Last Few Days in Korea + China

I’m currently sitting at some random gate at SFO waiting to hear about my gate information for my flight to Pittsburgh. I was just in China for 6 days and they block wordpress/facebook/twitter so I couldn’t update basically anything. It was refreshing to be disconnected though (although I did use instagram and email so I guess I wasn’t completely offline…such is life). 

I’m trying to remember what I did in Korea since the last time I updated….I don’t think I did much. It was mostly a frantic/traumatic packing experience. We went out a few times because it was our last weekend…also I went shopping near Ewha Women’s University, where there’s a ton of cheap/cute clothes and accessories and such. All of us who were there bought matching Korean-middle-aged-lady pants (아줌마 pants, if you will) which was pretty fun. We all wore them tot the SNU ISI closing ceremony (which was less fun……actually no it was pretty funny) and got some strange looks from people but mostly people just said that they were jealous and that they wanted a pair. 

yaymtachingpants

I came to Korea with one large suitcase, a backpack, and a tote baq. Looking back, I’m not sure how I managed to fit 10 weeks worth of stuff in such a small volume without it being over 50 pounds. Most of the stuff I brought with me was gifts, but I also bought a lot of stuff and also got a lot of really heavy/voluminous stuff from relatives to take home to my mom & grandma. I started packing at maybe 8pm the night before leaving for Shanghai and packed half my suitcase and realized that there was actually no way I could successfully pack all of my stuff in one bag. Given that it was 9pm and I didn’t really know anywhere near the dorm to shop for luggage, I just got in a cab and said “Homeplus” (홈플러스), which is kind of like Walmart; it’s the only store I knew that 1) was open late and 2) sold luggage. The cab driver was really confused because there wasn’t a Homeplus anywhere near my dorm, so I just started naming regions in Seoul hoping that there would be a Homeplus in one of them. The only one I had been to was in Jamsil, but that’s like 45 minutes from where my dorm is and I wasn’t looking to go that far because only about 20% of my stuff was packed, but, as it turned out, the Jamsil one was the only location he knew of, so I had to go all the way there to buy a freaking suitcase. It was also raining and still sort of rush hour so there was sooo much traffic. I got there after bout an hour, ran inside, got lost looking for the luggage section, bought pretty much the first large suitcase I saw, and then ran back outside to hail a cab. It took another hour or so to get back to the dorm and I ended up getting back to my room at around 11pm. People were going out  because it was everyone’s last night, so I ran into them in the lobby on my way back to my room. They all looked nice and ready to go clubbing and such and then I walked into the lobby without any makeup wearing running shorts and a sweatshirt, carrying a large suitcase. Basically I looked like a homeless person. I went back to my room and said bye to everyone who was going out (I had to leave my dorm by 6:30am so I definitely wasn’t going out) and packed all of my stuff until about 2am. I didn’t realize how much stuff I had until I tried packing all of it….. and I knew both of my bags would be overweight because they were literally completely filled with very heavy things; my great-aunt gave me like 6 vacuum-packed packages of dehydrated food items to put in my suitcase and each of them resembled and had similar masses to a medium-sized stone. When I got to the airport, both of my suitcases were about 4 kilos overweight (which is like almost 9 pounds). There was literally nowhere for me to rearrange my stuff so I told the airport checkin lady that I would just pay the fee. I think that’s the first time she’d ever heard that because she looked at me like I was insane, but I was running a little late and I didn’t want to try in vain to move around all my stuff. 

I arrived in Shanghai and met up with my freshman year roommate, Christine. She was waiting for me at my gate and said that her driver would be picking us up shortly (I’m not sure if this is a thing in China but like this further confirmed my suspicion that she’s super rich and just didn’t tell me). We stayed in her dad’s company’s apartment rather than the apartment where she actually lives because there’s more space and we’d be more free to do stuff throughout the day. We dropped off my luggage at the other apartment and then went to her regular home apartment; Christine ordered a masseuse to come to her house, so we hung out at her house getting massages and eating dumplings. It was quite the afternoon. I’d never gotten a legit massage before, so it was a bit painful, but it’s wasn’t an unpleasant experience. After that we went out to dinner at Christine’s dad’s favorite Japanese restaurant because he loves Japanese food and was leaving for Australia the next afternoon. The restaurant had apparently just killed a tuna so we had a very fresh multi-course meal of tuna-related foods. 

😮

hard at work

literally the best fish i’ve ever eaten

Most of my experience in Shanghai were eating at various restaurants, admiring the view at all times of the day (afternoon, 6-7am, 10pm…yeah), and shopping. I bought a bunch of “designer” bags from this underground mall type of place which was really cool. I don’t really feel like writing about all of it, so i’ll just post some pics and call it a day (I’m really tired because I just got off the plane and am chilling in SFO for the next 7 hours or so).

so many people omg

pigeon :O

chicken feet :O

pearl tower

staying up til 6 to watch the sunrise

 

wah 예쁘다

I’ll post a more summative (if that’s a word) post after I’m home and well rested (I can’t remember the last time I slept is that bad); I feel like if I wrote it now it’d be incoherent and not reflective of my time in Asia. For now, though, 안녕!

 

Korean War Stuff + DMZ

Today was quite the long day. I spent about 40 minutes within a few feet from and about 5 minutes in North Korea this afternoon!

We had to be at Lotte Hotel by 9:30 AM to check-in with our tour group, which meant we had to leave the dorm by 8:30 or so if we wanted to play it safe. I set my alarm for 7:30AM thinking rather optimistically that I’d wake up, shower, do my makeup, and be ready to leave by 8:30. I’ve learned that, personally, being optimistic in situations involving waking up early is quite foolish, since I have this tendency to either hit snooze or just turn off my alarm when I’m in the delirious state of just being woken up after 4 hours of sleep (which is basically a nap amirite). So I woke up when my alarm went off and scoffed at my stupidity before going to sleep that I’d ever be able to wake up so early and then set my alarm again for 7:50. I don’t really remember hearing my alarm again so I either just slept through it or turned it off and went back to sleep, but I woke up at 8:24 to someone knocking on my door and a bunch of Kakao Talk and Facebook messages on my phone from Pati, Alyssa, and Mawunyo all saying essentially the same things: “are you awake?” and  “are you ready? we’re leaving soon!” I sat up and uttered an expletive and ran to the door in my pajamas with my hair in a bun on top of my head, and I saw the three of them dressed and ready to go…. Awkward. I told them I’d be ready in 5 minutes and they went to get coffee. I was actually ready in 6 minutes, which was a miracle and I’m still not sure how I managed to do it. I managed to make myself not look like a hobo (as I usually look 6 minutes after I wake up) and ran out the door to the main lobby. It was raining really hard and I forgot an umbrella so I kind of just stood under a balcony until one of them came to get me. We set off in a taxi with 50 minutes to get to the hotel.

