Day 16- NANTA and Nerves

So, after last night's festivities at the bar (pictured here), I learned a few things that may or may not have been state dependent. For one I enjoy dancing a great deal. I do not know if that was state dependant or not, but I had a great time. Secondly, I apparently know all of the words to Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" and can sing it as well. Lastly, I can speak German rather well while inebriated. The latter of the trio is probably the most intriguing (one of the Hanyang visiting professors is from Stutgard) but I doubt that putting that I am more than proficient in German only have having consumed alcohol on a resume would be a very good idea. However, it appears to be one of my talents I did not know existed.

So after staggering back to my dorm around midnight, not unlike the character Maurice in Beauty and the Beast, I fell into a deep sleep and when I awoke, I was suddenly aware of how much I had exactly consumed. This was a bit of an unpleasent revelation, gained mostly through feeling horrible and queasy.

However, after that unpleasent awakening, I fell back asleep and awoke in a better mental state of being in time for NANTA.

NANTA, for those unfamiliar (like me), is a combination of sketch comedy and music. It's performed mostly without dialogue, except for people speaking in gibberish (tone of voice is very universal as is body language). The basic plot is that there is a restaurant owner who has three chefs (Head chef, Woman chef and Comic chef) who basically have to not only have to prepare boat loads of food in a short period of time, but also have to take on restraunt owner's nephew in the meanwhile. The nephew is a bit of a cocky smuck and he and Comic go at it at the beginning, while Head tries to mediate. Later, Comic and Woman's feelings for each other are expressed as well as the race against the clock. There is a deal of slapstick comedy along with the music and it's played for laughs. In the interlude over the hour and a half of time, the three chefs and nephew interact with each other by playing various percussion pieces using various cooking implements (generally cutlery and the like). And it was quite a fun event. I wish I could've taken pictures, but those were banned, probably first for safety sake (throwing knives and boiling pots being hard enough as is without flashing lights). Sorry.

I'd equate it almost to STOMP with a few exceptions. First off, NANTA restricts itself to mostly cooking instruments where STOMP uses everything including the kitchen sink. Also, while STOMP was very much sketch comedy with brief episodes, the story of NANTA is continous over the hour and a half one watches it. Lastly, NANTA also utilized background music, usually rock styled, at a few points, while STOMP does not. Having seen a STOMP concert, I would have to say that I'd prefer STOMP over NANTA, but the latter was very much a fun time.

I saw the show with a few Aussie girls that I met in passing a few days ago, Sue-Ellen and Juanita. Both seem to be pretty nice people and as such, I abandoned my mostly indifferent group for these complete strangers. After NANTA, I hung out with them as we wandered around the plaza where NANTA took place and did some shopping, buying a few items (one of which will be a gift for someone when I get back and as such will not be disclosed at this point).

Also, worthy of note is that we grabbed dinner. Sue-Ellen and I grabbed some pizza at this local pizza place and bought a few slices. Here's a picture of the pizza. Now, tell me, what do you see on it? To the best of our knowledge, SE and I determined that the pizza had bacon, potato wedges, mushrooms, nacho chips, onions and corn. Also the crust had something interesting in it, resembling the consistancy and roughly the taste of sweet potatoes. Random, eh? It was suprisingly good though. No, seriously, it was.

So, then we wandered the streets shopping. There were a number of street venders selling say belts or knock off purses. It was interesting to wander around, but had it not been for the prescence of my Australian friends, I would've headed back to the dorm far earlier. But it's not every day that you get to hang out with people from other countries doing randome things, so I stuck around.

On a negative note (moreso the former than the latter) a few kind of eerie, almost frightening things happened. Some man was walking by with a pole strapped to his back and loudspeakers on the top of the poll. He was ranting about the gate to Hell being wide and the path to Hell is straight and narrow. In English. He also was wearing a sandwich board though I can't remember what it said. While I am a Christian, this frightened me dearly for some unknown reason. Also, while SE was inspecting a scarf, we noticed this little message on the tag. It was just...unnerving. I mean, I'm alright with the tag, but the street preacher was just freaky.

To be honest, crazed religous folk have always scared me to no end. The mother in "Carrie" (book and movie), Frollo in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (well, he wasn't religious, but the Hellfire sequence...) as well as Nathan Price from "The Poisonwood Bible" have haunted my dreams at one point or another. I'm hoping I'm going to sleep well tonight after that freaky guy. Tomorrow, I hope to go out around Seoul with SE and Juanita, provided I wake up in time.

-Reven (my card from the party, for those of you wondering)