Dongdaemun

This day was an interesting one lol. BC was busy today, so we were left to fend for ourselves in the Korean wilderness without his translation. Our plan for the day was to go to Dongdaemun, a big shopping area. So we made it there with no problem... but most of the shops were closed on Mondays. We did end up going into one building called Hello APM, and there were many floors filled with all types of different clothes vendors. This area is known for these merchants and haggling is a must. However, we were pretty unsuccessful with that. I asked for the price of a dress but the merchant told me to try it on. So I did, and it was pretty cute... but it was $75!! I said I would pay $30 for it and she looked at me, pushed me in the "changing corner", and yanked down the zipper of the dress lol. No success there. It was pretty similar at some of the other stalls and we were shooed away when we asked for lower prices. We decided to leave and come back another day when things were actually open, so we headed back to the subway to go to Hongdae for a bit. Where we ended up was not Hongdae lol. We took he wrong train and ended up somewhere random, so we just walked around for a bit before heading back to our place near Seoul Station. We had a change of plans and went back to Myeongdong and explored what seemed to be every alley there. Also, we stumbled across a man making this Korean dessert I saw on YouTube. It's pretty much honey and malt boiled together and hardened, and he stretches it into 16,000+ strands and wraps almond or walnut inside it. He wasn't as exciting as the one on YouTube, but it was cool to watch! I bought some because I had to after seeing it lol.

It was getting late so we headed back and met up with BC at our place. Our next activity- NRB! Otherwise known as karaoke lol. Fun stuff, I think we were all close to losing our voices. Then, we wandered around Hongdae for the last time and had some street food for a late night meal. We came across some street performers later, two students playing saxophone and guitar. We chilled and talked to them for a few hours... super late night but it was fun!

Spa and R16 Round 2!

So all of the blogs after this point are being posted and/or written after I have already returned... lol. Blogging while in Asia didn't exactly work out...

Bright and early, at 10am, we woke up and went to.... another Korean spa! This one was called Dragon Hill Spa and it is one of the more famous spas. It was really big and had a lot of different things to do. There were also way more people at this one. In the sauna area, there were a lot more tubs and there were even outdoor ones! It is interesting to be naked outside lol. After the usual showering and bathing, we all met up outside in the co-ed areas and suffered through really hot and cold rooms together. There was a hot salt room with salt rocks all over the ground. It was painful to walk on, but not too bad to lay on. We tried covering our legs with burning salt but that was a bit unbearable. After some hot and cold switches, we had a snack of tea and hard boiled eggs. The eggs were black, I don't really know why but it was good. We also had a sweet rice drink after withstanding a burning room and it was very refreshing. Upon entering the ice room, the drink froze lol.

Next, we played around in the arcade for a bit. I tried to play Pump It Up, which is like weird Korean DDR with all the arrows in the wrong places. Too intense. After our spa day, we headed out to get some lunch! We took a bus and walked around the Han River kind of, but it was flooded from the rain so we couldn't walk along it. For lunch, we went to a Chinese-Korean restaurant. It was quite delicious! We came for the jjajangmyun, which was good, but I really liked the red spicy noodle soup! We made it back to our place afterwards and got ready for another night of R16!

Back at R16, we found that they ran out of tickets. But we were given free tickets to some unpopular seats or something, so we still got in. Tonight was only crew battles of breaking, while the day before was solo battles of breaking, popping, and locking. Sorry CS if I am writing everything wrong lol. I have no idea what count as good and bad but all of them were super cool. I didn't know people could be so bendy, and they also did a lot of interesting things like jumping on each other or being attached to each other while doing some very crazy things. I don't know how to describe it lol.

After R16, there was an after party at Club Able. We made our way to the area and looked for something to eat. There were also a lot of other foreigners in the area for the after party too. At the actual club, it wasn't really very crowded. Dumbfounded and Jay Park did a couple songs, but when they left the crowd also got much smaller lol.

Day 3

Ahhh I'm so behind on blogs because there's no wifi in Japan!! But that will be for another entry.

