Dancing in Daegu
Two weeks ago I attended Diana's wedding in the southeast Korean city of Daegu. Or, perhaps more accurately, I showed up two hours after the wedding started and caught the reception party -- which I feel incredibly guilty about. Ignoring the fact that I am a horrible friend for the moment, one of the things worth mentioning is that her wedding was held at a place called Asurajang near the northern entrance to Kyungpook National University (경대북문) -- which is also where the swing dancing group Swing and People (스윙과사람) meets. Since Diana and her husband are both members it shouldn't come as a surprise to hear that swing dancing was a part of the wedding reception -- in fact, I never did make it upstairs to see what else was going on in the building.
It took a while before I worked up the courage to ask anyone to dance as I was pretty intimidated by some of the excellent dancing that was on display by the other attendees. After an extended period of watching I did eventually start chatting with a couple of people and asked a few girls to dance. Since I felt uncomfortable with lindy hop I started with east coast swing, but made a point of asking each of my partners if they had a preference before starting -- had anyone said lindy I would have made an effort at it, but no one ever did. The first girl I asked to dance actually told me that she dislikes lindy hop, though I was regretfully amused to see that every other time I saw her dancing after that it was with a guy doing lindy.
Stolen from Facebook. Yes, I know, I'm going to the special hell ...
I asked a few people to dance and only one person declined; near the end of the night I also had one woman come up and ask me, which was a nice surprise. We danced for two songs and, following the second, I led her off the dance floor like any good partner should. I took a seat next to her and we had a brief conversation before an Australian woman came over and pulled me aside for a chat.
"You better not be an asshole. She's my friend and I don't want to see her get hurt."
"Huh? We just got done dancing and I wanted to chat with her. That's all."
"Yeah, well, if you're going to shag her you better shag her multiple times. Don't just do it once and leave."
That was ... rather unexpected. I tried to explain that my intentions only went as far as conversation and even gave her my name card as a way of deflecting suspicions that I had nefarious intentions in mind. After giving her my contact information I added that she was more than welcome to come and kick my ass were she to hear any bad stories about how I'd treated her friend.
If that wasn't odd enough, another girl came up almost immediately after she left. My second visitor was the Korean wife of a man who had been talking my ear off earlier. He'd had too much to drink and seemed oblivious to my non-verbal cues, so after roughly 20 minutes of listening to him complain about Korea not being as ethnically diverse as Canada I told him that I'd really like to go ask someone to dance. He then called his wife over and suggested I dance with her -- which suited me just fine. When she approached me talking to the other woman she leaned over and whispered in my ear:
"Be careful. You can do so much better than her."
She then kissed me on the forehead and walked away. I have to admit that this, too, was pretty confusing. As it was, a small group of people gathered after Asurajang closed to visit a bar (Junco) for cocktail soju and then headed over to Sugar Joe's for live music and more drinks. (Or, if you're me, "drink" in the singular.) While we were at our final destination the woman I'd danced with asked where I'd be staying for the night. When she heard that I hadn't decided yet she offered to show me to a motel in the area -- and that's precisely what she did after our group went their different ways from Sugar Joe's.
While walking to the motel she mentioned how she needed to get up early in the morning in order to visit a temple in the mountains, and when we got to the right area she locked up her bike a couple buildings away from the motel. Outside the entrance she took my hand and said ...
"I hope you come to Daegu again. I'd like to show you around."
She then said goodbye and went back to her bike. The motel I stayed at was 30,000 won for the night and - despite having stayed at love motels on most of my trips across Korea - the first time that I've ever heard my neighbors before. They woke me up at 6:30am on Sunday, but at least I know the woman was having a good time.