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| A photo I took on my day off to visit Namsan Tower |
I fell so hard for that place. Seriously, within a few hours I knew I wanted to live there. I am 100% not exaggerating. I met up for my first interview after being in the country for like three hours and just walking around made me love it. Hongdae is the place to be. I was right in thinking it's a cross between Melbourne and Hong Kong. I think I would fit in well because it reminds me just enough of home with an Asian twist.
What I loved most were the people. Korean people, and even foreigners that have lived there for a while are just so lovely and that was just from every day experience. And in terms of people that I actually hung out with... I met some of the most amazing people and had some of the best conversations of my life. And it was so great to be surrounded by people who love music as much as I do. Yeah, that was one of my other favourite things. It's the kind of environment that I want to be surrounded by.
I also I really learnt a lot about myself on this trip, but I think the most important is that this music journalism thing is what I want to do, and I really think Seoul is where I want it happen.
I had such an interesting experience too because I was doing things I normally do like going to gigs, doing interviews, shopping, catching public transport and hanging out with homies. So I didn't feel like I was in another country at all.
Also I feel like people didn't treat me as a tourist, which is 100% what I wanted. I don't know if it was the vibe I gave off, the clothes, my ability to scrape by with the language or having a bit of an understanding of Korean customs. Most likely a mixture of all those elements. #assimilationcomplete
Though I must say, and I talked about it in my diary (yeah I'm kinda betraying you and going old fashioned with a physical diary) but I'm not 100% sure if it was the experience that made me happy, and it just happened to be in Seoul, or it was Seoul itself. It's probably a bit of both to be honest.
I'm not going to mention much about my hip hop observations because I want to keep it for my article that I'm writing along side my article. So stay tuned for that bad boy to hear about that.
But I will mention that Hongdae is lit, I saw Simon D out while seeing Illa J, went to the Illionaire concert in which Zino looked at me and I got to sing "fuck these broke ass motherfuckers, peace out" at the top of my lungs with 4K other people and one of Korea's top hip hop music critics called me a real Korean hip hop fan.
But yeah, I loved it so much that I'm going back for 10 days this time. This time though it's more of a holiday. It's basically a completely selfish trip to make me happy. And you know what, I think I deserve it. I don't really do that many big things for myself, so I was just like fuck it, I'm going. Also it's going to be the only real break I get till the 21st of October which is when I submit my thesis. So I probably really need it too.
What will I do there? Well I plan on doing what I do best (and love most) which is go to gigs, and I'm really gonna try a go to a different one every night. I don't know how I'm going to go, and how much it'll cost, but I'm just going to wing it. Winging it and going with the flow was the key to success for my last trip, so I'm going to try and do the same this time round. It's also going to be summer so I am so going to be in my element. I'm already getting excited just imagining the sun blazing down on me. It's going to be great.
Alright, I better get back to studying now; I've got a conference tomorrow where I'm presenting my essay on Kendrick Lamar and the messages in hip hop. I'm actually quite excited because it's something that I genuinely enjoy talking about.
Catch ya.
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