But she came back to Gwangju the next weekend as well, a day early to attend my Live Music Party. We went out on Friday night, and we wound up at Provence (of course). The highlight of the night? Apparently Ee MeCha thought that there wasn't enough happening, just a lot of laughing, so she and SeungJong turned out the lights and then yelled "Kiss Time!".
I don't know if I have ever been so red.
As you will discover, the last few weeks have been very busy. This entry was started a few weeks ago... and will be finished now, on May 28th, as I am riding in an express bus on the way home from Incheon International Airport near Seoul. Busy busy!
Then we headed back to the Windmill, and we wound up watching bad movies and late night TV until about 5 or so in the morning (I can't believe I watched The Saint again. I mean, you know you're really into something good when two people are willing to sit through that just to be together)... it came to be decision time, ie, stay or go, and I wound up staying. No nearly enough sleep though, considering I had the live music party the next night. We walked around a bit that afternoon, and I did a sneaky sneak down the stairs to avoid meeting other people in the elevator. hahaha, but now I can write about it, and it's okay... somehow. But it seemed too risque at the time. Man, blogs are weird.
The live music party was a great success, I think.
Bikido played for about an hour and a half. There was, of course, documentation in the form of recordings (Darren and I are both huge nerds, so it's hard for us to set up without using about 7000 chords and half a dozen laptops. Nerds love to document!). Listening back, I'm really happy with how we did. I was supposed to break up the recordings into mp3s in the following week, but I became much too busy (as you will learn). It was such a good night, I couldn't believe how well it turned out. Throughout the night, we probably had about 40 or 50 people come in and pass through, and a lot stayed the whole night. Of course, the Bikido fanclub/groupies were out in full force, as were the photo nerds who flashed up the place.
The music went to about two thirty, and we had a number of guest performers as well. Mr C (Harley) was a highlight for me, he came out and jammed out a few tunes, some originals, some covers, including Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan, and it was great. He has a great voice, it sounds perfect for the songs he was singing, very "experienced". haha. Noel from Boseong came out, which was really nice, because I have been hearing about his playing for months, so it was great to finally see him in action. He did some great covers, and I'm looking forward to the next time that I can hear him play. Darren got back up to do some solo stuff, as well as some accompaniment for some ladies from his hagwon who got up to sing. It was so good, and Darren's solo set was an awesome reminder of how lucky I was to meet someone with such similar musical tastes... he played all these classic pop songs that are so awesome... those tunes that everybody knows but hardly anyone plays.
I'll post some photos form the music party eventually.
That night Vanessa and I stayed up all night just talking again. I love meeting someone I can talk to so easily, and how conversation just seems to flow, and how most of it is just random funny stuff we say that we don't even remember an hour later. Or... minutes later.
The next day we checked out of the Windmill, and we were walking around town delaying saying goodbye... or at least, that's how I remember it now, the decision may have come earlier... I don't know, it was a long, blurry while ago now... and I thought "This is bullshit!" But I SAID "How about I come to Mokpo tonight? I don't work until five anyways!"
So, awesome night, and we wound up hanging out almost all day together the next day, because she called in sick. w00t!
The next few weeks are honestly a blur, so I'll just give you the highlight reel:
Weekends in Gwangju (well, some in Mokpo), Night-trips to Mokpo after work (lots of related sleep-deprivation, arriving around eleven thirty most nights, just arriving in time to catch up on work/prep ahead for mom's visit), conversations continuing in an awesome manner...
The painting: After our first big lunch together, I knew that it was something really special. But I had no idea that a relationship would come out of it, I just thought it was an awesome lunch with this cute girl (with amazing hair). But I knew that I wanted to remember it... and I'm tactile, right, so I wanted something that I could see and touch. The first night that I had been at Vanessa's, I had received a warning... there was a painting of her in her apartment. It was a painting that she thought might make me blush, so she warned me, which was sweet... but what stuck in my mind was not the blush-inducing parts of it, but the decorations around her (although she looked good in it too). I thought that a painting would be a great way to remember the weekend, and even before things started developing after the music party, I was pretty confident that she would be willing to paint a picture for me. I asked her after the music party, and she said okay. Anyways, it turned out amazingly well, and it's hanging now in my living room. It's chock-full of our inside jokes and references to things that have happened to us (kiss time!) and it's just a perfect way to remember how things started for us.
What else did we do? We had a great little picnic in the park one day, with so much food... she's a great cook. Which is nice, it's been a long time since anyone cooked for me, on a one-on-one basis. And... it's GOOD!
We also tried to spend a night at my place once, I forget when... oh, the weekend of the Hampyeong Butterfly festival, I remember now... more on that later! Anyways, we thought it would be convenient, and much cheaper than her staying at the Windmill... but Vanessa is very allergic to cats, so that idea was out, when she lay down and proceeded to almost have an asthma attack. She was stubborn about it being okay, but I insisted, and it turned into another night at the Windmill. That damn place is inescapable!
In other Sam News, I will be looking for a new home for her. The last month has obviously been very busy with Vanessa (and later, with mom) but even before that I was having trouble with Sam. I bought her because I was very lonely and I wanted a pet in the apartment... and for a long time, it was wonderful, because I was spending a lot of time at home with her. But in the last few months, I have become very very involved in some other things, and I just feel like it is unfair to Sam. She's just a kitten, and she needs more playtime than I can offer right now. But I'm traveling a LOT now, visiting people, playing music, performing, starting to organize the music parties as a regular thing, and taking Korean lessons, and practicing... I'm a busy guy.