Me when I actually woke up and got out of bed at 8:24AM

The drive to the hotel took about 45 minutes and we got to the tour group office at almost exactly 9:30AM. We handed them our passports and paid the trip fee, and then the lady was like “okay we’re not leaving until about 10AM, so please be back here at 9:50!” So basically our Penn in Seoul program director knows that we’re late to everything and told us to show up early. That was smart on her part but like we were also panicking about being late. We made it on time, though, and that’s all that matters…

We got on the bus and started the tour. Our tour guide was a semi-elderly Korean woman allegedly named Laura. She tended to use a lot of sound effects while speaking and she was just hilarious in general. She was talking about North Korea and she said “They don’t have anything! They don’t have electricity, or even Home Depot!!”……. I’m not sure how modern North Korea has survived for so long without Home Depot, so kudos to them I guess. I thought our tour was only going to be at the DMZ/DMZ-related areas, but we stopped at the Korean War memorial and Imjingak Park along the way to learn a little about the Korean War and the division of the peninsula.

Korean War memorial

Memorial to fallen Korean soldiers

Hall of names of international and domestic soldiers who died in the war.

We didn’t stay that long in the war memorial since we were a little pressed for time, so we had a quick look around the place and got back on the bus. After the memorial, we went to Imjingak Park, which is a small park that’s fairly close to the DMZ. It has the Bridge of Freedom and the North-South Korean railway. The Bridge of Freedom is a wooden bridge used for POWs after the Korean War. Those from the North that were captured by the South and also those from the South who were captured by the North could cross back to their “homeland” via the Bridge of Freedom. It was blocked off after a few yards so as to prevent anyone from defecting to North Korea (which would be horrendous for North-South relations). The dividing wall was covered in South Korean flags and little hand-written notes; it was really cool and you could feel the nationalism and passion.

Korean War memorial

the bridge

Division of the Bridge of Freedom

After visiting this park, we went to eat lunch and then set off for the DMZ. We arrived at the first checkpoint of the DMZ, where an American soldier checked our passports and checked to see if our attire was appropriate. Apparently if you visit the DMZ you can’t wear anything sheer or “gangster” or “biker” or revealing, and you have to wear shoes with a closed toe and heel (in case you have to run….). Our tour guide said that usually the American solders who work at the first checkpoint are more lenient about attire than the South Korean soldiers. We passed through there and weren’t allowed to take pictures from that point on. I don’t think I’m even allowed to describe what I saw, because the South Korean government/military don’t want to broadcast their military technology/resources to the world.

We went to the Joint Security Area visitor center, where our tour guide gave us a very brief formal history of the Korean War, and then we went to the actual Joint Security Area (JSA). The JSA is a really small area of land (only 800 meters in diameter) with a bunch of North and South Korean buildings/offices. The border runs right down the middle of the JSA. We stood on some steps on the South Korean side and looked directly at North Korea; we were allowed to take pictures but only of North Korea (again, South Korea didn’t want us exposing their military stuff). Our tour guide said that there usually aren’t North Korean soldiers there since they only come when there are North Korean tourists (i.e. officials from Russia or China or really really rich people who pay to take a tour of North Korea) visiting the Northern portion of the DMZ. Today, though, was the anniversary of the signing of the armistice that “ended” the Korean war (a peace treaty has never been signed so technically the Korean War has yet to end) so there were some foreign military officials and I’m pretty sure some North Korean visitors, because there were a few North Korean soldiers there. Usually, the South Korean soldiers all stand facing North Korea in case of a sudden attack or defector. The North Korean soldiers stood a little differently; one stood facing the South, and two stood facing the North. Apparently this was because it was the best strategy for catching a North Korean defector; if someone tries to run to the South, the two people facing the North can catch him, and if someone tries to come in from the South, the one guy will see it. We stood on the steps of the South Korean building for about 10 minutes and then went into one of the conference rooms that’s also divided in half by the border. It was in this room that I had a chance to step into North Korea. Pretty cool stuff. There wer e 2 South Korean soldiers standing in there, and you’d think they were statues because they were standing so still and so sturdily. We were only allowed to stay in the conference room for about 5 minutes, so I was in North Korea for about 3 minutes today.

Hey it’s North Korea

Important (?) military people

A North Korean soldier from afar

North and South Korean soldiers

South Korean soldier in the conference room. I didn’t have time to take a picture with him

The actual border between the North (left) and the South (right)

After we left the border area we went back to the JSA visitor center to go to the souvenir shop and to use the restroom before going back to Seoul. The gift shop was actually really cool; they sold North Korean currency and alcohols (I bought a “wild grape” wine and pear brandy because the saleslady said they were the most popular). I guess the prices of things in this store were a lot cheaper than retail because (and I’m completely guessing, I have no idea if this is true) South Korean and American soldiers shop there so they lowered the price of stuff. Like they sold amethyst jewelry for pretty low prices because the soldiers like to buy it for their girlfriends. I bought 2 pairs of military Ray Ban aviators, which is what the soldiers wear, and they were only 35,000 won. Either they’re really real-looking fakes or they were just super cheap, but they seem pretty legit to me. This doesn’t mean much though because I’m also very naive… Whatever. I wanted to buy some at a different store at the Korean war memorial as gifts or whatnot but there they were 210,000 won. They’re nice sunglasses though so even if they aren’t real (even though I do think they’re not fake) it still doesn’t matter because they’re nice.

We left the JSA after shopping/bathroom-ing and went back to Seoul. We went to eat bbq after getting back (galbi 갈비 and samgyupsal 삼겹살), which is probably the 3rd of 4th time I’ve gotten bbq this week. I need to have a meal of carbs/fiber because eating all this protein can’t be that healthy. I feel okay though so I guess that’s all that matters?

Tomorrow marks the first day of my last week in Seoul!!! I still feel like I have a lot more to do (like shopping for things to bring home for family/friends and going to Myungdong for kpop related merchandise and going to an entertainment label building to look for idols and eat more korean food that i haven’t had yet and going to nightclubs that aren’t Octagon and ahhh so much stuff), but since i have a final and an essay due on Monday I feel like this weekend will be limited (or my performance on both of these assignments will suffer….which is less than ideal so I’ll probably work this weekend). If I don’t get to do all the stuff I want to by the time I leave, hopefully I can come back relatively soon (next summer? maybe?) and finish it then.

That’s all I have for now! Thanks for reading 🙂

안녕!

 

 

Nightlife + 4am BBQ

Hihi! It’s been a while since I last posted. I was going to post on my brother’s birthday but nothing interesting had happened from my mom’s birthday to Wednesday so I didn’t… sorry Bob. Happy belated birthday! Bobbo is now 2NE1 (21). Boy does time fly.

The boy with no front teeth can now legally drink beer wow

are you ready to be 21
i’m not sure

Wednesday was also Hector’s (a friend from Penn also doing SNU ISI) 21st birthday! We went to get pork bbq (삼겹살) and bingsu from Dunkin Donuts to celebrate. Yayayayayay birthdays all around.

