Bang City!

[As an aside, I'd just like to say that Blogger has been incredibly incompetent
regarding picture uploads recently, and it is pissing me off beyond belief, as
it forces me to waste 9 million more hours of time. I may or may not get my
noraebang pics up tonight b/c it's being idiotic. If not, I'll have to edit them
in later. I hate this. Why won't you work properly?!?!?!? Ok, 9,000 hours
later I finally got it to work]

Korea is a country of bangs (pronounced like bong). PC bangs. DVD bangs. Noraebangs. Board game bangs. You name it. Fyi, 'bang' means 'room' in Korean. And 'norae' means 'sing.' So they are rooms you pay for by the hour (or 2) to go to and do whatever it specializes in. PC bang=internet/gaming cafe (never been to one here). DVD bang=rent a dvd and watch it in your own private room with couches, etc. Apparently people go to these to make out (never been in one). Noraebang=private karaoke room. The best things ever. The U.S. needs to pick up on these. Board game bang=a place you go and sit and choose from a selection of board games to play. Pretty fun, and probably the least common of the bangs. Last night I went to a board game bang with my Pyeongtaek friends (and Osan Elissa). Not only did we play a board game (Settlers of Catan), but we also wore costumes. Jaclyn's monkey mask was the best monkey mask I've ever seen. It was seriously freaking me out a little bit. Here are a few pics.

And here are a few pics from a noraebang when Joleen was visiting. I look horrible in my picture, but hey. I'm singing. I'll use that as an excuse. Also, I included a picture that shows one street and all the noraebangs on it (this is in Pyeongtaek near my house...taken in December). Seriously, there are a crapload of them. I think there must be like 15 of them in a 2 block radius. All the cylindrical glowy blown-up signs in the picture are for different noraebangs. I believe you can see at least 5 of them in this picture and this isn't even the 'busy' side of the block! Crazy. Koreans love their karaoke!