Vacation, so far, what I can remember anyways.

So, this is the end of my fourth day of my six day vacation.
I had planned to go to Japan, but right now I am really glad that I decided not to go. It's such a short vacation, and I know that I would not have gotten any relaxation in if I had gone. Quite the opposite, I would have been a total ball of stress. I mean, the expense of going there put a lot of pressure on you to get the most out of your experience, ie, running from place to place instead of having time to enjoy the moment. So I decided instead to just hang out in the fine fine city of Gwangju.
Thursday was uneventful. I stayed in. I don't remember what I did... oh wait, yes I do. I had my friend Darren over for some jamming. We did more individual playing that together, but it went well... we were playing together, at the same time, doing our own things over a common progression. We both have loopers. It's good to play with him, because he is really good with his! It's very informative just to play with him and watch how he does it.
We actually only played two songs the whole time, just a new song that I wrote called "Singing Sad Songs" (see www.letterstosandy.blogspot.com), which lended itself well to the looper, and really came into it's own when a new loop was added. I thought of something, played it over it, and then harmonized it. It sounded good, but the genius part was when I experimented with the looper's reversing function. It sounded 180% better backwards. We must have played stuff over that progression for about an hour and a half! After that, he played something that reminded me of Lay Lady Lay by Bob Dylan, and next thing I knew I was playing that with him for about another hour.
The looper is really changing that way I am approaching all aspects of how I play, and I really really like it. A lot.
After Darren left, Brooke Laurien and I had talked about going to hike on Mudeungsan mountain here in Gwangju. But it's was already 2:30, fo we just had a few hours left to get out there and walk around, and we realized that with the new bus system, none of us knew how to get out there! And it would be pretty expensive by cab. So we wound up having a little walk-about of our neighbourhood. I, of course, brought the camera. Pictures will be coming soon.
We found a bunch of neat-looking places, but by far the coolest was this little "live club" called "Military" (well, Mee-ra-taw-ree). Laurien had already seen it, and said that she thought of me when she saw it and knew she would have to bring me there. It's this tiny little club with a couple of acoustic guitars, a little stage, and military stuff pasted all over the walls. I resolved that this was a good place that I had to come back to.
Ryan and I went back later that night. There were a couple of tables of businessmen, and we were immediately asked to get on stage and sing some karaoke. I had seen the guitars, so I knew that if I made a good impression I might be able to play there... so I carefully paged through the songbook and selected... "Happy Together". really, you can't go wrong. Everyone knows it, it's in my range, it's a song I know well. Good times. I was asked for an encore... I did "The Letter" and "San Francisco", which went over well too.
I asked the owner about a poster on the wall that said "Gwangju Folk Guitar Club", and he misunderstood and led me onstage and handed me a guitar. I was happy to oblige though, and played "Firecracker" by Ryan Adams, "Your Beauty Must Be Rubbing Off" by Hawksley Workman, and "Shine" by me, as well as "Winding Wheel" by Ryan Adams. It went well. But I didn't want to stay onstage too long, because Ryan was there with only me, and I have been informed many times in the past that that can suck. haha. When I got offstage, the businessmen had filled our table with beers, so that was a welcome sight. After everyone else left, the owner came over and played a little, and sang a few verses of "Blowing in the wind" for us. We asked him to join us, and we had awkward conversation until another business man pulled him away from us.
He was talking to me about music though, and when I said that I knew The Beatles and Bob Dylan, he asked if I could sing Frank Sinatra. It's a very funny situation here, music-wise. All different eras of popular music are a bit blended here, because theya ll seem to have arrived here at the same time. So the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra and Led Zeppelin all fall into the same category of "old pop". It's really odd.
Anyways, Thursday was a good night.
Friday was a good day too. I slept in, and I was starting to wonder when I would hear from Steve, a teacher from a camp that I had participated in last summer, whom I had made lunch plans with. I was getting so curious about his lack of contact, actually, that I checked thet e-mail that I had sent him to make sure that I had in fact responded positively. I had, but I noticed that I had sent him the wrong number. I sent him a correction, and he called a few minutes later. We went out to Outback for lunch, which was nice, but a little embarassing, because I had been there just a few days earlier. I got my cell phone hooked up too, which is good. I've been putting that off for far too long. Steve had to leave pretty early, which was too bad. I wasn't ready to go home yet, so I stayed downtown.