Oh, the Korean lessons, I can make a confession now, publicly. I was looking for something a little different... and I thought that maybe a Korean girl could be it... and I know this extremely cute Korean girl... but her English was not so good. Maybe you have talked to me, and you thought "Holy Crap, this guy really wants to learn Korean! What a trooper!" Well, yeah, I have a lot of reasons to want to learn Korean but chief among them for a long time was this girl... there was always good vibes from her, and lots of giggly smiles, so I thought "Hey, If I could talk to her, this could probably be fun", and since I'm not one of those guys who will date a girl they can't talk to because they want to touch a boob, I tried to learn. I really tried. Like, combined lesson/language exchange of up to 12 or 15 hours a week. Needless to say, it got a lot better real quickly. My speaking Korean, I mean. A few weeks in though, the vibe changed... I still liked her, but I started to think "Boyfriend?" Yes, that means I had dedicated that much time to learning for a girl I wasn't even sure was available. Boys, stop laughing, girls, stop saying "aww". Anyways, she did have a boyfriend. A fiancee, it turned out, but I was not crushed. Luckily, the vibe warned me, and I had started backing off a little... and good timing worked for me again, just as I was backing off, I met Vanessa.
But, timing is a two-faced bitch sometimes.
As good as it was, for both of us, really, timing-wise, it was also terrible, because Vanessa left Korea on May 23rd. So we had a couple of amazing weeks together to try to make up our minds about where this was going. We decided that it was worth waiting for a while, and it looked like we were going to get back together and see how things went when I got back to Canada. But then more time passed, and she decided that she would come back in August. So... wow. That's good, two months are a lot shorter than six. But two months... oog. I'm... like, four or five days in, and it already sucks. Luckily, mom has been here to distract me and keep me busy.
SO yeah... before I talk about mom's visit, I should talk about the Butterfly Festival and a few other things.
So, anyways, the butterfly festival. I was invited to play in the talent show for foreigners at the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival, which was pretty exciting. Vanessa and I panned the whole weekend around it, starting with a FRiday night in Gwangju, then the Festival on Saturday, then over to Mokpo for the rest of the weekend. Anyways, Friday was the night that we wound up going to my place after having some drinks with Mel in Gwangju, but then we wound up at the Windmill anyway, because of the cat's damned allergens. haha. We got up bright and early to catch the bus to Hampyeong leaving from the Gwangju International Center. We got there at nine, and there was no-one there! I started freaking out a little bit, but not too much, because great hair has an incredible calming effect on me.
Anyways, I called at around ten to find out what the heck was going on! I was very surprised to learn that the festival performances would actually be taking place the following day. Yeah. Shitty.
But it turned out alright, we were already packed, so we headed to the bus terminal and got on a bus for Mokpo and caught up on our sleep there (late night illness+early morning=tired). The next morning we caught a bus to Hampyeong, and got there just in time to grab some lunch and then perform. I played three songs, opening with "Such a Simple Way" (of course) then a Ryan Adams cover "The Hardest Part" and closing with a new song "Make you smile". It was well received. We were asked to wear "traditional costume", so I wore Columbia Hiking shorts, a gray T-shirt and some Birkenstocks. Basically, that's my uniform in Canada, so it seemed appropriate, especially since I have no Voyageur pants.
Ooh, I just had a random flashback to playing against the Valois team from Mattawa, with the guy who was playing house league after years of double and triple A who made me wet my pants (not really) every time he took a slapshot at me... yikes, still remember how bad he hurt my elbow through the shitty house-league monkey suit that the Powassan hockey league provided for me.
I won second place, which came with the awesome prize of 200 000 won in Farmer's Coop gift certificates! That's just over $200! So, I'll eat cheaply this month, that's for sure. The woman who won did a traditional dance from India, I believe, and it was quite good! The other highlight for me was two girls who did a very country-ified cover of "Last Night" by the strokes, with some great harmonies and tambourine/cowboy boot accompaniment!
After the performance we had some tent meat, which is always fabulous (seriously) and then we headed home (to Mokpo).
I forgot to mention that the other part of the prize was "Stamina Wine". hahaha, awesome. I love how every second thing here is lauded for providing increased stamina... especially alcohol. I think that general consensus is that alcohol has the opposite effect... and why the obsession here? There is a LOT of concern over stamina here. Do Canadians have so many stamina products, and I've just been ignorant of the market? Is there an pickled eel store somewhere that no-one ever told me about? If there is...
What else happened that was awesome? there was another thing I wanted to mention... before I turned it over to mom...
Oh, the Wando Beach party? Well, that was cancelled, which sucked. But, it led to a pretty awesome weekend with Vanessa anyways... we had a double-date with Kristin and Jeff, who are a LOT of fun, and we gifted out some stamina wine. Jeff drank it at dinner, which was highly amusing. Then we went out for some drinks... I had some over-priced/under-tasty sake... and terrible sausages. ugh.
I forgot to mention this party we went to at Jeff's uncle's house... it was really nice, we had some barbecued burgers and we drank wine coolers, and I wound up playing some guitar for a while, and meeting up with some new musicians, as well as some just general noobies... which was fun. I got to play the part of "Sage". haha. It was nice, but it rained later in the night, and kind of put a damper on things.
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