Oh My God!

This past Friday (10/24) was epically outrageous to say the least.
It can officially be said that in hanging out with the local breakdancing Koreans from "Morning of Owl", we consistently have absolutely no idea what we are getting into.

On Friday evening, after yet another long day of attempting to break through to large sets of rambunctious 10 year-olds, both Carillo and I arrived over at Seoung Ju's house to see where the night was taking us. Our options were laid out for us on the table. Either head to Suwon Station, which is one the larger nightlife hubs in our area, or make the mission to Seoul where we could then meet up with the rest of the boys in the dance crew. Morning of Owl had a dance demo for a private high school event in Gangnam on both Friday and Saturday and thus were in Seoul for that reason. Considering the energy that follows each character in the crew and as a whole, our decision was easy....off to Seoul we were.

After a traffic-filled drive lasting nearly an hour and a half, we had arrived to meet with all the boys. This time, there were a few new faces. Two western b-boys were there to join us. "Blink" is a b-boy/piercing artist from Vancouver Canada who is a great guy and can definitely hang with Carillo in one of his signature non-stop conversations. Byron is another awesome dude from Seattle, who is a little more laid back and can speak Korean better than any foreigner I have met to date. The two fresh faces (to us) were another plus to the early night, as we all anxiously strode into a large restaurant for food and drink.

We then proceeded to indulge in some quality Korean food, beer, and a fair amount of the infamous Soju. After a few hours of good/broken English conversation and a lot of laughs, we lost one of our members to the hours of the night. It was 12:00am and our good compadre had become too tired to hang. We all refrained from giving Pocket any guff for it considering he is just 12 years old. And don't worry, he wasn't drinking anything but a whole lot of soda and juice.
We later moved on to speaking with some astranged Korean girls for the first time. It turns out that the communication barrier plays a larger role when speaking with Korean women rather than men. FYI

After a few more hours, it was then time to leave the restaurant or so Nick and I were told by everyone else that knows what is going on. At this point a large group of the guys had already left and we were now following "B-boy Q" to meet up with them. I assumed that it would be at another bar if not a hotel but I would soon come to realize that I was way off. The next thing I know we are standing in a lobby and I hear Seoung Ju yell...."it's on me!" I am next handed a key attached to a bracelet with a number on it. Turns out that that number corresponds to a locker where I would be hanging up my clothing for the evening. Once arriving to the locker room I soon came to realize that we were in a very large Korean bath house/sauna, aka Jin Jil Pang. I was next handed a set of matching shorts and shirt that apparently no one else was wearing. Everyone was just completely naked and screaming sauna and pool but in Korean. It was awesome. This place had showers, saunas, ice rooms, pools, jaccuzzis, food, TV's.... you name it. It must be said that the whole naked dude thing was a little offsetting at first but apparently no one in Korea cares at all. I got over the nudity pretty fast but I can't say that Carillo and I wouldn't pull off to the side every once in a while and break into non-stop laughter at the situation that we were now in. After experiencing all the facets that the suana had to offer, we then moved into a large perfectly temperatured and tiled room. There were large TVs and people strewn accross the floor. We were then handed a strange leather pillow and soon fell asleep to the sounds of a Korean soap opera and old guys snoring.

This story may or may not sound so odd as you are reading it, however it still remains one of the most noteworthy occasions for both Carillo and I, simply because we had not the faintest idea that we would end up where we did that night.

Basically from now on, Nick and I go out with the Korean crew just hoping that we end up at a Jin Jil Pang when the night closes.