Gomungo

One of Jade's students had a friend who plays traditional Korean music on a traditional instrument, called the gomungo. She invited Jade, Chloe, and Sam to come and see it, so we spent another Saturday heading to Seoul, specifically the traditional village at Chungmuro. It took awhile to find it based on the directions, but Chloe has a knack for finding hidden places. We met Hannah outside the theatre, and she not only bought our tickets, but also a CD of her friends music. Before we sat down in the theatre though, Sam and Chloe spent some time scouting out these little dwarf fairies they had hidden all over the place as decorations, taking pictures. Hehe.

We had really good seats in the front, and the stage was fairly plain, adorned only with a couple instruments and a screen which played pictures of beautiful traditional paintings and Korean scripts. Obviously we missed most of the story. The show started with the gomungo, a flute, and traditional Korean drums. There were four parts which included a keyboard player, and also this weird instrument which we are convinced is some kind of magical rock. Jade says it's a kind of bamboo flute, but we have doubts. It was a fantastic performance, even though we didn't understand a lot of it.

Afterwards, we went out for dinner in Itaewon, something a bit more simple: burgers! There is a popular chain in Korea called Kraze Burgers (which Chloe pronounces as "craze", but everyone else pronounces as "crazy") which makes huge delicious burgers. You can get really weird things added to them too, like a fried egg and avocado. Mmmmmm, this is making me hungry! That about wraps up our "traditional" Korean weekend.