Anywho, last night (Thursday) we decided to go out/clubbing. We only have around 1.5 weeks left in our program (!!! so sad) so we’ve been trying to make the most of our remaining time. Some people are staying in Korea after, some (like me) are traveling elsewhere in Asia, and others are going home, so this is the last chunk of time that we’ll all be in Korea together :(. We found this bar a few weeks ago called Monkey Beach 2 (much better than the original Monkey Beach which is right across the street) that sells, among other things, tequila shots for 1,000 won, which is actually insane. Whenever we go there we tend to get a little rowdy so the bartenders recognize us now whenever we walk in… We wanted to show them that we could have a normal, relatively not-crazy night there so we went in a smaller group of 5 and hung out for a few hours. We usually go before going clubbing because drinks at the clubs are like outrageously expensive. Monkey Beach 2 is really nice because they play awesome music (a mix of like American music and kpop) and you can tell that everyone there is having a good time. We ordered a few rounds of shots and one of their “bucket” drinks for groups and stayed from around 11PM to 2AM

yay monkey beach ❤

After Monkey Beach 2, we went to Club Octagon in Gangnam. You usually have to pay gross amounts of money to get into clubs in Seoul, but Thursday was “donation” day so you could pay whatever you felt like. We got there at around 2:30am and it was so crowded. There was this semi-famous (I think? Elaine from our group knew who he was) DJ playing so we stayed for a few hours and danced and stuff. A few girls who worked there would occasionally stand on the stage thing and hand out free sailor hats/t-shirts/shoes (?)/shots, so whenever that happened there was a huge surge of sweaty bodies to the front of the dance floor. I got caught in the crowd a few times and it was generally really unpleasant. I did get a sailor hat though so I guess it was worth it? It’s sitting on my desk now and I have no idea what to do with it. We stayed until around 4AM and decided to get food. We found this bbq place across the street from Octagon that sold bulgogi (불고기; thinly sliced marinated beef) for pretty cheap (around 9,000 won per serving!) so we went there. Last Thursday we also went to Monkey Beach 2/a club and at around 4am decided to get bbq…I guess getting meat at 4am on Thursdays is a thing now? I don’t mind though; it’s so good and it always hits the spot. We ordered bulgogi and ate until like….5:20AM or so. I feel really bad for our friend Josh because he’s doing an internship here when he’s not taking classes and he had internship this morning at like 9….and he was out with us until 5:30 eating 고기. Heh. 화이팅!

Josh <3s food heheheh
#5ambbq

Anywho, by the time we finished eating and found a cab, it was light outside and the sun was just starting to rise. It took us maybe 15-20 minutes to get back to our dorm, and by then it was fully light out and the sun was up. Quite the eventful night, I’d say.

5:30am cab right back to the dorms heheh #sorry

Last night was really fun! I’m glad we’re spending our last week or so taking advantage of the things you can do in Seoul that you really can’t do back in Philadelphia/Pittsburgh. Like if I wanted bbq at home I’d have to go to Oakland and sit in traffic and pay like $35 for mediocre bulgogi… So it’s good that I’m doing all of this here while I can. Plus obviously I can’t go to clubs/bars on campus or at home without going through some sort of complicated process of fakes and such and ain’t nobody got time for that hassle.

I’m sad that my time in Korea is almost over! Bobby was only here for 6 weeks and I honestly have no idea how he got anything done. I feel like I still need more time to do the things I still want to do. Although I’m not so excited to leave Korea, I’m going to Shanghai on the 31st to see my lovely roommates Christine and Elise!! I haven’t seen them since early May so I’m really excited to spend a week with them in their hometown. Christine loves Shanghai and always talked about it during freshman year so I’m really excited to experience it for myself. After my week in Shanghai I’m heading back to Pittsburgh! I’m flying from Shanghai to Seoul where I have a 2 hour layover and thenSeoul  to San Francisco where I have a 12 hour layover (kill me now) and then I’ll be back home on August 7 at 6:30AM, where I will proceed to sleep for approximately 40 hours.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now. I’ll update again soon! I’m going back to SBS tomorrow to see another Inkigayo rehearsal but since I already ranted about that trip last week I’ll probably refrain from doing so again… unless a really awesome groups performs in which case I’ll be obliged to post about it.

안녕!

Lotte World + Inkigayo

Hellloooo. Before I start talking about Korean stuff, today is an important day: my mom’s birthday! Happy bday Rubes! you da best

birfday shoutout to the one and only ruby kang

Anywho, this past week was pretty hectic. I had a midterm for my US foreign policy class on Monday and another one on Thursday for East Asian history… The US foreign policy one was grossly curved, seeing as I got 103.7% and that wasn’t even close to being the highest score. I think they’re being super generous with grades since it’s a summer class; some of the TAs have said that we shouldn’t study too hard and that we should focus on having fun this summer. I’m really liking this philosophy so far. We took our East Asian history exam on Thursday and since i went to Insadong all day Tuesday, I couldn’t study, so I put off all my studying until after class on Wednesday… this is not advisable. I started studying around 7:00PM and tried studying in my room for an hour or so but it just wasn’t working, so my friend Diane and I went to a study cafe near campus to get shit done. Koreans are super serious about their studying so these study cafes are actually super helpful; everyone is hard at work, drinking coffee and studying for exams at all hours of the day. It’s open 24 hours a day and people literally stay there all night. I wish there were a place like that at Penn; I would be much more efficient in my studies. Diane and I stayed from around 8:30PM until 2:00AM, then we went back to my room and studied with some other Penn girls until around 4AM. It was a pretty crazy Wednesday night. We went through the history of China, Japan, and Korea from ancient times until 1800… Lots of dynasties and wars and trade and other not-so-exciting things. After hours upon hours of studying I now have the first 10 Chinese dynasties memorized in order (Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing) among other facts that I’ll most likely never use again.

coffee at the study cafe ❤

We had our second official field trip on Friday! We went to Lotte World, which is an indoor and outdoor amusement park. Since we’re in the middle of monsoon season, we couldn’t really do any of the outside rides since they wouldn’t operate them in the rain. I’m not sure about other places, but I’ve been to Kennywood and rode the phantom’s revenge when it was raining and there were no problems… It was okay though because Lotte World has a lot of indoor rides that are still pretty legit so we spent all day in there. Most of us bought a pair of animal ears/other festive headbands because that’s just what you do at Lotte World. I bought black cat ears, which were pretty tame compared to some of the other ones they offered. They were so cute though, and everyone was wearing them so it wasn’t weird.

Lotte World’s indoor ice rink

rainy day at Lotte world

We stayed from probably around 10AM until 4PM walking around, riding rides, and eating amusement park snacks (i.e. dip n dots, churros, etc.). I haven’t been to an amusement park in ages so it was really fun; plus Lotte World is way more colorful and bright and cute than any other place on this planet (it’s probably closely rivaled by Disney) so it was aesthetically pleasing as well as fun.

