I'm not dead, yet

Since the pub crawl last Saturday, it's basically been a downhill spiral of me quickly losing my morning hours in exchange for more evening hours. 2, to 3, to 5am finishes have often left me without any motivation to do too much during the afternoon, but I have actually accomplished a few things.

I've visited the rose garden festival out in Jungnang, with its hundreds of varieties of roses lining trellis tunnels between the main gardens.

I've hung out in the basking area of Hongdae, with particularly good performances from the dance groups. One guitarist however was an absolute showman, walking down from his podium and getting right up close to anyone with their camera out for a better shot.

I've partied with the guesthouse regulars many times, and often hatched terrible plans to go out drinking only once 2-3am has rolled around.

One of the workers here will be studying at Seoul National University, so I joined them to find and explore the campus. On yet another bloody mountain (as many campuses seem to be), the campus was a gorgeous place with an already vibrant evening well on the cards, as evident by the groups of students congregating with their chicken and beer.

That evening a half dozen of us went to the local international bar Thursday Party for some beer pong. I won my game, but the other kiwi here (and also from Chtistchurch) didn't fair so well.

Throw in the odd day of rest and finally catching us up to yesterday. I went out to Seoul City Hall for the Seoul Drum Festival in the early afternoon. It didn't start until 8pm, and I spent the afternoon lounging on the Lawns in front of the stage/city hall as the groups did rehearsals and sound checks. I took the time to finish off my book in the lovely weather as I did so. Particularly good performances had the drum groups playing along to rock and dubstep tracks, which I thought was awesome.

As the evening rolled on, I caught up with an old friend for dinner, and we partied into the whee hours back in Hongdae Playground, making and forgetting new friends in the haze of convenience store alcohol.

Today I will be going back to the drum festival for more sweet music as my anticipation for Ultra Korea grows. There's some other music performances happening in Itaewon afterwards which I'll check out as well. Hopefully I'm still alive tomorrow!