A Year of Change: aka How Kpop changed my life!
So I haven’t really posted on here much....ever... but I felt like it was time. Part of that is because I’ve looked back on the year I’ve had since last May and I can’t even believe everything that has happened.
Last year was my step into the real world, I graduated cosmetology school, I had loans to pay, a job to find. I spent the first 3 months terrified that I would mess up, or be told I wasn’t cut out for this. I remember being sick to my stomach every time I got a color, so terrified that I would mess it up.
Then it was announced that Got7 was going to be touring... In the US! Anyone who knows kpop knows, that that doesn’t always happen. So I saved up, and me, my sister and our friend Kelsey got ourselves ready. They had already been to a Shinee fan meet in Chicago (leaving me behind : ( because I had just started my job) But this was a concert! A concert with probably our biggest bias group!
So in July of 2016, I got to go to New York City for the very first time because of Got7! To this day I can barely believe that this is real. The boy’s put on an especially amazing show, being their amazingly goofy selfs. I ended up crying during Just Right, because it had been the song that first got me into them. We had bought tickets to both shows, My friend managed to get p1 for the first show and p2 for the second, me and my sister for p2 for both. I still can not believe how beautiful they are in real life. I still can’t believe they’re real.
After the second show, as we sat in the seats at the back of the venue, watching them break down the stage as we waited to hi-touch our boys, I thought how sad it was that it had to end. Sure we had spent two days waiting 10 hours on the sidewalks of New York city waiting for this. The second show we even had a couple people pass out from heat exhaustion before the show had started. But it had been the best three days of my life. Getting to see Time Square, getting to see an amazing concert and be with my sister and our friend. It was an absolutely amazing experience...
We didn’t know when we would see the boys next, or any kpop concert honestly.
I’m not ashamed to say it made me kind of sad. Really sad.
But we had our memories and our little videos of them that we could watch.
What we thought was the end was just the beginning of a crazy year.
Because in September Got7 announced a fan-meet, but no US locations were announced. The closest to us was going to be in Toronto, Canada. So, being the crazy people we were, we decided Toronto must be lovely in November, and if we’re there anyways, why not see Got7... two more times... (You might be able to see how real the addiction is at this point, we sure couldn’t)
So it November of 2016, I got to see Canada for the very first time. It was my very first time leaving the country.
We got P2 for the first show, but got the cheap seats for the second. It was kindof nice to get to sit back and watch them. It can be a bit hard to see with standing room.
The Kelsey’s (my sister and our friend) ended up being filmed by the Real Got7 crew when we were in line, and Bam Bam complimented my sister’s tattoo during the hi-touch.
While we were in Toronto be got to go to Korea town and found an amazing music store that sold a bunch of Kpop. Needless to say we left more broke then we already were.
Again, it was over. The Kpop depression was pretty real at this point. We had gotten so lucky being able to see our boys, twice within the same year, Two concerts and two fan meets. There was no way we could be any luckier.
Then BTS decided to peek it’s head into the US. December 14th of 2016 we officially had tickets to see BTS! December 17th, we sunk ourselves deeper by getting tickets to the Washington DC fan meet of Got7.
As if all that wasn’t enough, which it definitely was, Shinee announced a concert as well... the same weekend that BTS would be. And only in Texas, which was the day of the BTS concert we were attending, and in LA two days after...
But we’ll get to that in a second. first was the Got7 fan-meet in D.C.
January 21st 2016 I got to travel to D.C. for the very first time.
I still can’t believe it.
We ended up finding a restaurant named Mandu that had amazing Korean food!
Leading up to the concert I had drawn a comic panel of the boys
I had made a bunch of copies and passed out some before the concert while we were waiting in line. Until it started to pour... 10 hrs, in the rain. Well not raining the whole time, but a lot of it.
Anyway we ended up meeting some amazing girls in line. We’re still friends even now. We bonded over our love of the Got7 boys and all our other mutual groups too. They had even gotten Tickets to BTS in New Jersey too! So we exchanged Instagrams and stayed in contact.