Today (Sunday July 14) was the third field trip: attending an Inkigayo rehearsal! If you don’t know anything about the Korean music scene, Inkigayo is basically this music performance show where all the groups who are currently promoting songs perform every Sunday. Each week there’s a winner based on popular vote (I think… I’m actually not entirely sure how winners are chosen). This episode was special because it was an “end of the year” special, so a ton of really famous groups came to perform songs that they had promoted throughout the past year. I’m not sure why it was an end of the year special in the middle of July but I wasn’t complaining. I actually wasn’t planning on going (I also signed up for next week’s date and planned on going to that one) so I woke up at around 11:30AM. I saw a ton of messages from my friend saying that I need to wake up and that I should go to the field trip this week because it was the end of the year special. I spent the next half hour being indecisive and tired but at around 11:50 I decided to go. I was still in my pajamas/not ready to leave the room and I didn’t have time to make it to the group meeting spot, so I put on a pair of shorts that weren’t pajamas, brushed my teeth, and left to find a cab. I actually don’t think I even looked in the mirror or touched my hair before I left. I would usually rather light myself on fire than go outside without doing my makeup or  hair so I was obviously desperate to get there on time. I’m fairly certain I looked like a hobo. I took a cab to the SBS building, but apparently there are multiple SBS buildings in Seoul and I went to the wrong one. Luckily, though, I was pretty early, so I figured out where the right building was and took another cab there. I made it on time (actually before the rest of the group) and waited around outside for the rest of my SNU ISI group. There were literally hundreds of people waiting outside to go to the broadcasting; they don’t really sell tickets so if you want to go you have to show up and wait in line. Someone said that people start to wait outside the building 6 hours before the show starts. So crazy.

people patiently waiting to catch any glimpse of a kpop idol outside the SBS building in the rain

We only got to see around an hour of rehearsal, since it was super crowded and we were a fairly large group. We JUST missed SHINee (one of my very favorite groups), which was kind of upsetting… I got over it pretty quickly though since the first person we saw was Lee Hyori (basically like Korea’s most famous solo female artist). We also saw Girls’ Day, After School, B1A4, Lee Hi, Exo, and 4minute. SO EXCITING. Here are some of the music videos for some of the performances we saw:

EXO

Girls’ Day

B1A4

I was really really really excited to go to Inkigayo and now I feel a sense of fulfillment after seeing so many idols. I’m going again next weekend, so hopefully I get to see more groups that I didn’t get to see today.

That’s all for now! Stay tuned for more stuff.

안녕!

Insadong (인사동) Adventure Time

Yesterday, I went to 인사동 (Insadong) with my good friend from Penn, Sally! Luv you, girl. As a bit of a forewarning, this will be a relatively long post… Sorry bout dat. It’s mostly pictures! Insadong was really cool though so hopefully it won’t be boring.

Sally and I met up at around 1PM (we were supposed to meet at 12:30 but I’m an idiot and got off one subway station too early so I was late…). Sally had heard about this relatively famous restaurant in the area that specializes in pig feet (족발 “jok bahl”). It sounds gross/weird but it’s super Korean. Plus they cut it up and made it look pretty. It was actually really good. She told me that I can’t be a Korean person without eating pig feet at least once in Korea. We also got Korean style soba noodles (in case the pig feet wasn’t good heheh)

pig feet dish. so aesthetically pleasing.

all mixed up mmm so good

After lunch we tried to make our way to Insadong. We looked on a map and it looked like we had to walk a really far way, but I guess Korean maps aren’t drawn to scale very well or things are a lot closer together than we’re used to, so we ended up walking really really far from where we wanted to go.. heh. It was fine, though… it was good exercise, amirite? Eventually we made our way to the main road.

Insadong is one of those places that’s trying to maintain traditional things in the face of Korea’s rapid modernization. All the signs and stuff were written in Korean–even signs for Starbucks or other places that are usually written in English. Anyway, Insadong has a ton of really artsy and cute little shops that sell all these handmade crafts or jewelry. As we walked down the street, we stopped in a bunch of little shops and had 타래 (tah-rae), which is like strings of honey… which doesn’t really make sense. It kind of looked like a cocoon. It was made of stringed honey with some sort of nut-sugar mix inside.

Suh-tah-buck-suh koh-pee (Starbucks Coffee in phonetic Korean)

Making 타래

chocolate 타래

We eventually made our way to Ssamjigil (쌈지길), this cute little shopping complex type of place. They have all these really cute shops that sold tons of things, like handmade jewelry, paper products, ceramics, snacks, clothes, shoes, etc. As soon as you walk in, there’s this food stand that sells 똥빵 (ddong bbang). We read about it on someone’s blog and made it our mission to find this place. Luckily it was in plain sight as soon as you walk into the complex. hehehehe. To maintain some semblance of dignity, I’ll let you figure out what 똥 is on your own. It was essentially a pastry filled with sweet red bean paste and walnut. It was actually really delicious despite its name and general appearance.

똥빵! ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅎㅎㅎㅎ

Ssamjigil

On the basement floor of this complex, there’s a bunch of places to do crafts, so we decided to have arts & crafts time. There were a ton of different options, including but not limited to glass blowing, fan painting, pottery (not available that day though ㅠ.ㅠ), mother of pearl jewelry making, and wood carving. We chose to do mother of pearl jewelry first and then glass blowing. The jewelry making was pretty cool; you could make a ring, necklace, keychain, mirror, etc. and it all relatively cheap. I made a keychain and Sally made a ring. There’s something about making arts & crafts that’s really calming and nostalgic. ‘Twas good fun. After we made our jewelry, we moved over to the glass blowing/molding station. This guy uses empty soju, wine, beer, Coke, etc bottles to make pretty art things. It’s a pretty cool way to recycle, in my opinion. We both used soju bottles. I have no idea how I’ll take my artwork home with me but it’s really pretty and the guy working there gave me a free fake flower to put in it so I really hope I can figure out a way to bring it back to the states without smashing it.

You’re never too old for arts & crafts

my keychain!

soju bottle glass molding

yaay fun fun

Glass bottle art

After making our art works, we walked around the whole complex and stopped in a few of the shops. Everything was sooooo cute and artsy. We eventually made it to the top and went to this “love cafe” (I think that’s what it was called) where couples or friends hunt these little messages all around the shop. Naturally, we made one and hung it on the fence. We also bought matching giraffe earrings! Ah so cute.

ㅋㅋㅋ

Love cafe

Kpop music boxes; one of the thousands of cute souvenirs you can buy in 인사동.

After we made our rounds in Ssamjigil, we went to find this ddeok store in the area that I read about on a different blog to get ddeok (gelatinous rice cake) and bingsu. The store was really cute and they sold all different types of both traditional and modernized ddeok. The green tea bingsu we had was reeeaallly good and super cheap (~7,000 won).

ddeok store

green tea ddeok bingsu

the ice was shaved frozen green tea. so legit. There’s also sweet red bean, green tea ice cream, nuts, and ddeok.

After eating bingsu we walked around some more. We also started looking for this really cute and authentic looking tea shop that we found online. It was at the end of a super remote alley so it took us foreverrr to find, but we eventually made it and had some tea. It was a little overpriced but the cups were huuuge and it was really unique and the atmosphere was really cool.

Tea shop that was almost impossible to find

my citron iced tea. cool stuff.

After our tea, we walked around yet again (there’s so many shops and art galleries around here) and, at around 8PM, we went to get dinner at a Korean BBQ place. The restaurant we went to specialized in beef–specifically, 갈비 (galbi), which is beef short ribs if I’m not mistaken. I had been craving 고기 (“goh-gi”, which means meat) for sooo long so it really hit the spot. It was really fancy and the waitresses had this system of timing how long the meat has been cooking at each table so it didn’t burn. So good.

