni pizza between the three of us we headed back out onto the street to see if we could get a cab driver to take us to the park, which after my last experience, I didn't much fancy walking to!

It must have taken us about twenty minutes to flag down a taxi, and after saying 'Global Gathering' to a couple and them not understanding, we decided it was best to call 1330 so they could explain to a taxi driver exactly where we wanted to go. I tried calling a few times but couldn't get through and eventually when I did, I didn't get through to somebody who spoke English which wasn't much help.
The lady told us to call back in ten minutes but pretty much instantly Kevin called them and got through to someone who was able to give directions to a cab driver.

Thinking we were good to go we hopped into the cab and the driver started driving us in the direction of the park. All of a sudden, the guy started making hand signals, and the three of us confused we pointed in the direction we thought the park was. After making a couple of U-turns to and getting further away from our destination we decided to 'Yeogi-yo' the guy and get him to stop near the park which blocked me from the DJ Festival back in May.

Thanks to an evening of navigation back then and a good memory I then had to guide us back in the right direction and on a twenty minute walk to where we had hoped the cab driver was going to take us. Thankfully this time once we got to the main road the bridge which had so tormented me last time was close to being finished and we were able to walk over it, without fear of it collapsing on us.

Global Gathering itself was pretty much set up the same as the DJ festival with a main stage a thousand tents selling drinks, merchandise and food and then a smaller stage to the left where some of the minor acts were playing. Unfortunately, due to our late arrival we'd missed the Korean sensations which are G-Dragon and 2NE1 (just a couple of the million k-pop bands which exist over here) but after walking around for a bit I met a couple of my friends from the football team and we all watched Roksopp (who I'd never heard of, but were pretty good) and then Underworld (who I have heard of and were very good!)

By the time all the excitement had finished it was 3am and time to head home. We had a pretty difficult time getting a cab home for one reason or another. The first guy that we tried to get a lift with didn't know where we needed to be and after agreeing a location with the second guy we tried to convince him to give us a ride for 45,000 won (which is how much we usually get home for) but he clearly felt that our money wasn't good enough for him and instead sped off towards somebody who was going to be mugged off into paying more. Needless to say he got plenty of deserved abuse from the three of us as he stepped on the accelerator.

The third guy we finally managed to get to give us a ride, played on our foreign nature and after agreeing to take us home for 45,000 started asking for more when we gave him the money. We were pretty fed up of standing out in the cold Seoul night and gave him what was necessary to get him to drop us off at home. Back in Suwon by 4am, the three of us were relatively hungry and stopped at the kimbop restaurant just near our house to pick up a midnight snack of cheese donkas.

After a tiring night of dancing (and mostly pointing as you do to dance music) I didn't get out of bed until about 11am and ready to play football at 4pm I had plenty of time to mess around on the computer and catch up on the football I missed yesterday. Turning up at GSIS for my game this afternoon, I was disappointed to discover that several of my team mates had left their abilities (and their first touches) at Global Gathering. Something which wasn't great news considering we were playing last seasons Champions and the best team in the league.

Within ten minutes we were 2-0 down and although at one point we eventually managed to peg them back to 4-2 we went on to lose 5-2 much to our disappointment. There goes the unbeaten record I guess, but on such setbacks Champions are created.
Charlie and Kevin came to watch the second half of the game and afterwards we went back to Suwon station to eat some Dak-Galbi.

The rest of my evening has been spent planning for tomorrow and watching football. Shortly I'm going to head to bed as I a pretty tired but I'm pleased that I had the oppertunity to write a lengthy blog before my eyes started to close!

I'll leave it there for the time being folks. Hope the week is bearable for you

Ben x

Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch it to be sure.
Murphy's Law