I must admit: my day started quite unexpectedly: woken up by kids doing morning exercise at the Elementary school visible from our small terrace (yes we have a terrace: it’s awesome and the kids are so cute).
Look! Aren’t they just cute! It looked like a flash mob, very cute. I don’t mind waking up because of this every morning.
Yesterday evening I met my room-mate. Her name is Kiki and she is from Hong Kong. She speaks some English so we communicate in English and Korean (sometimes) and she is very nice. She likes korean music and dramas as much as I do and likes to have fun so I must say that today was also very fun and interesting, many thanks to her (언니 사랑해요 ~!).
Woken up by the kid’s morning exercise, we slowly prepared ourself and headed over to the examination room with another Hong Kong-nese friend that my room-mate had met the previous day. We had to take one written and one (very quick) oral exam. My two friends got in the first class: 1A and I got into the second class: 1B. The final results from our test will be out on Wednesday and then we will be put into classes and start the lessons. Excited!
After the test we all decided to go to Jamsil together, that is a place where Lotte World (a famous attraction parc) is situated. Lokty Lok (the other Hong Kong-nese girl) had to go there to get some JYJ merchandise because she is going to their concert in Busan this weekend. For all of my readers that don’t know JYJ: they are three famous korean singers.
We took the metro and I was lucky that my room-mate had an additional T-card (a card that allows you to take the metro and buses in Seoul without buying tickets) so I didn’t have to buy one, but only put money on it. As soon as we arrived we were lost and had to ask for directions: that’s how big it is. But somehow we managed to find Lotte World in the mid of all the chaos and took a picture together. ❤
Lokty, Kiki (my room-mate) and me in front of Lotte World.
Kiki and I have promised each other that we will go into Lotte World someday before I leave to play around and have fun, today we didn’t have the time for it because Lokty had to go home to prepare everything for tomorrow where she leaves for Busan, in the South of South Korea, Seoul, where we currently are, is in the North of South Korea.
We made our way through the Lotte department store and found what we were looking for: a place called STAR AVENUE. It is a place where things that Korean celebrities have used are exhibited (like stage clothes, clothes from a film, motorcycle from a film, etc.) with their handprints.
We made our way to it and I took pictures of three of the exhibitions: Rain, Jang Keun Suk and Big Bang! My room-mate went crazy over the one with Rain (who is very famous all over Asia). It turns out that she had met Rain personally and shook his hands only three days earlier! What a lucky girl.
The hand prints. To the left: Big Bang. Top right: my room mate’s hand against Rain’s and lastly my hand against T.O.P’s from Big Bang. (Yes, we had a lot of fun with that and somehow spent over half an hour looking at four different installations…)
We ended up having a conversation with the guy on the picture at the bottom right (in front of the big poster with music group: 2PM) about wether 2PM or Song Seung Hun (a famous korean actor who was on a poster on the other wall) was better. We got into a bit of a fight over it an he ended up asking for a picture with us and dragged us into a very expensive shop (I think it might have been Luis Vitton) to get a nice background: we were dumbfounded, but laughed a lot over it afterwards.
We made our way to the tenth floor and Lokty bought some JYJ merchandise and I bought my first BB cream! Now is the time for me to explain this Korean wonder product to you: BB cream is any lazy fasionaista’s dream! It is a make up that looks like foundation in the bottle but when you put it on it looks very natural and there is no need for any other make-up (apart from BB cream, eyeshadow, eye-liner and mascara): no need for Foundation, conceiler or powder: all you need is BB cream. Korea’s magical make-up.
After spending time there we made our way to another part of Seoul so my room-mate could buy a second-hand Korean phone so she could call her parents home in Hong Kong. Lokty left soon after that to prepare for her trip the next day and Kiki and me made our way to a korean restuarant. We were starving! It was already 4pm when we realised that we hadn’t eaten lunch yet so that ended up being our lunner (lunch and dinner). I got bimbimpap, a famous traditional korean meal that I always wanted to try. You get a hot put with rice and a lot of vegtables on the top and then a rice on top of that and some red spicy sauce on the side to put on top and then you mix it all together and eat it with a spoon. Yum! It was so good! And I didn’t feel hungry again until late at night where we both ate some Korean rice cakes that we had gotten for free the previous day at the university, and that too was very nice.
We made our way back to Ewha Woman’s University (prnounced E (like the letter) -wha) and went down a very nice and cool shopping street right outside the university to buy some necessities like towels, hand soap, etc. We have ended up buying a lot of things together and sharing the price like Toilet paper, soap, shampoo, conditioner, noodle bowl (so we can make noodles in the microwave since we aren’t allowed to cook in the dormitory) and so on. Oh the benefits of having a room-mate: everything comes out cheaper.
Apparently Hong Kong is a very cheap place because my friends told me that everything was expensive in Korea but when I compare with European prices everything is the same almost, sometimes cheaper here (often poor quality clothes and shoes). The most expensive thing I’ve found yet is fruit, which comes out at the same price as fruit in Denmark: about 4500 won which is about 20 DK and 2,50 pounds for a pack of strawberries. Otherwise everything is pretty affordable for me.
Campus Complex. It’s huge and has everything! We still haven’t walked through all of it only through one level and we already discovered a Chinese Restaurant, a small convenience store, two cafés (including one Starbucks) and a huge Gym (only for students so only for girls). It’s very pretty and the architecture very modern and fresh. what is more it is right in front of the main entrance and the enormous stairs at the end of the complex make it look very very impressive.
What I bought today. From left to right: pre-BB cream moisturiser, BB cream, a cute pig bath scrub, a bowl for washing my face with a cute butterfly at the bottom, a cute cup with a lid (that I thought was handy if I ever decided to get some coffee, that way it stays warm), a bowl for microwaving food, a small lunch box set (meals at restaurants here are so big and have so many side-dishes that it is almost impossible to finish it all so this way we can save the food in the lunch box and eat it later so we only need to buy breakfast a lunch every day) and a Korean chopstick and spoon set. It is all very Peng, Ling, Cheng as we say in Cantonese (yes she is teaching me a few cantonese things): It means everything cute, beautiful and cheap = all the best.
Well that is me calling in from Seoul, South Korea after my first day adventuring in this country that I still has a lot to learn from.
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Small bonus: This is something I got on my plane yesterday as i was flying into Beijing. If I had had to stay in Beijing city I would have had to fill in some informations on it before entering the country, but I didn’t. So the only reason that I kept it was because what was written on the back made me laugh:
After a while I suddenly realised that what they meant by aliens was foreigners… Aïe, Aïe. Aïe.