고기 사랑해

yayayayay korean bbq

the waitress gave me a weird look when I took this picture…

After dinner, we got our palms read, because, ya know, why not, right? The lady didn’t speak English so Sally translated for me. Basically she told me that my palm said that I’m a kind of person who has a hard time saying no to people, and that I work hard and have a lot of endurance. She also said that I will definitely get married before I turn 30 (HAH) and that I’ll have a lot of husband-luck (i.e. I’ll find a good husband) and that, after we’re married, I’ll be very supportive of him in all that he does. She also said that I’m hardworking in school but my major might change very suddenly. Also, my palm apparently told her that I will work in a profession that’s centered around caring for others. Some of the things she said were pretty accurate and I’m not sure how she got that but it made me sort of believe in these types of things… It was really fun though and it was only a few thousand won.

Sorry this post was so long! It was a long day yesterday. It was soooo fun though and I’m glad Sally and I finally got to hang out after 6 weeks of me and her being in Korea at the same time. ^^

That’s all for now! I’ll post again laterrr.

안녕!

Clubbing for American Independence

Hello friends! It’s been a while. I keep saying that I’ll post more often but I think I’m going to give up on that because it’s obviously not happening. Plus day-to-day life here isn’t that exciting or post-worthy.

I just woke up like an hour ago (11AM) and I’m sitting at my dest eating Shin-Ramyun and listening to kpop (내가 제일 잘 나가 (I Am the Best) by 2NE1 is currently playing, which is a fantastic song that you should listen to immediately). I feel like the most Korean person ever right now.

mmmm tasty tasty.
quite the relaxing Sunday morning.

^The song I’m currently listening to. 2NE1 has 4 members — CL, Minzy, Bom, and Dara — and they have a lot of international celebrity fans, like Snoop Dogg, Jeremy Scott, and others. They’re my favorite girl group (actually I think they’re the only girl group I like). They’re actually releasing a new song at midnight tonight! 2NE1 화이팅!

On a more relevant note, since last Thursday was the 4th of July, we decided to go out to celebrate America’s independence…in Korea…with some British people in the program. Because that  makes sense.

Before going out, though, we decided to pregame a little on campus since everything in the clubs is super expensive. There was a large group of us so some of them went a little earlier. They told us to meet them in the “common room”, which I thought would be like a room in our hall or something. But as it turned out, the common room was a really large public space next to one of the gyms on campus, and when I got there, our group was sitting around and drinking and stuff, but there were other people there who were just trying to hang out among themselves. I felt kind of bad because we were all there being noisy and drinking and the other people probably wanted some peace and quiet… #sorry.

A few of friends and I didn’t want to stay in the common room though (it was approximately 4 billion degrees and it was getting really noisy) so we went to a bar in Gangnam that was pretty close to the club we were going to. We stayed for around an hour. It was sooo much nicer than hanging around on campus drinking cheap soju and beer.

At around midnight, we went to this really cool club called Octagon in Gangnam. It’s one of the newer places and it’s becoming super popular. The fancier/high end clubs in Seoul have really strict dress codes; guys like aren’t allowed to wear shorts and have to wear nice shoes. Girls can pretty much wear whatever (as long as it’s nice/dressy) but apparently it’s easier to get in if you’re wearing heels. When we got there, a girl who looked a little older than us was having a hard time getting in because of her shoes; I guess they weren’t closed in the back so the club considered them to be sandals and you’re not allowed to wear sandals. I’m still not sure if she got in or not… sucks to be her though. She looked well-dressed to me. I didn’t take any pictures inside the club but here’s what it looks like:

Club Octagon when it’s empty. The tables octagons…heheh
photo from: http://retaildesignblog.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Club-OCTAGON-by-URBANTAINER-Seoul-02.jpg

We got there a little before midnight and stayed for a while. There were fog machines and really cool lights/lasers and good music and a lot of people hanging out and dancing. The club was really cool and young and I’m really glad I went. I know my older brother didn’t get to go clubbing when he was in Seoul 2 years ago, so I’m glad I finally got to go. I think it was easier for me to find an opportunity because I’m in this program with a bunch of people who I know well and who know Korea/Seoul pretty well. I’m in Korea for around 3 more weeks (time has really flown by) so there will be many more opportunities to check out a lot of the other clubs in Seoul. Woooo.

That was pretty much the highlight of my week… SNU hosted a Koreans-only BBQ on Tuesday night, which was pretty fun, even though only a few of us attended. I’ve noticed that whenever SNU hosts events (i.e. free pizza, free Korean BBQ for Koreans, etc.), the only people who show up consistently are the Penn kids. We do love us some free food. The BBQ was on Tuesday night, and I was just expecting to eat dinner and leave since it was hosted by the program and all the TA’s and staff went with us… but they ordered like 20 bottles of various drinks and we consumed most of it. It was probably the craziest Tuesday night of my life.

Aftermath of the Koreans-only Tuesday night BBQ at one of 2 tables after it had been half cleared… Good times.

Other than these 2 nights, nothing much has happened. I spent most of the weekend studying and recovering/catching up on sleep. This upcoming week, I have 2 exams so I’ll mostly be studying and… yeah mostly studying. I can’t believe I’m only here for 3 more weeks… I don’t want to leeeaaave. If I actually spoke/understood Korean fluently, I’d be really tempted to just stay here. But. alas, my Korean has improved very little, so I don’t think I could survive here for too long. Well, I mean, I could, but I’d be that weird Korean girl who can’t speak Korean.

That’s all for now! I’ll keep you posted if anything fun/interesting happens in the near future.

안녕!

Weekend Trip to Gyeong-Ju (경주)

Hellooo. I haven’t posted in a while… I’d like to say it was for a good reason, but, sadly, it was simply because I wasn’t really feelin’ it. I’ll try harder to post more though!

This past weekend, a large group of students in ISI went on a field trip to Gyeong-Ju, a really old and historical city on the southern coast of the Korean peninsula. We left at around 8AM on Friday and were on the bus for around 5 hours.

We didn’t really do anything touristy or culturally significant on Friday. We stopped by a traditional craft store along the way and had the choice to either make jewelry or ceramics. I chose to make jewelry because I figured that if I did ceramics I’d make a slightly-less-than-mediocre clay thing and then be forced to deal with carrying it around if I wanted to keep it. So I made a keychain. They showed us how to make these really cool glass mosaic looking things using colored sand; I’m guessing they’ll put them in an oven and ship all the stuff to us after they’re all done (we left almost immediately after finishing our crafts).

The sand form of my glass keychain thing

After we did that, we went to a beach for a few hours. Most of us didn’t swim because the water was frigid but a few of the guys were brave and went in the water. It was really scenic and there were a few women selling grilled/dried squids and other beach snacks. We mostly just put our feet in the water, took pictures around the waves, and sat down in the sand for a while. It was nice and relaxing.

SNU ISI takes the beach

so pretty ^^

After the beach, we went to our hotel for the night. There was a karaoke room, arcade, and sauna on the first floor of the resort. The hotel was actually pretty nice; I was expecting like a motel on the side of the road so it was a pleasant surprise to be in a resort. There was this really cool waterpark right outside the hotel but apparently we got there too late and couldn’t go. So instead we ate a huge dinner at the hotel buffet, went to karaoke, and hung out in other rooms and got to know everyone over some drinks and stuff. There wasn’t much else to do since they said we couldn’t leave the hotel after 10PM. Personally I wasn’t feeling well (the bus rides made me a little motion sick) so I went back to my room relatively early, but it was still fun.

