What a Nightmare!

Ughhhh, so, having disregarded this week's quickly approaching holiday, I have spent the past two days scrambling to put together a Halloween costume that is acceptable. . .as deemed by none other than myself. Unfortunately, the deadline is fast approaching and no verdict is in sight!

After returning from soccer Sunday evening, Nate informed me that he spent the better part of the day wandering the city in search of a costume. On his way out to explore the city, Nate ran into DYB elementary teacher Bryne who was simultaneously headed out with some others to find costumes. . . in turn, Nate tagged along.

Apparently they spent a pretty good amount of time wandering the Dongdaemun Market during which Nate was only able to amass two small articles of disguise that he has yet to make a decision about adorning himself with this weekend. . .of course we will let you know once final costumes are decided upon. Finally breaking from what sounded like a rather dreary crowd, Nate made it out to a Halloween store, appropriately named Halloween, that Dave's ESL members had enthusiastically recommended. Unfortunately for Nate, the almost hour subway ride to Sadang left him empty handed as Halloween apparently closed up shop early on Sunday afternoon! Even sadder is the fact that Nate learned the elementary school will be having Halloween parties Thursday and Friday while we are expected to conduct class as normal. . . .boo! Oh wait, I meant, boo hoo. . . too bad for us!

Come Monday neither of us put any effort into costume hunting as I imagined Nate was a bit dejected from his somewhat futile expedition the previous day and I myself use Monday mornings to let my aching body rest from the beating it inevitably takes Sunday afternoons on the pitch! After talking with some coworkers Monday we decided that a return trip to Halloween was in store for Tuesday morning. By coworkers I mean Cleo and by decided I mean she told us we should have costumes because we are apparently supposed to be attending "club night" in Hongdae this Friday which of course will have a ghoulish theme.

So. . .Tuesday morning Nate and I both managed to drag ourselves out of bed and downstairs by 10:30! Pretty impressive if I do say so myself. . .especially considering that I have yet to get to sleep at any sort of reasonable hour on any Monday night following my Sunday angelic like rest! By this point in our 'adventure' (in Korea, not costume shopping) we have figured out that the bus outside our apartment runs directly to the closest subway station (which is not the original one that we have been using) and the fare is forgiven if you get on the subway within an hour of boarding the bus. . .woo, yippie, hoo.

One hour and a Time magazine later (thanks Dad, I'll keep 'em for you to pick up next time you come out) we hopped off Line 4 at Sadang station. Another couple hundred meters later we climbed down the flight of stairs to Halloween, situated in the basement of a rather obscure building in the middle of nowhere. . .well, next to hospital but, come on, is that really any place for a costume shop?

We browsed through the small shop for a good hour before deciding that there really was little of interest. The back row of the small (meaning no larger than 40 ft x 40 ft) shop contained shelves of bagged costumes without pictures that were labeled in Korean. This clearly is of no help despite being the primary means by which people in Korea dress up. Huh?

What I mean is that the most common form of costume in Korea is that which is most common for elementary students in America. Ya know, the fresh off the shelf and right out of the bag, half styrofoam and half spandex brightly colored copyrighted character? Yeah, that one. Well, apparently not only do Koreans (and foreigners in Korea) dig this type of costume, but they actually pay to rent rent them! I'm not sure how this system works as I've been a firm believer in costume creation ever since my early days of Surfer Dude, Hobo, Barbie leading right up to Natalie Halloway and Kim Jong Ill. . .my most recent, and perhaps politically insensitive, of disguises.

Anyways, we tried to concoct ideas using the various accessories that were littered throughout the store, but continued to fall short of any brilliant revelations. While our late start might have in part contributed to this, I blame it primarily on the fact that if you think of something you want to be, you can't simply go out and buy the pieces because you just have no blubbing clue where to even begin looking for a pair of bellbottom jeans or a denim jacket that says "Disco Stu" on the back in rhinestones. . .not to give away my current project or anything. . .so far I'm missing everything but the. . . .well, I've got the idea at least!

We made it out of Halloween a little over an hour after we left with no more than a handful of accessories to show for it. While Nate might be able to put together a decent costume with his small haul, I have left myself with a lot of room for creativity; otherwise known as high and dry.

Without a perfect idea of what either of us will be, we decided to continue our costume hunting Wednesday morning, both in hopes of putting somethign together and as a great excuse to bail on our Konglish lessons with Cleo and the Gang! Consequently, we ended back up at Dongdaemun Market where Nate had spent a good part of this past weekend.

Dongdaemun is absurd. I do not know how to accurately describe it in words. It is an enormous market but not like any I have ever been to. It is mostly enclosed, not like the open air markets of Africa, and spans literally miles of city blocks. There are buildings that run at least a half a mile or so and are a couple hundred yards wide with small stalls lining the streets. Only after talking briefly to a curious student (who noted that we looked more like gangsters than English teachers. . .yeah, we'll take that as a compliment) did we realize that the six story buildings we were looking at housed vendors all the way up their interiors! It is entirely possible that there are tens of thousands of individual vendors in this 'market' which is really just a sprawling commercial area that deals in everything from home appliances to toys with a heavy, heavy, heavy focus on clothes. Plain and simple, I've spent a good amount of time around a number of young beautiful Tulanian woman, and I have never, never, seen so many clothes in one place in all my life!

With so many clothes and Koreans' absurdly disorienting fashion sense, one would think that you could find anything you would ever want at Dongdaemun. . .not so! First of all, if your looking for women's clothes, you're in luck! That's essentially all they sell! If you're a six foot plus male, you're unfortunately out of luck as this body type simply does not exist on this side of the world. Now if you're a male looking for an interesting pair of pants, all you need to do is go down into the subway and look about you. However, if you're looking to purchase some, you're plum outta luck! I spent over two hours wandering the largest clothing market this side of Mercury and could not land myself one pair of relatively loud pants that would hint at anything out of the ordinary. In fact, I only found a dozen or so stalls that sold men's pants at all and most of them were either jet black or of the 'just another pair of blue jeans' variety! I briefly considered buying a cheap pair of blue jeans, some fabric, and talking matters into my own hands. . . and then decided against doing so, primarily for the sake of my emotional stability!

So, three hours later Nate and I found ourselves sitting dejected in a Lotteria (a fast food chain run by the largest department store/supermart/amusement park/production company in the country, Lotte). We eventually treaded back towards Junggye after stopping at another, depressingly empty, "Halloween" store on the market's outskirts.

Well, I guess there's always tomorrow. . .after that, I'm not quite sure what I'll do! I picked up a (relatively) interesting t-shirt today (don't worry, I'll show you later) that will most likely end up being my costume if my continued hunt for something costume worthy fails me again tomorrow as I plan to make my way towards Itaewon early in the morning. In part I plan this to buy a ridiculous shirt but more so I'm just excited to treat myself to a pad thai lunch special for the first time!

Hope your Halloween's shaping up better than mine!