The Internationale...

The Balloon Festival was, as I had predicted, “international.” Also, as predicted, some Korean lads tried to rap and … well .. just check out the “A Flock of Seagulls” hairdo on the one kid,

Compared to the bartenders’ championship, though, there were actually some other internationals at the event and the name kind of made sense. One of the balloon operators had even been flown in from Texas. The Chinese students from the “BPU Nearly a Bizness Skool” were nowhere in evidence. As usual Student Services had picked them up at 9:30 in the morning and dumped them off at the festival site. Someone needs to alert them that nothing really starts at any festival till mid-afternoon and thus they are boring the students to tears by dumping them into empty venues.

I walked over to the park, which took about two hours, and when I got there things were just beginning. The OAF had been sick, so she took public transportation to the event. We were both starving and ate some 닭길비 (Chicken Galbi) that was nothing like any other Galbi I’d ever eaten and was mainly notable because it didn’t seem hot at first, but kind of crept up on you as you ate the stuff. Here is OAF, happily shoveling it in (Please note her “drunken-master crossed chopsticks” style).

Then the water-droppin helicopter came by and left us a lovely rainbow.




The balloons started to go up, but emblematically, the “It’s Daejeon” one got started, and the collapsed back to the ground, the victim of an unseated valve somewhere at the top of the balloon.

up

And brutally down

Then it was off to the “Bio-Sphere” where the “mini-massage” fish worked on the OAF’s tangled cuticles.

Finally, a long (and mainly hopelessly lost) walk to the Weizen House where we ate bad German food and I drank beer along with many other BPU staff members. This long walk finally concluded when we found a PC Bang and I looked up the email about the location. On the 103 bus line, said the invite. So we wandered around (this whole lost process took about an hour and a half), found the bus line, hopped on the bus, and 2.5 blocks later and one right turn we were at the restaurant. I felt relieved AND retarded.

A taxi home, a visit to the Pirate Ship bar next door, then off to bed.

Today we head to downtown South Central to see a band with some of our friends in it. I need to stay undercover, since I got a pretty good redneck sunburn yesterday.