Water park at the first hotel… Such a tease.

The next day we left for Mungyeong (문경) at 8:30AM to do more cultural/sightseeing things. We went to Bulguksa and Seokgulam in the morning. Bulguksa was a Buddhist temple (I think) and Seokgulam was a palace. I’m not really sure because we were a huuuuge group and there was only one tour guide so some of the information got lost. It was really pretty though and I could feel that it was super old and traditional.

yay Penn friends!
Mawunyo, Debbie, Nicolette, and myself.

a veritable swarm of ISI students

After seeing these places we went to lunch and then went to see some ancient royal tombs. They were underground I think so there were a bunch of huge hills scattered around large fields of grass. It was actually pretty cool.

one tomb

A field of tombs

an observatory near the tombs

After doing some sightseeing here, we went to the second hotel. This one was really nice too, and the view was awesome. It was in the mountains right in the middle of South Korea.

View from my hotel room!

That night, as the was also nothing to do, we hung out and drank and played Korean drinking games. It was really fun, since we haven’t really had a chance to do this with people outside of the Penn program. We met some people from England and from other schools in the States. Everyone seems really nice! I’m really glad I went on the field trip since I almost decided not to go. We left for SNU at 9:30AM on Sunday and got back to campus around 12:45. All in all it was an action packed and enjoyable weekend.

Classes have been going pretty well. I’m not used to being in history/policy-making classes so this is all brand new for me. Hopefully I won’t fail both of my classes… I don’t think Ruby and Jim would be too pleased since they are funding my trip and my studies here. Heheh. It doesn’t seem too difficult though; I just have to adjust how I study and learn this stuff. 화이팅!

I don’t think much is happening in these next few weeks.. I’m going to a Kpop music show next Sunday, which I’m reeeeaaallly looking forward to. I’m almost certain that my favorite girl group, 2NE1 (pronounced like 21 or To Anyone), will be there!!! Ah! So exciting. I’m also visiting my Aunt Yomee and Suemee this Friday, which I’m really excited about since I haven’t seen Aunt Suemee in a really long time and she also visited a lot while I was growing up. Her kids are really cute too.

Anyways, that’s all I have to say for now… Thanks for reading!

안녕!

Classes Begin + Fish Market

Classes have officially begun at SNU! I’m enrolled in East Asia: Past & Present and US & Asia. I’m thinking about majoring in biochemistry (if not some other science-y field) so I’ve never taken a class that’s anything like either of the two I’m taking now. I’m glad I picked these ones though. I feel like I’m expanding my mind and the content is actually really interesting.

East Asia is taught by Professor Eugene Park, a Korean professor from Penn who’s actually the director of the Penn-in-Seoul program, so we get Penn credit for taking his class. S0mething Professor Park talked about that seemed really interesting was  defining “Asia” and how most people only think of East Asia (i.e. China, Japan, and Korea) when discussing Asia. Asia is not only East Asia, though, and we really should include Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand), Inner Asia (Mongolia, Manchuria, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and other Turkic-language-speaking countries), and South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), and Southwest Asia (Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia). Of course, when a guy says “I’m Asian”, I think almost no one would picture Borat, amirite? The concept of Asia as a whole is pretty interesting and is something I’d never thought about before. He also discussed  other things about Ancient China, Korea, and Japan (i.e. economies, religions, social structure, etc.) We covered a lot of material in 2 lectures, so this summer will definitely be packed with condensed East Asian history. It seems more exciting to learn about this stuff since it’s about my “ancestors” and such; learning about all those white guys in US history and European history wasn’t quite as interesting for me. Prof Park also talked about tracing back mutations in DNA to see migration patterns of humans around thousands of years ago, which I thought was cool. Professor Park has the M122 marker, which is apparently very common in Asian men, so the common ancestor he shares with, say, a Spanish man with the M343 marker, existed around 40,000 years ago (see image below; you can find the common ancestor by finding the diverging point of 2 arrows and checking what color the point is with the legend). Apparently men can get their genes tested by ordering a kit from National Geographic and sending in a sample of cells from the inside of your cheek. Pretty cool stuff.

Tracking DNA mutations on the Y-chromosome and the migration patterns of these mutations. Biology is super cool omg
From: http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/2008-07/evolution_5.jpg

The other class I’m in – US & Asia – is a class about foreign policy between the US and Asia. I know next to nothing about foreign policy except that it’s policy regarding foreign countries (I’m really smart, I know). There are 16 students and one professor in the class; the only Caucasian person is the professor. Literally everyone else is Korean or Korean American (I think one kid might be half white half asian but I’m not 100% certain). Since some of the students aren’t from the US and understanding US foreign policy-making requires some background knowledge of the American government, we spent the first lecture reading the Constitution and Bill of Rights and very briefly discussing some American History. I wish I had paid more attention in Thad Merriman’s US History class in 11th grade, because my knowledge of this stuff is a bit shaky. The professor would ask the American students (maybe 50% of the class) questions about very general American history (i.e. when did the American revolution start adn end) and I felt like those were questions I should be able to answer but couldn’t remember. I haven’t formally learned about the American Revolution since 8th or 9th grade (if I’m remembering correctly) and it never really stuck in my brain. I felt ashamed as an American citizen but also none of the other American students knew or said the answer so I felt a little comforted in my ignorance. I can’t even blame it on my Korean heritage for this because I’ve never been to Korea before now and know even less about Korean government than I do about US government. So basically I’m just another ignorant American teenager. Heh. I think the class will get more interesting once we start talking about foreign policy of Asian countries and how international relations affects foreign policy making in both the US and in various Asian countries.

I haven’t been doing much these past few days because I’ve been trying to adjust to school life and such. Like last night I read 4 articles about East Asia, watched a Korean tv show, and went to sleep (at midnight! so early). Today (Thursday), my US & Asia class was cancelled because the professor went to Jeju Island for some big conference because the president of South Korea, Park Geun Hye (fun fact: she is the first female president of South Korea), is going to China, so he has to cover that for his actual job. Accordingly, Alice, Tiffany, Nicolette, and I decided to take advantage of our free afternoon. We went shopping at the Express Bus Terminal near Gangnam, which is this huuuuuge shopping center in the bus terminal. Everything is super cheap and you can bargain for most things so it’s an awesome place to check out if you’re lookin to save some money. I generally don’t buy clothes here because most Korean girls are approximately the size of a grasshopper, so I bought accessories and cosmetics/skincare stuff. I think I’ve bought like 8 jars of hair wax for my brothers/various other male relatives. We shopped for a few hours and then took the subway to the NoRyangJin (노량진) fish market!

The fish market was incredible. Oh my goodness. It was enormous and there were probably over 100 different vendors (mostly older women and men) selling fish, clams, shrimp, lobster, crabs, scallops, etc. We bought some fresh salmon, some sort of fish with clear meat (i think it was 과어 but I don’t really remember), giant scallops, and tiny live octopi. I ate something alive today. Omg. It was really really delicious and so fresh. We bought all of this for around $35 dollars for 4 people. Mmmmmmm.

