!!!AKARAKA!!!

AKARAKA was so much fun! It was crazy how many people there were! I heard aprox. 10,000 people; almost ten times as many people there as students at Beloit! haha. Emily and I met 토 (Ghetto) and 뽈뽈 (SooAh) at ttebang at 12:30 and then we went to lunch. We went to a donkasu restaurant which was good and then we had ice cream. yum! At 3 pm, everyone who wanted to go to AKARAKA with tte met at ttebang. I think people tend to go with their major departments. People's majors here are kind of their friend groups too. I was talking to 개토 and he said that he chose a club and his major; so things he might otherwise do with his major he does with tte (his chosen club). So, not everyone from tte was there, but a fair number. We headed over to the stadium. This is what it looked like as we waited in line to get into the stadium. We got into the stadium and went to find our seats. Each club/major had an assigned area they were supposed to sit in, but people were sitting in our area, so we (well, not me per say...) had to negotiate with the group in front and behind us to get our spot.

!tte people!

I stood by 뽈뽈 who explained what was going on and showed me what to do. She brought her friend from Korea University, which is Yonsei's biggest rival. Her friend wore a blue shirt, but there were pockets of red here and there from Korea University kids coming to "disrupt" AKARAKA. Really, I swear they were there to have fun; they didn't do anything. We were there from 3 pm to 10:30 pm, when the show ended. In the beginning there were some performances by Yonsei students, including a dance group with one of our fellow CIEE friends!

go Andrew! he is in the back.

They actually showed a PowerPoint before the main events started! Yonsei has an actual AKARAKA cheer team (akaraka is actually the name of the cheer group)!!! They're extremely enthusiastic and wear funny costumes. I heard from someone that its very rigorous and most people can only withstand one year; they go through a highly selective selection process, and if you have that you were an AKARAKA cheer person on your resume, you're almost guaranteed the job. I'm not sure if thats entirely true, but its a very highly esteemed position.

They taught the crowd a few new cheers, and lead a few others. Then the big name singers came out: Jewelry, VOS, Big Bang, Sonyashidae (Girls Generation), 45rpm, Sweet Sorrow, Gummy, JYP (Pak JinYoung), and others. I only knew of Big Bang, JYP, and Sonyashidae... It was funny because there are two people in our drumming group who are going out. When Shonyashidae came out the guy got sooo excited and everyone jokingly said his girlfriend should cover his eyes. Then when Big Bang came out, the girl started screaming and jumping up and down, and switched spots with someone so she could see better.

Girls Generation

These singers are some of the most famous/popular singers in Korea. According to my roommate Pang who is a huge HUGE HUGE K-Pop fan, Big Bang is bigger than N'Sync or Britney Spears ever was - they've been number one on the music charts for weeks.

Big Bang

My favorite part was the cheering. It was really fun. Everyone knows the cheers, so it was a stadium of approximately 10,000 people doing the same cheers at the same time. For each cheer they would have the lyrics projected onto the screen on the front stage and everyone sang and did the actions. If you didn't know the actions, you could look around and copy someone or look at the cheer group on stage, who were also doing the actions with large grandiose movements in really odd faux renaissances costumes - the theme this year was Renaissance in Yonsei.

look at their kooky costumes!!! haha. They were so serious too!

~The End~