Day 66: Moving Day

I moved to my last place today *cue tears*. I realized I could save a lot of money if I booked one place for a longer period of time so I found another goshiwon nearby and I'm going to stay there for my entire last month in Korea. I am so excited to not have to move around anymore, plus I can finally set everything up in my room and make it feel comfortable!

Getting there was painful though. It was only a 10 minute walk from my current place, but I had two huge suitcase packed full and I had to walk uphill over a super bumpy road so it took me way longer. I am not looking forward to having to take these all the way to the airport yikes... I received an email with the code for the door and my room number so I didn't need to check in with anyone, which was lovely.

When I finally figured out where my room was, I walked in and almost coughed because of how moldy the room smelled. It was also super tiny. There was absolutely no shelving and I could barely fit my suitcases in the room! I know goshiwons are tiny, but this was next level. I tried to unpack as much as I could but my dreams of setting up a shelf with all my K-pop merch were crushed. I had to leave a lot of my stuff in my suitcase even after using the top of both suitcases as a shelf. Definitely the worst place I have stayed so far and it was just my luck that I had booked it for the longest time. Oh well.

After unpacking I messaged Ella to see if she wanted to go to a cafe and she did! The cafe is called &gather and I have been there before because it was a place where BTS filmed an episode of their show Run! BTS. However, one of my friends had posted on her story that they were doing a special event for Jin's birthday. This is how I discovered idol birthday events.

I went on Twitter after seeing this and found out that so many fan accounts or fan sites set up special events for their idol's birthday at cafes. The fan accounts design and order cup sleeves and then they meet with a specific cafe to see if they can decorate it and hold the event there. The length of events that I found for Jin's birthday ranged from a couple days to over a week, depending on cup sleeve supply. The fan account is in charge of decorating the cafe (if the cafe is ok with it) so that the people who work at the cafe only have to hand out the cup sleeve when someone orders and asks for it.

A lot of the fan accounts also provided a limited number of other fun goodies like photo cards or stickers! Information about the event was available on the fan accounts Twitter, including what the cup sleeve looked like, the location of the event, the dates it was running for, and the quantity available. Most fan sites provided the cafe with 1000 cup sleeves! Someone was even awesome enough to compile a list of all the cafe events in Seoul and make a map. There were also events held in Daegu and Busan, but that's way too long of a trip for a cafe.

So today Ella and I went to our first ever BTS birthday cafe event and it was awesome! We got so excited about the stickers and cup sleeves and thus began our addiction to birthday events.

We also took some pictures like the ones that V (Taehyung) took when they filmed their Run episode.

The cafe had a few cute decorations including a collection of wire art designs of the members.

We met at the cafe around 3:30 and we were there for over an hour. We eventually had to leave because I needed to go meet Alysha for dinner. I took the subway to where Alysha works and I got to meet her Monday, Wednesday, Friday class!

She works at an English academy that is about an hour away from where I am staying. The students in her class were super cute and shy, but really nice. They even helped me create my Korean name. One of the boys in the class came up with 미래 (Milae, kind of like Emily without the E). It sounds a little like my name and it means future so it seemed like am interesting name to take. I was able to chat with her class for about 15 minutes before they had to catch a bus home. They all go to school during the day and then they come to the English academy three times a week in the evening to learn English. So much school for kids that are only 11 years old!

Alysha and I drove to a BBQ place after we met her class and ordered a ton of samgyeopsal (three layered pork).

Then we went to karaoke (noraebang / 노래방, which literally meaning song room) for a little bit and sang some more BTS songs. I am getting much better at BTS's "Spring Day". It's slow enough that I can kind of read the lyrics and it's a song that I really love so I have listened to it a bajillion times.

Watch the music video or listen to the song, it's so beautiful. "Spring Day" is also the longest charting song on Melon by an idol. It has been charting for over 100 weeks! Melon is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) streaming sites in Korea so this is a huge accomplishment. Several of the members participated in the production of the song and the leader of BTS (Namjoon/RM) wrote the lyrics for it. The song is about desperately missing someone and trying to do anything to reach them.

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(November 30, 2018)