This weekend, I went up to Seoul to attend the AWEH launch party at the Laughing Tree Lab, which went swimmingly well with what seemed like half the expat community in attendance.
This was my first time at this recently-opened underground (both literally and figuratively) art gallery, and the space was much smaller than I expected, but it made everything that much more intimate.
There was everything from paintings, drawings, and small clay figurines, to live digital painting, and live music~ The party also spilled out onto the sidewalk where people could enjoy the perfect autumn weather and check out some live graffiti and painting.
Aidan Cowling wheat-pastin' on the sidewalk. We've been in a few shows together now, and he's just such a talented, kind, inspiring artist! I love being around so many creative minds. :) Oh, and I believe that's Patty Hogan in the red cardigan, who is also so super-awesome that I was too shy to introduce myself. bah.
Anyway, it was such a fun event and I'm really thankful to all my friends who came out to support. I even met a few blog readers! :) Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to get a good photo of my two pieces hanging on the wall because the lighting was really dim, but here's a shot of one of them:
This dark raven was a commissioned piece. The other painting in the gallery was a smaller owl, which you can see an unfinished image of here.
And now onto some Seoul weekend eats...
Before the art show, a friend and I met up for dinner and we ended up going to Bao restaurant in Noksapyeong. I had been there before and really enjoyed the food, but my goodness, my experience there this time was so disappointing. My friend ordered the flat rice noodles and I ordered the thin rice noodles with Thai sauce (without oyster sauce). While the flavors were fine, both of our rice noodles were undercooked with some chunks being completely dry, plasticky and crunchy from not being cooked long enough. Bao, what happened???
We both sent our dishes back to be fixed, but I don't think they did much because the noodles were still stiff and dry when they came back. They just tossed everything in the skillet for a few seconds, thinking that would soften the noodles. At that point, we kind of just picked out the parts that were edible, and left the uncooked bits on the side. I've heard that maybe they got a new chef recently and so the food isn't consistent, but really, how hard could it be to at least serve fully-cooked, soft noodles? I mostly just felt bad to my friend because I was the one that recommend we eat there... It was especially bad when my friend had to remove bits of plasticky flat rice noodles from her mouth that looked like cartilage. haha. ew. I don't want to completely write off Bao because my previous experience there was so delicious and their menu is actually incredibly vegan-friendly, but I think they just need to work on consistency... . I hope things will be better on my next visit.
Anyway, moving on!
Earlier in the day, I got lost in some used books at the Foreign Book Store in Noksapyeong.
Oh, and after staying out late on Saturday night, Sae Hee and I crashed at Kia & Sean's place. Us girls were still so wired and awake that we ended up watching 'Forks over Knives' while munching on some delicious nooch-laced popcorn:
Woke up the following morning and had some of Kia's apple-rosemary scones... supermegadelicious.
So that about sums up some of this past weekend's shenanigans. I have to say, I'm really thankful to friends who have let me crash at their place whenever I'm visiting Seoul. And they always open up their vegan pantry for me to raid whenever I get hungry. Even the weekend of the bake sale, I got to sleep over at Fiona's house which, by the way, has the most comfortable couch in all of Korea.
Breakfast at Fiona's place: nectarines, bananas, vegan granola, and organic soy milk.
One of Fiona's rescued cats. :P
Yay for vegan friends with couches!