The Fan-meet itself was amazing, Got7 definitely has a way of making every fan meet different.
At the Hi-touch, I was holding one of the comic pages as I went through the line. I don’t know if most of the boys understood it, but the line got held up a bit when I was just in front of Mark (I nearly dies XO) and he read a bit of it and said it was cool!
Also both Kelsey’s told Bam Bam he was fabulous, he asked them if that was a good thing. So be sure to tell Bam Bam he’s fabulous!
On the way home we went to a Korea town in Virginia and got some albums and ate at a bakery.
Again, another fan meet was over, the sadness of not seeing Got7 again for a while was still there, but we still had concerts on the horizon.
So like I said earlier, BTS concert was March 24 and Shinee only was going to have two shows. Dallas was out because we already had BTS tickets.
It started as a joke... Jokes are dangerous. We kept telling each other, oh we should just go to both hahahahahaha.
I didn’t expect it to happen...
So we were going to LA for Shinee, the same weekend we were going to New Jersey for BTS...
This post is not meant to brag, it’s more to reflect on this past year of events.
So on March 24th we headed to New Jersey, meet up with our D.C. friends, and spent the day waiting to see our Boys.
Oh also KENNY was sitting a couple of rows in front of us!
You can see us in his BTS vlog in the background lol.
BTS has by far been the most emotional one for me. Yes I had cried alittle during Got7 but BTS was a trainwreck of emotions. Jimin’s solo had me alittle teary eyed, Suga’s First Love had tears coming... But as soon as Jin started Awake... WATERFALL! The girl next to me at one point asked if I was okay! I wasn’t, but I just nodded.
And just seeing the Rainbow ARMY Happen, in real life, it was so beautiful!
I pretty much had tears through half of the concert, if not more!
I was still crying after the concert!
Then we went back to our friends hotel room to relax for a bit when one of the girls came back and said she got off on the floor above us and hear BTS was staying in the room above us. Not totally sure if that’s true, but I can dream lol.
So after a couple of hours, we headed to JFK airport in New York and waited for our 7 am flight to LA.
First ever flight, First time in LA!
Luckily I slept through just about the whole flight there, since we hadn’t gotten any sleep that day.
But then we landed in LA at 10 am!
I got to see my first real Palm Tree!
We spend the first bit of the day just wandering around and went to Korean BBQ that night. We also found Music Plaza, a full Kpop store!
Needless to say, again we spent way to much money.
We had some amazing seats, we were in the balcony off to the left side. We were just before this private little balcony that was blocked off.
My friend nudged me and pointed, we could see into the balcony area and Evan and Steven from Buzzfeed were there! We might have fan girled a bit over that! Not gonna lie.
They put on a ridiculously amazing show, obviously! You really can’t expect anything else from Shinee!
As the concert wrapped up, we saw the private balcony start to clear out, and we knew they’d have to go right behind us. I watched the balcony, waiting. Then I saw Steven and Evan make their way out. I turned to fast and just waved, “Hi Steven Hi Evan”
I think it took Steven a second to realize we recognized him, but Evan immediately smiled at us! (Steven did too! It just took him a second)
It was definitely such a crazy weekend, but I wouldn’t trade any of these experiences for anything.
And soon the adventures are going to continue!
July 14th of 2017 I’m going to MonstaX in New York at the same place it all started with Got7 and it makes me get butterflies just thinking of being there again.
July 27th of 2017 We’ll be seeing G-Dragon in Brooklyn, NY. New venue, new experiences!
I can’t wait for the new adventures to happen!
If you’re going to be at either of those concerts, or if you were at the concerts I mentioned, leave a comment or message. You can never have to many Kpop friends!!
If you read all this , Thank you for letting me share this adventure with you! It means a lot just to get all of this out!
Have a beautiful Day, and just go find an adventure!
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