The fish market! This was only one of about 6 or 7 rows in the whole market.

The biggest crustacean I’ve ever seen in my life. They were literally monsters.

For context (monster crabs are in the top left tank). There wer also freakishly huge lobsters right below the crabs.

Some of the octopi before we consumed 5 of them. You were delicious, octopus friends.

A veritable feast. Salmon, octopus, and fresh scallop sashimi. MMMMMM.

The octopus was really good. I thought I would be more freaked out by eating something that was still alive and squirming, but I got over it pretty quickly. The suckers got stuck to everything, but, luckily, not the inside of my mouth or throat. I think if that had happened, I would have been traumatized and less willing to eat it. We dipped it in this sauce that comprised of sesame oil, salt, and sesame seeds. Oh so good. If you ever come to Seoul, I highly recommend you visit this fish market. It really helps if you have someone who speaks and understands Korean fluently (Alice saved our butts because she knows Korean and could talk to the merchants), but it’s definitely possible to visit if you or your friends don’t know Korean; you might be ripped off if you’re a foreigner but it’s still really delicious and relatively cheap so it’d be like paying for this stuff in the States. Maybe. I’ve never bought seafood in the States so I don’t really know.

Live octopus. They were still moving even though they were cut up! 😮

I got back from dinner a few hours ago and am just hanging out in my room. Some of the girls in the program decided to go out but I’m really tired and we have to leave at 7:10 tomorrow morning to catch the bus to GyeongJu for our program field trip, so I decided to stay in. I’ve heard that GyeongJu is amazing, so I’m really excited to go!

That’s it for now! I’ll post again after my field trip this weekend!

안녕!

Back to Seoul + SNU

I’m currently sitting at my desk in my SNU (Seoul National University) dorm room! It’s super nice here; campus is beautiful and really big. There’s buses that run every few minutes that take you to the subway station or to a more populated/not-campus part of Seoul, so we can access the rest of the city pretty easily. The program I’m doing here is called Seoul National University International Summer Institute (ISI), and this year there’s over 500 students from all over the world. The program started just 7 years ago and the first year they did it they only offered 11 classes and I think only like 50 students participated. This year they’re offering 36 classes with faculty from universities around the world.

SNU campus is quite large.

My last day (Sunday) in Daegu was pretty uneventful. We left pretty early (11AM) because there’s supposedly a lot of traffic at the merging point of 2 major highways in Korea, so BK wanted to make sure we’d have enough time to take me to the co-op where I was staying for the night. BK told me to wake up at 8AM and that we’d leave his sister’s apartment by 9… but apparently he doesn’t really stick to these statements. He himself woke up at around 9:45 so we didn’t leave until 10:30. We ate breakfast and I took a selfie with So-Young before I left. BK’s sister kept telling So-Young that I was leaving and that I’m going back to America and she probably won’t see me for a long time…so she ran to the couch and hid under a blanket for 10 minutes. She was really cute and I’m glad we got to hang out! Bobby met her while he was in Korea 2 years ago but she didn’t remember him (sorry Bobs)

So-Young! So cute

English unni and So-Young ❤

We drove back to BK’s parents’s house to say goodbye. His mom gave me this gigantic bag of stuff to take home to my 할모니 and 할아버지 in Dallas and for my parents as well. She gave me these packages of various dehydrated things for my grandma; there’s a few packages of various types of dried fish as well as  a block of dried and compressed pepper flakes that looks and has a similar mass to a large stone. I’m not sure how I’m going to manage to bring all of it back (especially because I’m gonna be going home from China, and someone told me it’s harder to bring foodstuffs from China to the US) so I might just mail it before I leave. At 11 BK and his wife drove me back to the co-op where all the other Penn-In-Seoul people have been staying for the internship period. I had to pay for my room but it was like $60 for a night and I got a nice big bed and a room to myself so I wasn’t gonna complain. Before I went back to the co-op, BK and HyunJi took me to lunch. We ate budae-jjigae (부대찌개), which is like spicy ramen with literally everything in it. Koreans started making it during the Korean War (I think) when Americans gave them cans of spam to eat since it doesn’t have to be refrigerated and probably lasts forever. They made ramen with spam and hot dogs and kimchi and ddeok (ricecakes) and bacon and so many other things. The kind we ate didn’t have bacon but instead had really thin pork belly (samgyeopsal 삼겹살). It sounds kind of gross but it was really tasty.

Budae jjigae aka army stew (budae means army). So delicious.

After I got back and deposited all of my stuff in my room, I went to HongDae with Mawunyo and Patty to eat an early dinner and then we went on a cruise on the Han River! The cruise was from 7:30 to 9:00 PM, so it got pretty chilly and windy by the end. We reached a bridge and there was a cool water/light show. I guess it happens every 30 minutes, so we were lucky to be there for it. It seemed like a waste of water/electricity but like it was pretty so it didn’t matter. heh.

예쁘다~

2013: The Summer of Selfies

the moon is orange here just fyi

Han river night cruise wooo

Kooooorrreeeeeaaaaa

After we docked, some of us decided to go out to a bar in HongDae. We stayed out pretty late, and some of them wanted to go to 노래방 (karaoke) afterwards, but I wasn’t really feeling well (plus I really don’t like singing) so I took a cab back to the co-op. I got back at like 2AM and bought a giant bottle of water and some kimbab at a store across from the co-op. I was staaaarving when I got back and I really wanted Korean food but I’m not confident enough in my Korean to order over the phone, plus I didn’t have the phone numbers of any nearby restaurants. I tried to order food online but a combination of factors (i.e. my lack of Korean-reading-abilities and my mental state at the time) really made the process difficult, so I gave up after an hour of scouring the internet for Korean delivery places in Seoul.

We left for SNU the next afternoon at 1:30PM. It took about an hour to drive to SNU’s campus, which is somewhere in the mountains really close to the center of Seoul. I thought I had escaped the mountains when I left Anseong but I guess my destiny was to live in the mountains for 9 weeks while I’m here. Luckily there’s approximately 817239582374 more things to do here than in Anseong so I won’t die of boredom. When we got here we checked in, got a free shirt and zip-up hoodie, and signed up for field trips. There’s a trip to GyeongJu (a really old and palace-y city near the coast) this weekend which I’ll be going to, and then there’s a trip to the broadcasting station SBS to watch a rehearsal of the music show Inkigayo (!!!!!!! so excited for this) and a tour of the station, and a Seoul city tour. I’m really excited for all the field trips because they’re things I would want to do but probably wouldn’t be able to do by myself or like with family. While here I also have to find time between studying and these trips to meet up with a lot of family on both my mom’s side and my dad’s side. I already met with most if not all of my dad’s relatives that I was supposed to meet so now I have to meet with Ruby’s relatives. I’ve met some of them before so I’m looking forward to seeing them again. I’ve literally never met some of my dad’s relatives but they were all kind of arguing over whose apartment/house I’d stay at while I was in Daegu so I think there was a little bit of tension while I visited. They were all really nice though, and I’m glad they took the time to see me!

