Summary of Liz & Kirsti's visit and our last day~

Alternative title; Stuff I Ran Out Of Space For Or Forgot To Mention In The Last Post.

I'd only found out on Thursday that I actually had this Monday off school for the school's anniversary. It was perfect timing, as it meant I could spend extra time with Liz and Kirsti for their last full day here.

We started off by making our way to Hapjeong, to the YG Entertainment building. We didn't spend all that much time there, though we saw some trainees or staff every so often and TOP's manager go in (later he was smoking on the balcony and watching us - apparently a common occurrence).

As it was April Fools and friends knew we were at YG; the opportunity was too good to pass up. Between us, we tweeted we'd seen Seungri and that he'd gone blonde. Cue lots of uncontrollable cackling over our phones, watching our Twitter mentions explode. Liz even used my phone to take a blurred picture of the back of one of their vans parked in the car park and we pretended we missed taking an actual photo...

It was even more hilarious that a couple of other fans who were there had no idea what was going (although we did explain to them later about it) and TOP's manager was with another YG staff member, who were smoking and watching us. One of the other fans kindly took a photo of us all together - again, we had our UK Big Bang banners!

After this, we went back to Hongdae (as it's only one station away on line 2) and did a little bit more shopping. We ended up in Artbox, where Liz and I both bought small wheeled suitcases. Liz needed hers to get back home and... after all the stuff I'd somehow acquired over the weekend, I needed one too... But it'll also be really useful for short trips!

G-Dragon solo concerts with Liz & Kirsti [30th/31st Mar]

"Not another concert!!" I hear you cry! Well, yes.. but let's just get on with it, as then I can go back over more things since January that I still didn't get around to writing about yet. Something is better than nothing, right?!

Liz, me and Kirsti~

TLDR (Too Long, Didn't Read); it was an awesome show and I had a heck of a good long weekend with Liz and Kirsti.

Kirsti rocking GD fan-Mickey Mouse ears.

For starters, Liz and Kirsti flew in on Wednesday and spent the day in Hongdae before coming out to Gwangju on the bus. I still had work of course, but we went for kimbap and deokkbokki that night, which was yummy. They went to the COEX shopping centre on Thursday and we all went for samgyeopsal (also with Hanneke, the new teacher at my school who replaced Steph) in the evening. On Friday, again they went off into Seoul with all their stuff to the pimp suite in Gangnam, and I joined them for dinner in Edae with other international VIP's who were in town for the concerts too. We all also went to Teddy's Twosome cafe in Hongdae afterwards and met up with even more people before eventually making our way back to Gangnam.

UKBB represent!

Saturday was the first concert day~ I still went to Korean class (as for a change, it was only 10/15 minutes away instead of 90 or so) and went to Olympic Park to meet up with them afterwards. We queued for some fansite goods, met up with lots of people for tickets and things, and generally soaked up the atmosphere. We chilled out in the Tous les Jours there and kept running into the same people throughout the afternoon! We didn't bother with the merchandise queues, but instead chilled out in front of the big Gmarket-sponsored screen, singing and dancing along to the music videos. I have video evidence that Liz knows all the words to the Gmarket song that GD did a few years ago - useful for future bribery, ahaha! Hanneke also joined us later on and eventually we all went in as we had seats and didn't have to queue for standing.

Me & Hanneke~

2nd floor view on Saturday.

Me and Kirsti were very close to each other on the 2nd floor on stage right, only two rows apart. She was able to swap seats with the girl in front of me so that we could be right next to each other. Liz was clear across the other side of the arena from us, also on the 2nd floor and Hanneke was up on the 3rd floor but at least in the centre. I was also sat next to three lovely girls from Hong Kong.

My super-quick visit to Kobe for Daesung's concert [23rd/24th Mar]

Why was I in Kobe for a weekend you might ask? All because of this guy;

Daesung~ (credit; High Lite, one of his fansites whose photo's I just adore).

In case you've not heard, I'm a big fan of Big Bang (vast majority of people reading this are well aware of that, but you never know). Daesung is my favouite member of the group and he recently released a solo album in Japan under his stage name there of D-Lite. He covered Japanese songs and they included Japanese versions of the songs he had on previous Big Bang albums in Korean; here's the trailer!

The concert hall and view from the lift at Portopia Hotel.

I know I'm so lucky really, to be able to fly to Japan and back in a weekend but I wish I'd had more time to actually even see Kobe because I essentially spent most of my time travelling. I flew into Osaka Kansai, then took the high-speed ferry to Kobe. My hotel and the concert venue were less than 5 minutes away from each other on Port Island, which was really handy.

Fans outside the venue in awesome custom-made overalls.

Backtrack to: St Patrick's Day [16th Mar]

Considering that I've never celebrated St Patrick's Day at home, it was awesome to do something different for this year. Usually, I just about to remember to wear green and that's about it because I'm not one for going out and getting trashed.

I'd started the morning nice and early, as usual at my Korean class in Gangnam. This is only significant for the fact I'd had hardly any sleep the night before (yay, meeting new people in Gwangju at WA Bar!) which meant the rest of the day was far far too long.

When we arrived at lunchtime

We met up at Sindorim where the Irish celebrations were starting. It was amazing how many people turned up over the course of the afternoon, and I'd never seen so many foreigners in Korea so far, even in Itaewon.

Later on in the afternoon!

We watched the girls doing Irish dances before joining in when the next band came up and they invited people to dance in groups. I'd dragged Samantha along from class (only met her that morning) and Boram joined us too and we spent as much time dancing as we could all afternoon. I think there's video somewhere. I had a great time and I've only really danced a ceilidh before at Chrissie's wedding so it was awesome to do it again.

We grabbed dinner in the HomePlus food court, then made our way to Itaewon to an Irish pub called Wolfhound to carry on and meet up with other people.

Some of us decided to leave eventually, and on our way up to Rocky Mountain (funnily enough, a Canadian bar), I suggested checking out Woodstock in case there was a decent band on instead. Which is how we ended up watching a metal band who were really good and our head banging/dancing motivating an otherwise fairly boring crowd... errr... and now I've completely forgotten their name, although we did ask them afterwards. They loved that we were there (we'd been the only foreigners when we walked in) and Eric had bought them all a drink.

Band playing at Woodstock, Itaewon

All in all, by the end of the night, we ended up at Burger King quickly for food before taking a cab back to Gwangju, squishing four of us in the back because Eric is awesome and can talk cab drivers into doing that kind of thing (even whilst pretty drunk). I think I got home around 4 am to realise that in 24 hours, I'd only had 4 hours sleep and then been on the go for 20-odd hours... and that was why I was pretty knackered by that point.

All in all, I had an awesome day! The weather was also warmer for the first time so that made me happy too - goodbye winter!!