Day 3! 7/13/13

I'm writing this a day late and I've already forgotten what I've done haha. We started out the morning with a lunch of fermented soy bean paste stew and chicken soup. It was a special day, something similar to a summer solstice. On this day however, you are supposed to eat chicken soup to strengthen your stamina! After restoring our HP, we hit up a cafe- the Hello Kitty Cafe!

The cafe was very pink, as you can see in the pictures. I got a green tea latte and tiramisu. Nothing special, but it was indeed very cute. After our Hello Kitty adventure, we walked through some of the streets of Hongdae and looked through some of the shops. However, we needed to move out of our place to a different one in Yongsan. Our hosts picked us up and we arrived at our new home for four days near Seoul station. It is cute, but pretty small. Then, onto the big event of the night- R16!

R16 is a bboy worldwide competition in which bboys and bgirls from around the world battle each other. Although I don't really know anything about breakdancing, it was super cool! It was exciting to watch, but it was also tiring because we stood for more than four hours. I learned a lot about different styles too. And then... CS lost his wallet! But it was found luckily. It was raining a lot so we took a taxi back, and he dropped us off in some alleyways that were supposed to have good food. After strolling through some pretty sketch alleys, we found a restaurant and got seafood pancake, pigs feet or something like that, kimbap, ddeokbaki, and some stew. Then, we went home to rest and did face masks!

Myeongdong

Day #2! 7/12/13

The first thing I learned after waking up and going out is that nothing is open in the morning! We looked for food in the morning but most places didn't open until 12pm. So we ended up going to a 24 hour cafe to chill for a bit while we waited for BC to show up. Poor planning on our part, because he had no wifi but had a Korean phone number, but we only had wifi and no Korean phone service lol. Korean coffee is pretty normal tasting, nothing too bad or amazing. CS got pat bing soo and it was pretty good.

After meeting up with BC, we wandered off to get some food in Hongdae. Korean pizza! They like to put sweet potato on their pizza. The onwards to our next destination- Myeongdong!

We took the public transportation to get there, good thing BC was there because we would never have been able to navigate there. So much make up in Myeongdong! Much to soon I noticed I only had a dollar left in my wallet. The store people stood outside of their shops, yelling things in Korean and holding samples to get you to come in. There were multiples of many stores too so I kept thinking we were backtracking. After loading up on make up, we went to get a snack of some Korean foods that I don't know what they were called. It was really good, and they had the most intense kimchi I have ever eaten. I could not handle it lol. 

After a few hours of wandering Myeongdong in the rain and feeling gross, we headed back to Hongdae and returned to.... Hongdae Happy Day Spa! Now I could get naked with ease haha. We met up in the co-ed part and went in rooms of varying temperatures. There was an ice room that wasn't that cold... until after we melted in a burning room with hot rocks on the ground. There were a couple hot rooms and I learned how life is for a pizza in the oven. One room was so hot that it felt like my face was burning. We went back to shower again after all that sweating and went back to our place relaxed, ready for a long night out in Hongdae.

Which didn't happen lol. But we got fried chicken! It was pretty good. Still a fun night!

Spa Time

On my first day here with hours to kill before everyone else arrived, I decided to go to a Korea spa! Hongdae Happy Day Spa was just a few minutes walking down the street for me so I went in with a goal in mind- getting a naked scrub down by an ajumma. And I did it! It was quite an interesting experience...

So I walked in and paid 7000 won for use of all the baths and showers and stuff. I got a key for a shoe locker, put my shoes in, and proceeded to the clothes locker. And then I stood awkwardly in front of it for a while. I saw a naked old lady when I walked in, but there weren't very many people so I had nobody to follow example. I eventually took off my clothes except my undies and started wandering around, when an old lady in undies pointed at the shower/baths area and gestured for me to get naked lol. So I did as told, and ventured into the showers. There were some standing showers, but most of them were short ones where you sit on a stool. It was quite strange, I didn't really know what to do lol. I scrubbed down a little bit and then went to go sit in one of the hot baths. There were a few ladies over there and I was looking around awkwardly to not see them. One girl started to get a body scrub- my number one goal for the day! It's kinda weird though cuz she is getting scrubbed in this slightly closed off area, but still open for everyone to see. Her friend went and stood there and talked to her while she was getting scrubbed too....

