I bought a flight two days before my October 21st departure, and really ran Seoul hard in order to catch up with all my friends and past encounters that I could possibly squeeze in (as well as a hang with a random couch surfer who turned out to be flipping awesome!), and what do you know, I ended up missing my flight and unintentionally bought myself one more night in my beloved city of light and sound. I visited an old district of town I hadn't been to since my first trip to Korea; nearly two years ago, and went to the old hang out, where after a split second of being looked at like a lost tourist, I was recognised.
So awesome.
The owner even left me there for about 10mins as she ran home to get a country rice desert to share with me, introduced me to her boyfriend and his colleague, and caught up as much as we could in our broken versions of each others native tongues. Turns out however, that her boyfriend counts English among his list of 5 languages that he speaks, and ended up liking me so much that he even decided to 'adopt' me as a child of him and his girlfriends. This to the point that upon hearing I was headed to Hong Kong the following day, handed me a business card and told me to 'call Daddy' should I need any help or get injured at all. I had a great time, but his non-polyglot friend wasn't of a similar mind an ended up feeling left out of the conversation (which I empathize with, since the remainder of the time was spent in fast-paced, slightly slurred Korean), and ended up standing up to announce that he was bored, ad stormed out in an effort to attract some attention. This is of course, a culture based on honor and respect though, and since he was dining with a superior, it really ended up in him being more ignored and him lurking back in 10mins later with a gift bag peace offering in hand. Whoops!
I decided to take my cue and make an exit to 'meet a friend', and headed over to Hongdae, the pumping arts district next to the university my friend is currently a 4th year student at. I had a few hours until she was done (she's hand weaving a rug of ... Newton(??) with a rice cooker), so I heading into the streets with a self-imposed mission to take photos. This was dashed from my head quickly as the first booth I slowed to peruse had a nice man with a guitar. BAM! we started playing and next thing you know it's attracting customers who are buying things and attributing it to my presence and music, so my new friend gifts me one of his wares (a plastic phone charm back-scratching animal claw) and decided I was his new guitar teacher.
Have I mentioned I'm quite decidedly mediocre at guitar?
...It's just not nearly as common to play here as something like violin or piano.
