Anne in Korea: Hallyu Dream Festival

This weekend I attended the Hallyu Dream Festival - a festival that aims to spread Korean culture to foreigners but also is just a lot of fun.

Saturday night we went to the KPOP dance competition. This involved various teams from all over the world competing at dancing to KPOP songs. I hadn't realized that all the teams (except for the weird american couple) were teenagers, so they were all adorable and passionate. The winners were from Thailand, Japan and Nigeria. We were all a little sad though that the extremely intense Filipino group didn't win.

Tonight, Sunday, was the actual Hallyu Dream Concert. I got to see pretty much every current KPOP band perform, which was awesome. It was freezing and I didn't have the greatest angled seats, but it was FREE and hilarious. The men are androgyny defined, and the woman didn't wear pants. All groups lip sync, some rather poorly haha. However, they were awesome and so so so beautiful. There were screaming girls everywhere.

I also saw a few students! First I saw some girls who waved, later I saw some other girls who bowed (makes me feel so special) and walking home afterwards I heard "Teacher! teacher!" and when I turned some of my boys were smiling and waving. Our conversation went something like this: "Did you go to Korean Concert?" "Yes! It was great!" "GOOD GOOD!! Who do you love? BEAST??" "Yeah they were great!" "GOOD!!!" haha they were so happy that I had gone. They made the fact that tomorrow is Monday so much more bearable. I do feel pretty bad that I don't know their names, or even their grades, because I just have so many kids. Hopefully they'll be the ones to bring it up this week and I can be like YA it was great to see you!

UPDATE: I totally forgot to mention this part of my weekend which was totally funny and should be mentioned. At the Dance Competition there were many cameras filming and photographing the contestants and the audience. The house lights were never dimmed so they could easily see us. As my group of friends and I were given the absolute best seat (center halfway up, perfect view) we were right behind all the cameras. They apparently wanted shots of foreigners because we were filmed SO MUCH. It was hilarious and we felt so awkward. If we reacted strongly to something, the filmer would tell the photographers and they would all turn and shoot us. So apparently I will be on Korean TV or something. Pretty famous.

Anyways here are some piccies. Not very good ones of the concert, sorry.