My Life in the Land of the Morning Calm: Cirque du Soleil and Seoul

This past Saturday I went to Seoul to see Cirque du Soleil! The performance I saw was called Varekai, and it was mind-blowing. My friend Chris found out that Le Cirque was coming to Seoul, and he was interested in going, and I've always wanted to see a Cirque performance, so it was decided. I kept trying to explain to my coteachers and vice principal what I was going to see, but the fact that "Cirque du Soleil" is in French was throwing them for a bit of a loop, and saying I was going to see the circus didn't quite convey the message I was trying to send. I finally just youtubed some performances to illustrate my point. I attached a Youtube link of the Icarian games part of Varekai if you're interested in watching. Something I found very interesting and different from what I expected was that the performers actually messed up multiple times. At first I couldn't believe it, but then I thought about it and realized how ridiculous it would be if they landed every impossible trick every time. I thought about how Olympic gymnasts rarely land perfectly, and these Cirque performers were landing most of theirs. It actually added to the show, I thought, because it showed truly how difficult these things were. It stressed me out a lot to be honest - I kept gasping every time they would attempt something particularly scary or challenging. They did a lot of stuff in midair without safety nets, though thankfully sometimes they had spotters on the ground, but not for everything. I was so excited to go; it was such an amazing experience.

Getting to Le Cirque just showed me yet again how massive Seoul really is. I looked up the tourist information about Seoul, and it's crazy to think about the scope of this city. First of all, Korea is about the size of Indiana. A (very brief) Google search of the US Census Bureau tells me Indiana has a population of about 6.4 million people whereas Korea has 48.6 million. A full-blown quarter of the population lives in the city of Seoul, while HALF the population of the ENTIRE country lives in the Seoul National Capital Area, which includes most of the Gyeonggi province as well as the neighboring city of Incheon (home of the Incheon International Airport). According to the Seoul tourist site, Seoul itself is less than 1% size-wise of all of South Korea, so you can imagine calling Seoul "densely populated" is a bit of an understatement. I've put a picture of the epic-ness of the Seoul metro in this post so you can appreciate it when I say the Seoul metro is insane.

Anyway, so here's a sample of the difficulty I have in accessing the city of Seoul. It's deceptively easy - just get to downtown Buyeo (which is very simple) and hop an express bus (heaven forbid I accidentally get a non-direct bus that stops in Cheonan, Gongju, and some other godforsaken town and takes about 3.5 hours to get to Seoul) to the city. The express bus usually takes two hours to get to the Nambu Bus Terminal in southwest Seoul. After landing at Nambu, it's off to the metro. Again, sounds simple. However, if you want to get to Hongdae (the university section of Seoul where all the cool kids hang out), which is usually where I want to go, it's about 45 minutes by metro. That doesn't include the line change which takes about 10 minutes of walking from the orange to the green line. Chris and I were staying in a hostel in Hongdae, but Cirque du Soleil was at the Jamsil Olympic Stadium (from 1988, I think, when South Korea hosted the Olympics), about 15 minutes from Nambu. This meant I had to take a two hour bus, 45-55 minute metro ride, walk to the hostel to drop off my things and change into my Cirque attire, then we walked back to the metro and took our 50 minute joyride to Gangnam for dinner. Then metro from Gangnam to Jamsil, thankfully only about 10-15 minutes. Enjoy Cirque du Soleil, then get back on the metro yet again to cross the city yet again. We could have stayed in nearby Gangnam, but my friends Gena and Elise were in Seoul for the weekend, and I wanted to see them, so Hongdae it was. Phew - it was quite the journey. Additionally, I dressed up for Le Cirque, so that meant I got to spend lots of time standing in heels on the metro. Also apparently I am a giant klutz who has problems walking because I managed to trip and fall while walking to dinner - yeah, that was really embarrassing. In my defense, that sidewalk was really poorly paved. The next day I got to cross the city yet once again to get back to Nambu Terminal. I think I've had my fill of metro rides for some time.

Another thing that I found out almost as soon as I got to Korea that I thought was interesting is that apparently all Westerners cannot pronounce the word "Seoul" correctly. We say "Seoul" like "soul," but if you say that to a Korean they probably won't know what you're talking about, unless maybe they're very familiar with Westerners. The way you have to say it is "Seo-ul" which is the way it's written in Korean with two distinct vowel sounds. I always feel like a bit of an idiot when I'm basically trying to pronounce it with a Korean accent because goodness knows my Korean accent is a total zero.

If you click on the picture, it should enlarge. Or if you're really that curious, you can google "Seoul metro map." Regardless, my stop, Nambu Bus Terminal, is on the orange line towards the lower right hand side. Hongik University (Hongdae) is on the green line, center-ish towards the upper left side. Jamsil is also on the green line, though much closer to Nambu.

My friend Chris

Ridiculous Varekai picture. This woman was absolutely incredible - the picture doesn't even do her justice because you can't really tell but she's just holding onto this block on a peg. She did all these contortionist things with only one hand or sometimes two on just two individual blocks on pegs.

Varekai!

The tent. I'll be honest, it was a bit underwhelming. The arena was much smaller than I had expected, but that was awesome because it meant our seats were much closer than they looked online.