On a different note, classes officially start tomorrow. I’m taking East Asia: Past and Present and US & Asia. I kind of wanted to take Korean Language but I’m taking it in the fall at Penn and I wouldn’t get credit for it here. I’m really excited though because I’ve never taken a class specifically about Asian history or Asian international affairs and it seems really interesting. All of the Penn kids are taking the East Asia class together so that should be interesting. Apparently each year the American students are super aggressive when participating in class discussion and all the other international kids are really quiet. Typical.

Everyone I’ve met who’s not from Penn has been really nice. We’ve befriended some girls from The Netherlands who live on our floor, so we’ve been hanging out with them these past few days. I’m looking forward to making a lot of international friends these next 5 weeks! wooooo

Anywho, that’s all for now. It’s been a while since I last posted… I’ll try to be better about posting more often.

안녕!

Daegu + Family Fun Part 3

I’ve made it to Daegu! All of the Kang clan either is here or is from here. I spent the day meeting various Kang aunts and cousins and cousins’ kids and babies and so on. It was quite hectic. I woke up at 6:45 to leave from Seoul and, since I got back from the 2PM concert (see my last post for more details) at around 12:30 and didn’t sleep until around 2:00am, I was so exhausted. We were supposed to leave at 7:30 but as it turns out BK and HyunJi overslept a little so we left at around 8:00am. We got kimbab before we left and hit the road.

nomnomnomnom kimbab for breakfast

Now, when taking family road-trips, I’m used to only stopping once. Like when my family drives from Pittsburgh to New Jersey to visit my mom’s sister’s family, we usually only stop once or twice during the whole 7 hour drive. The drive from Seoul to Daegu is about 3.5 hours, so I was expecting to just drive straight there without stopping. But about 40 minutes into the trip we stopped at a gas station to go to the bathroom and stuff. I’m not sure if they stopped because they needed to or because they thought I needed to… I was sleeping soundly in the back seat though. Maybe I was giving off some sign that I had to pee while taking my early morning nap. I like never have to go to the bathroom though (with the exception of the plane ride from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, as described in my very first post) and when flying from San Francisco to Seoul I didn’t go to the bathroom once (11 hours!), so 40 minutes was literally nothing. I didn’t complain though. We stopped again though after another hour to go to the bathroom again…It was a little weird but again I didn’t say anything. I think they were just trying to be considerate. Or they need to use the restroom a lot. Either way I’m in no position to judge.

BK and HyunJi are really cute together. They tease each other a lot and have little arguments here and there but I think that’s pretty normal. She’ll jokingly threaten to beat BK up and he’ll turn to me and say “please tell American family that she treats me like this” or “she is so violent, it’s crazy.” It’s pretty funny. Sometimes when I’m with them I feel like I’m an awkward third wheel but like everything I do is awkward so I got used to it pretty quickly. She does a lot of aegyo (애교), which is this super Korean way that girls try to act cute. I personally think it’s ridiculous and I can’t do it very well but it’s like….I actually can’t even describe it. It’s like a mix of baby talk and extreme flirting. HyunJi is all about the aegyo and talks with a babyish voice a lot. It suits her though. If I ever tried to talk like that and someone heard me I think I’d be deported.

Right now I’m at BK’s sister’s apartment. Her apartment is reeeaaally nice and I think it would have cost a medium-large fortune had it been in Seoul but because it’s in Daegu I think it might have been less outrageously expensive. I might be wrong though. Maybe they’re really rich and just I have no idea. Either way, I’m just glad to have a bed mat to sleep on. Everything here is Hello Kitty since they have 2 very young daughters, So-Young (who Bobby met while in Korea 2 years ago) and…the other one (I asked her what her name is but she’s a small infant and didn’t answer me). So-Young and I have hit it off and now she either calls me “English-unni” or “Jenny unni” (unni is what a girl calls an older girl whose like an older sister). Usually I repel children and children repel me so I’m not sure what happened today but it was pretty fun. We played with bubbles and a water gun that we got for like 40 cents at the market. HyunJi said I’ll make a great mom and I almost keeled over and died after she said it. No one’s ever said that to me before since I’m usually painfully awkward around small children. Whenever I think about the prospect of being a mother I always pity the poor future child that gets me as one of its parents. In these fictitious situations I also almost always see myself handing the child over to my mom all day every day until it’s time for it to go to college (sorry, Rubes).

One of my older relatives told So-Young at first to call me ahjumma (which sort of has the connotation of being a middle-aged woman) and it really freaked me out. I never felt so old in my entire life. I quickly said that I don’t like being called ahjumma and that made them all laugh… but like it’s true. What 19 year old girl wants to be called something that is usually a title for women who are 40+? Not me, no thank you.

Me and unnamed-baby-no-name (she has a name, I’m just stupid and can’t remember it)

My Hello-Kitty sleeping accommodations for the night. is cute, no?

I met BK’s parents, JinTae and his wife (also whose name I did not catch… I don’t think they actually told me her name so I don’t feel as bad about not knowing it). JinTae is the head of the Kang family, which is super legit. I guess he and BK are responsible for taking care of all the ancestral Kang stuff, which dates back to the Joseon dynasty (I might be wrong but like the Joseon dynasty was from 1392 to 1897 so it seems like a safe window of time). Apparently their house has looked exactly the same for the past 30 years. Spooky. I hung out there for a while and then I went on an aunt-visiting tour. Actually that’s an overstatement; I just met 2 aunts. But I met MyungJa gomo, who is the oldest of my dad’s generation of Kangs (I think). She has a really bad back and couldn’t walk without a walker. She seems lively though. She gave me a red envelope with money in it as “allowance for when I’m in China” in August so that was really sweet of her. After visiting her I went to see Myung-Ok gomo, who is the 3rd oldest. I’ve met one of her sons JeungKi multiple times and her other son JeungHo picked me up from the airport here. I didn’t realize she was their mom until maybe 15 minutes after I got there though and when she found that out she called me stupid (바보, pronounced bah-boh to be precise).

While visiting all these relative I also distributed various gifts to them that my mom had me buy before coming here. I felt like Santa Claus… except, like, female and Asian and young. And instead of bringing toys to children I was bringing wrinkle cream and vitamins to old Korean women. Close enough though.

After these aunt visits, I went back to BK’s parents house to hang out and eat dinner. This is when I befriended Soh-Young. She got over her initial shyness and started hugging my legs and calling me English-unni and stuff like that. Of course I speak virtually no Korean so it was a little bit hard to communicate with her, but our Korean speaking abilities were at the closest levels compared to anyone else I’ve met here so maybe that’s why I got along with her. We played with water gun and bubbles and walked around the neighborhood. I think I’m starting to get over my fear/dislike/allergy of children.

Anyway, that’s all that happened today. I’ll post again when I have wi-fi or if something interesting/dangerous/cool happens. I’m starting my classes at Seoul National University on Monday! Wooo! Now I’ll actually be in a large, modern city! Now I can do some real shopping. hehehehe. If you want me to bring you back anything (i.e. makeup or skincare stuff or hair products (men’s hair wax is quite nice here) or kpop stuff or anything else that is exclusively Korean) just let me know! I’m planning on buying another smaller suitcase because I already know that my stuff won’t fit in the baggage I brought with me.

That’s all for now! Happy weekend!

안녕!