I headed to Art Street, which I have not been doing as much as I had thought that I would when I decided to come back to Gwangju. I went into a few galleries, which was really nice. I got to stare a little more about this beautiful painting that has been hanging in a little store for almost a year now, which I am totally in love with. It's just this deep orange sky, not realistic at all, but just stunning, I think. So, a good afternoon.
I headed home along the river, and I came upon a staircase. I noticed it a few weeks ago, and I thought that it really seemed like a cool place, and I knew that I would have to investigate it. I was in no mood to go home yet, so I thought that that would be a good time to do it.
I headed up, and came, panting, to the top (it was tall) where I was greeted by a man reading newspapers at the top on a bench. It was not the usual "Annyong Haseyo!" with a little bow. It was an actual "Welcome!", in English, and with unexpected enthusiasm. He got up, came over and shook my hand, and started asking me all the standard questions, but the big difference was that he was actually confident in his English, even though it was not perfect. It was very refreshing. His name was Mr Lim, and he told me that he came every day to clean the park. Apparently it is a memorial for 3196 soldiers (he said police officers) who died in 1956 in the Korean war. There were large marble plaques with all their names written on them. He asked me what I thought of his cleaning. He was obviously very proud of his work, and he had every reason to be, it was one of the nicest parks I had been to! He asked me if I had been to Sajik park, and I said no. He waved me down a steep path, and told me to enjoy it.
I did! Sajik Park was wonderful! There was only one street through it, that was not busy at all, so it was very quiet. There were a lot of benches, nice trees, little pagodas, it was very peaceful and nice. I hopped in a cab on the way back, and I was glad that I did, because even though I was embarrassingly close to home, I was incredibly off in guessing which direction I thought would take me there.
Friday night was uneventful, I just stayed in and played more guitar. I did write another song though. They've been coming very quickly lately.
Saturday was a big day. For guitar playing. It's all I did. All day. Just play and play and play. I experimented with the looper, I fiddled with stuff, I wrote some more, I practiced Jordan's stuff, I practiced my own stuff, I listened to music.
In the evening I went out with Brooke and Ryan for a little BongSunDong pub crawl. It was snowing pretty violently, so it turned into a "Log Cabin" bar sit-fest. Just sitting, chatting. I actually had a really bad headache. But it was entertaining nonetheless. The "Log Cabin" is a pretty cool little pub. I don't know what it's actually called. OakTong, or something. It's got a "Western Theme", complete with a cutout of John Wayne! Good Times.
Then we wound up at another little restaurant that Ryan and Brooke thought was a bar, but it quickly became apparent that it was not. It was just a chicken restaurant. But they had beer, so it turned out okay. They also had the greasiest chicken bits that I had ever put into my mouth. I actually had to stop eating it, because I was going to get sick. The place was a little bizarre, with semi-pornographic Conan The Barbarian-esque prints on the walls, children coming and going/sleeping under fleece blankets by the kitchen, a group of extremely drunk Korean college kids and a couple having a domestic situation that culminated in the man knocking the woman on the head with an aluminum bucket that just happened to be on the table.
Today was similarly eventful. Woke up, had a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs and bacon (the last of the bacon, thank God. My heart hates me) and too much coffee (a 1.5 litre bodum of coffee is hard to resist) with Baileys (Mmm... vacationey). Then out to lunch with Brooke, Ryan, Jon and Emily. It was a pretty good restaurant, and we had one of my favourite meals, a meaty soup with a sweet broth served with countless bottomless side-dishes. After that we wandered around downtown looking for the bootleg DVD guy, but we never found him. I was kind of in a mood to shop, but I managed to avoid spending any money, which is a good thing.
We tried to go skating, but we arrived just as the rink was closing, which was too bad, because it had been the reason why Jon and Emily had wanted to get together in the first place.
I offered to make home-made pasta for everyone, but Jon and Emily wanted to go home so that Jon could prepare for school tomorrow.
Anyways, Ryan and Brooke came over, and we had a good meal of home-made meat sauce and gnocchi, which I unfortunately overcooked. Also, I just checked, and we didn't know that gnocchi had to have potatoes in it. hahaha, that's fricking hilarious. Oh well, our little bready dumplings were just delicious.
Since then, we've just been sitting around doing our own thing. I've been reading a bit, writing in my blog, Ryan is working on his website, and Brooke's reading "Angels and Demons". Sam is providing entertainment in the form of neurotically running from corner to corner in the apartment and frekaing right the hell out. The best move has been trying to attack the Christmas lights by climbing on the back of a chair and jumping up the wall.

Well, that's my vacation life. Pretty good, no?