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!
Seoul Adventures 