140831 Lotte Family Concert

as usual, this is a personal travel account, not an ordinary whatever that means fanaccount, so if you just wanna read about the concert, there's gonna be irrelevant stuff.

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due to the Sewol tragedy, the 18th Lotte Duty-Free Family Concert had been postponed from..April, I think, until now, and since Bangtan was performing (maybe as replacement for GOT7? who were originally on the schedule, but didn't perform) I was d e s p e r a t e to attend.

140823 나눔 Sharing Concert in Seoul

as usual, this is a personal travel account, not an ordinary whatever that means fanaccount, so if you just wanna read about the concert, there's gonna be irrelevant stuff.

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a couple of days earlier, when I was checking Bangtan's schedule for fansigns, I did notice that they suddenly had this performance on the program even though I had heard no one talk about it.
but since it was just two days away, and I am completely clueless about how to go about things here in Korea, I just shrugged it off.

but then the next night a sweet new aquaintance, who's also in Korea at the moment, asked if we were going to the concert, and I was like, no cos no tickets and blah blah blah.
then she said to try and search on twitter, cos she had just bought one for 35000 Won. I was completely mind-blown cos 35k?!!? what the hell, why so cheap?!?

she told me to search in Korean, and I told her I don't understand Korean at that level, but in the end I still gave it a shot cos what the hell, it couldn't hurt, right?

140821 Taemin at MCountdown Begins Open Studio

as usual, this is a personal travel account, not an ordinary whatever that means fanaccount, so if you just wanna read about the open studio, there's gonna be irrelevant stuff.

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so this whole thing came about as sort of a chance thing.
I saw an acquaintance, who's also currently in Korea and doing the whole kpop thing full on, make a questioning tweet about Bangtan maybe doing Open Studio today since this was their comeback day for Dark & Wild.

she wasn't sure so I asked my K friend, Chris, cos since Taemin's currently promoting (I wrote this on the actual day, but I didn't finish it until now. he's not promoting anymore), she's totally on top of music show schedules.
of course she knew and she told me it wasn't Bangtan this week cos it was Taemin. she asked if we were gonna come watch cos she was going there right now. Taemin was having radio schedule in the afternoon so almost all the noonas had gone to watch that, so she figured there wouldn't be that many lining up at the moment.

it's finally here

FINALLY. August 2014.

Korea.

I've been trying to remember back to the other times, how I felt in the weeks before we left cos I don't think I've ever felt like this before.

it's probably because we've done things so differently this year.
nothing is organized and everything is Bangtan and it's had me wondering. am I this excited cos of kpop or Korea? cos everyone I talk to about going to Korea only has a kpop angle and I could feel myself getting caught up in the excitement of the possibilities of being over there in person.

but at the same time there's no doubt in my mind that I would never prioritize my precious scarce time in Korea chasing idols or waiting in airports or queues for hours on end.

I wanna go to concerts if possible, and now that Taemin's having his solo debut and Bangtan's coming back while we're over there we'll definitely see if they'll be having fansigns in places we'd go to anyway, but I won't be in line for music shows and I won't be camping out at Bighit.

so this is definitely Korea feels, but in a way, cos we're not really in Korea-mode at all, it feels so surreal that August is finally here. I'm not ready??

and at the same time I couldn't be more ready. I crave that place. I dream about it at night. my impatience and feels bubbles over in seconds if I start to think about it.

I already know it's gonna be too hot and too perfect and over way too fast ㅠㅠ

can it never be August 9th already???

I do

I just read an article in the NY Times about a 41 year old woman, an adoptee, who went back to Korea in 2004, and who, apparently, has been a leading part of the campaign that eventually lead the country to change its laws, so for the first time ever it's actually stipulated, that the country should reduce international adoptions of Korean children.

The government provides stipends for domestic adoptive parents and single mothers who wants to keep their children, and there has to be a period of at least 6 months wherein a child is sought to receive domestic adoptive parents before it is made available for international adoption. 

New mothers also have to spend the first week after giving birth with their child, while receiving counselling about the possibilities of keeping the baby before she can relinquish custody.

멀리서 바라만 볼 수만 있는 곳이라도 여전히 사랑해...

Whenever I come across videos like the one below my heart always breaks a little ;~; 
The ache is physical and I feel like curling up in a ball under my covers and not come out until it's time to jump on that plane and fly over there. I don't wanna be here, I wanna be there. Now.

Heartache...

I want to go back.....