I still didn't really know what to do at this time, so I just wandered from bath to bath. There were two hot ones, a lukewarm one, and a cold one. It actually feels pretty good going back and forth from hot and cold! There was a sauna room but I walked in for 5 seconds and decided it was too hot lol. After soaking for a bit, I wandered back outside and told a lady that I wanted to get a body scrub. I really should've learned some basic Korean phrases because that was so difficult lol. She had to go to her purse to pull out the amount of money that I needed to pay, I was so confused! So i gave her 20,000 won for a body scrub (and also shampoo but I didn't know I agreed to that lol) and she took it in to the ajumma doing the scrubbing. The ajumma signaled at me to go shower and sit in the tubs, so I did back and forth showering and bathing for a while. Eventually.... it was my turn!

It's super gross thinking about how much germs you share with other people there lol. I laid on a plastic table while she scrubbed me vigorously with rough mittens. It probably would've hurt, but I was kind of used to the feeling because I have a Japanese shower scrubby thing that feels the same. But it was crazy! She scrubbed off so much dead skin, it was like I was surrounded by giant pencil shavings. She maneuvered me around to scrub me very very thoroughly everywhere. After losing a pound of skin, she lathered me up and poured a bucket of water on me. Next was the shampooing. It had a nice peppermint smell and made me want to eat Andes mints. Then my head became very menthol-y feeling, it was very strange having a cold head and warm everything else lol. After she clawed at my head in a kinda good but kinda painful way, she released me to the showers. I rinsed off, ready to get out of there because my portable wifi ran out of battery. I took my naked self back to the lockers but reached a problem... they only gave me one towel but I used it to shower. So I kind of dried off with a wet towel, but it was kind of okay since it was hot and I was already getting dry. I didn't want to push my sign language skills today and ask for another one, since nobody else had one either. I think the hair dryer cost 1000 won to use so I just walked out looking like a crazy person with wet hair and strolled back to my place. I didn't have time to check out the co-ed part, so hopefully I'll get to go to another Korea spa before I leave! Goal #1, Korean Spa and Body Scrub, achieved!

To Korea!

I am bored on the plane so I am pre-writing this blog! I got to LAX around 5am and did all the usual flying business. KOed before takeoff like usual. From LA, I had a layover in SF and finally made my way onto my 12 hour flight. It wasn't too bad, I slept for about half of it and watched some movies while I was awake. Too bad the plane doesn't have individual TV screens =(. I don't know why I bothered taking pictures of airplane food but I am too accustomed to taking pictures of everything I eat haha. I also learned how to maneuver over sleeping middle seat people without waking up. I felt like a spy trying not to trip those laser alarms lol. I have also begun my cultural immersion by listening to the K-pop and J-pop music on the plane! There are still about 2 hours left before I land... I still need to fill out the customs form because I said I was Korean while I was sleeping and now my form is in Korean haha. Time to play some more iPad games!

Okay, I arrived! Took a while to get to our place. After some confusion with what train I was supposed to take, I eventually got on it and went for about an hour to get to Hongdae. Our hosts, Jay and Mr. Bang, eventually found me and took me up to the room. Cool thing is that they have a portable wifi device so we can take it around with us. It's a little ghetto looking here but it's clean, and it's close to everything. I walked outside for a little bit and it's so exciting! Looks kind of like NYC with a lot of Korean kids running around. Theres a lot of little clothes shops, food shops, cafes, and music playing everywhere. I can't wait to explore it more when everyone gets here! I had a snack at some random food shop called Hong Cup lol, it was fried chicken and rice cake... and two tater tots lol. I got soy garlic flavor, it was pretty good. Then my next destination, the Korean spa!

Getting Ready in Style

Only a few more hours before I head to the airport! In preparation for my trip, my dear art teacher Ms. Kim took me to get my nails done... my first mani pedi! I am horrible at picking colors, took forever haha. Looks cute enough though! Too bad my feet will always be ugly, I cannot bear to post a picture lol. I have one sparkly nail! They are gel polish so it should last for 2+ weeks. I will see if they can withstand Asia.