SUH ooool

I learned these past 5 days that I suck at pronouncing Korean and should just stop trying. My internship ended last Friday (woo!) so I took a trip to Korea to visit a few friends. Here goes my condensed yet very long update :)

NIGHT 1: After a looong bus ride to my hotel, I met up with Julia, Christina, Brian Yoo! (what a small world) and Justy to explore Seoul. We ended up at this restaurant in Hongdae serving huge portions of chicken simmered in kimchi soup and various other unknown items haha. Should've taken a picture! Next we went to HO Bar for some dranks and began celebrations for Hooly's 21st birthday.

(THAT LARGER THING ON MY HEAD IS SOMEONE ELSE'S HEAD..NOT MY HAIR..WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME?)

Later, we met up with more new friends to eat..again. We probably ate about 3 times that night..basically eat/drink/karaoke/eat/drink and repeat. It was a nice welcome to Korea.

(BARFDAY APPLE CIDER)

(JULIA'S RANDOM NEW BOYS.."ARE YOU TAEYANG???")

DAY 2: Today was our city tour of Seoul, led by our wonduhful tourguide JANE LEE :) We visited Namdemun, Myeongdong (street markets and shopping areas), this man-made river, the hello kitty cafe!, and other areas with names too similar in Korean that I can't remember right now.

We also visited Ewha Women's University (eeeeeewaaaaa lol), one of the top universities in Seoul. The new campus center was designed by Dominique Perraul and was probably one of the more interesting buildings we saw. "..campus center's spaces are interspersed above and below the land..submerging much of the spaces underground. Light penetrates the structure through a large channel that sits between the building's two halves. ..designed to offer a new sense of direction for higher education in the 21st century." -ArchDaily

As seen on designboom:

(RANDOM CUTOUTS WE FOUND INSIDE EWHA)

That night we met up with Julia again in Gangnam and took pictures at the media poles. Pretty entertaining for awhile lol. The result:

We couldn't find much to do since it was a Sunday night so we just wandered around the area, ate some tasty street toppiki (korean rice cake) and took sticky pics haha. The highlight of the night was probably this sign:

DAY 3: Our Seoul tour continued with a visit to the Seoul Tower, a communication and observation tower in Nansam. We probably spent more time at the gift shops rather than the observation deck but it was still fun.

Locks of looove. Couples come to the tower, lock their locks, and throw away the key. Kinda cute I guess but didn't apply to the three of us in the Singles Club.

Justin holding hands with his new friends..right before he broke off the white guy's arm :(
You're supposed to buy a square, write a note, and glue it on this wall forever..
but we decided to glue our sticky pics on this creepy girl's face for free instead! If you ever go to Seoul tower, be sure to look for us :)

We tried ginseng chicken soup for lunch cause I read about it online as one of the must-eats in Korea. It was pretty hot and satisfying..didn't disappoint nomnomnom.

We visited the Han River and decided to go banana boating. Since we didn't go prepared..the guy told us we wouldn't get wet so we happily went. ...of course he lied and flipped us over, leaving us completely drenched. no bueno at first but we decided to make the most of the nice day and played some more in the water. A champion jetskier also gave us a free ride haha. We later found out the suicide rate at this river was quite high...GREAAAT.

To celebrate Hoolia's 21st bday at 12am American time...we bought her some soju and made her drink at 4pm Korean time near the lake..amongst young children and their familias. She was a good sport though and actually agreed. happy barfday hools! That night we met up with Christine! and had some quality Korean BBQ. I was too hungry so I just ate and forget to take more pichas.

Next we visited Dr. Fiiiish! It's a cafe where you can pay a bit more to have bebe fish nip off the dead skin from your feet.. yummm. Sounds strange/gross and it pretty much was! Took some getting used to but it was an interesting experience haha.

This was Justin's last night in Korea so we wanted to have some fun. We took a long subway ride to Sinchon only to find the area dead and deserted. We found some random "Jazz" Sky Bar and took a chance. It was a super fail..no live band or even jazz music..only a depressing bar playing sad kdrama songs :( Goodbye Justin!

DAY 4: This post is almost over I promise. I stayed at Julia's family's house for my last night so her really cute/nice aunt took us out for a traditional Korean meal. This is only a small portion of what we ate..the dishes kept coming and coming. I wish I spoke some Korean though..cause we basically couldn't communicate at all lol.

Next we tried to visit Gyeongbokgung Palace, the largest palace built by the Joseon Dynasty. Sadly it started to pour so I only took a picture from afar. We visited the National Palace Museum instead haha..which took probably ten minutes.

After a walk down any street in Seoul, I quickly realized that Seoul has A LOT of cafes so Julia took me to a green tea house in Insadong to try their tea and green tea waffles. It was another sad day cause their waffle machine was broken :( I settled for this fruity green tea, which was aiiite. I really liked the simple interior of the tea house so we stayed there for a loong time, hiding from the rain and discussing our futures and what we should change our majors to...just kidding kinda.

(SHOPPING AREA AT INSADONG WITH A CONTINUOUS RAMP)

For dindin we ate this Korean hotpot meal. I forget the Korean name for it but it's basically a huge boiling kimchi tofu soup with ramen and udon. Julia and I are used for scale to show how large this thing was..and yes of course we killed it. oopsy daisy.

O___O

We tried to move our comatosed-selves around the area after dinner and went to this street near Apgujeong. Again I can't remember the name..but I decided it was one of my favorite parts of Seoul. It's filled with cafes and unique stores with interesting and modern storefronts. If I ever return to Seoul, I wanna explore this area more on an empty stomach. I also tried my first Mister Donut..even though I was about to burst. the things i do for food..

This was my last night so we met up with some new/old friends again. No pictures from our activities though..it was basically everything that went down the first night x5?

DAY 5: We woke up way too late due to the previous night so we didn't have much time before I had to bus to the airport. We just stayed around Anyang and visited the Museum of Contemporary Art of Koreaaa.
This will be the only pic from the museum to stop this post from getting even longer. My 5 days in Korea went by fast but I feel like I got to see the main areas and experience Seoul more as local rather than a complete tourist (thanks to our lovely hosts and new friends!) I know we exhausted you guys and you probably got annoyed of seeing us 5 days straight lol..but I really appreciated it. Come to Hong Kong anytime I'm here and you can exhaust me back. I'll show you a good timeee. Now I'm back with just less than 2 weeks left in Hong Kong. Where did the time go?! I need to rest up before my next adventure in Barcelona.