Welcome 2009!

I hope everybody had a nice New Years Eve! Lets get ready for a year that is destined to be significantly better than the last!
I went to a college neighborhood called Hongdae with the only 3 teachers left in Seoul, as well as the 2 brothers who came to visit their sister over the Holidays. Considering I spent last year on a delayed airplane at John Wayne Airport, I would say this year started off significantly better.
Three of us (Maranda, Chris, and I...I figured I'll start using then ames of people I hang out with frequently) took the hour train ride together. Maranda and I had had a late night the night before, staying at a local bar until 6:30 in the morning attempting to speak Korean with Koreans who were in turn using us to improve their English. So I was expecting New Years Eve to be an early night when we got together. The three of us met up with Michele (whom I'll be traveling to Beijing with in 20 days!!!) and her two brothers at a Soju tent- a giant tarp where food and liquor are served. Soju is the national liquor of Korea, if you will. It is to Koreans what Vodka is to Russians or Sake is to Japanese.
And it's, literally, cheaper than water.
There was no count down, so we used Chris' watch to instigate our own, but we decided that taking a shot of Soju would be a good way to welcome in the New Year, so we delayed the countdown for a few seconds while we got the shots ready, and then started again. As soon as we cheered our glasses and shouted Happy New Years, the Koreans in the tent all had their own 10 second count down and everybody was cheering eachother.
After the Soju Tent we went to a predictably crowded and predictably western bar where we got to see two live bands. One was awful. One was a fantastically cheesy cover band. After getting mocked for not recognizing a famous Led Zeppeling tune Maranda, Michele, her brothers, and I danced for the next couple hours. It was really, really fun. At around 4 in the morning we crowded five people in a taxi and headed to a norebang.
Have I told you about Noribangs?
It's hard to describe them,but they are a quintissential Korean experience. Basically you pay around $15 for a private room and you and your friends (or coworkers as I have gone to it as a school function) sing Karaoke and get rated by the computer. There are tambourines for the other people to play, as well as a catalog of music that has thousands and thousands of songs.
It's your own private Karoake bar and it is ridiculously fun. We were there until about 6:00 in the morning until Michele's younger brother, who had fallen into a heavy coma, woke up and decided he was hungry at which point we headed to a Korean restaurant for Ramen and fried pork. It was very wierd to eat with people who were waking up, eating their breakfast while we had not yet gone to sleep.
Here are some pictures that were taken, I hope everybody else had a great New Years. It's going to be a good year!