Weekend 49 of 52.

Lotte World Talent Show with Foreign Friends

This pretty much concludes our first installment of weekends in Korea. The upcoming weekend we'll spend flying to America, defying gravity and time zones, and then we'll spend what would have been our final two weekends doing American weekend things (like eating BBQ made with pulled pork instead of grilled and hanging out with our parents). Luckily, we did something hilarious like entering ourselves into a talent contest... and winning!

It was probably the strangest thing we've experienced in Korea so far. We signed up to sing Kelly Clarkson's "Because of You" with Dan playing guitar. For some reason, the Korean host thought we wrote the song. I hope that's not why we won. We got to the park at 2. We were ushered into a picnicking section to the right of the main stage, where we sat practicing (we played Scrabble Slam) and primping (I brushed my hair) until 5:20 or so. Then we single-filed it to the backstage area and took our turns. There were 7 or 8 acts and 2 non-competing Russian dance performances. Only two of us sang songs. Everything else involved cultural dance. Not at all what we were expecting, but it was fun to watch, fun to hang out, and everyone was super, super nice.

We were sat next to the young group of kids who'll you'll see next to us in the photos. We took turns watching each other as Dan strummed his guitar and the girls and boys got various makeup applications, including glittery eyelashes. The boys, as is seemingly a common theme in Korean entertainment wore dresses and wigs. We tried to get their youngest sister to speak to us, using our limited Korean children's vocabulary. She preferred to keep staring, though she did eventually high-five us after we won. Victory in so many ways!



We don't have photos of the competition itself, but we do have footage, and Dan will compile it, and we will put it here. Our friends Heather and Jessica came to watch us and took some pictures of our conquest. The lady speaking with us is famous and French, and I think maybe she sings the song that plays during the closing fireworks show at Lotte World, which is one of my life goals. Photo by Heather Moore.


I am confused about how we got into this whole thing. Photo by Heather Moore.


A similar picture, but look how stoked Dan is. Note the cross-dressing boys on the left. Photo by Heather Moore.


Pictured with the other contestants. Photo by Heather Moore.


All participants were awarded with yearlong passes into the park. Excellent consolation prize. At first, they had printed Dan's face with my name, and it was very difficult to explain that it was incorrect, even though we know the Korean words for "my name". I think it's because Serenity is not a name to most Koreans, least of all one with gender specificity.


Unrelated, but sweet. Because I had already gone out earlier on the Saturday, Dan went and bought me dinner. I didn't know what I wanted, so I gave him no direction, and he came home with heart shaped falafel and a tub of hummus. He is the best.

-Serenity