지난 주

So, it has been over a week since I last posted. I really have no excuse this time sans laziness. I'll try to make up for it by writing a lot in this post though.

So last weekend, I essentially did nothing. It started out as me trying to relax and get some homework done, but then just kind of turned into me being apathetic and experiencing wave-two of culture shock. And not the fun kind like in wave-one, where I just thought everything was super cool. This time I just kind of sat in my room for two days, not really wanting to do anything. It was strange, because I've never felt like that while travelling before, normally I'm just excited all the time and trying to make the most out of it. But then again, this has been the most drastic change I've had while travelling. I can't help but stand out here, and there's nothing I can do to even remotely try to blend in, which is new for me. It's also new for me to have to use a language that's not my own so often. Other places I've gone, most of the people know at least some English, and there are plenty of tourists so I hear English being spoken around me constantly. Here, I'm just constantly bombarded by Korean. Which I love and is the whole reason I signed up for this, but I guess wore on me a bit more than I'd realized. I'm totally over it now, and a little embarrassed to think about how I felt at the time. I had kind of pictured my self as this person who loves travelling, and I do, and I thought homesickness would never happen to me, because it hadn't before. Not when I went to Germany, not when I went to Italy, not when I decided to go to a college 5 hours away from home and only see my friends and family during the holidays. But Korea has been nothing like any other travelling I've done. But it's been absolutely fantastic. And I'm totally over the homesickness thing now, which is great, because I only have two weeks left to soak up Korea!

For lunch on Monday, I went to a Ddeokbokki (sweet and spicy rice cakes) place with Ana. You could order different things to be in the ddeokbokki and it cooked at the table. We had ours with vegetables, ramen, cheese, and sweet potato dumplings. The second we walked in, the woman working beamed at the sight of me. After Ana placed our order (originally without cheese), she looked at me and asked in Korean if we wanted cheese too. So we said sure. She then looked at me again and asked if it would be too spicy for me. Ana, knowing how much I love spicy food, assured her I'd be fine. She brought it out to the table in a pot with a serving spoon, and actually spooned it into my bowl for me, smiling and saying things to me in Korean that I couldn't quite catch. She constantly came over to our table, which is strange in Korea because the restaurant staff normally only come when you call them, and would pat my back or shoulder and ask me if I like the food in Korean. If I responded in Korean, she would giggle and leave the table with a huge grin. Although the water and cabbage were self service, she brought them for us and made sure we had refills. Ana told me she was very excited to have a foreigner in her restaurant. I've noticed that it's pretty common to be seen as exciting here, though certainly not everywhere. But there have been plenty of times where I've walked into a store, been weakly greeted by the owner whose back is turned, responded in my obviously non-native Korean, only to have them turn around, surprised, and then smile and bow and greet me more excitedly. Although it does add to the feeling of not fitting in here, I'm happy to be mostly accepted rather than disliked as an American foreigner as I may be in other places.
After classes on Monday, I met up with some people to go to dinner, specifically to go to Miss Lee Cafe in Hyehwa. It was a very cutesy sort of cafe, that specialized in desserts and "Doshirak", or Korean style lunch boxes. The cafe was covered in notes patrons had written and hung up, which was really neat. We all got the lunchboxes, with were metal containers filled with rice, kimchi, meat, vegetables, and egg, which we were to close and shake to mix the contents before eating. It was a cool experience, but I didn't think the food itself was anything spectacular. Afterwards, we all wrote our own notes in our native languages and hung them up around the restaurant, and went back to Anam.

Tuesday, Ana and I decided to take the subway to Apgujung for lunch, thinking a change of scenery would be nice. It ended up being a very rushed trip, considering we only had two hours and it took about 35 minutes to get there. We arrived, ate at a chain bibimbap restaurant Ana wanted to try called Bibigo, which reminded me of chipotle in the US, but with bibimbap instead of burritos, and then left. We walked the opposite direction of which we came from the subway, thinking there was another station at the end of the long street and it would give us the opportunity to do some site seeing on our way out, but we were wrong and had to turn around and rush back, which took about 25 minutes. We ended up being late for our next class, though only by about five minutes, my professor was still taking attendance when I walked in so, other than the fact that I absolutely loath being late for anything and it bothered me on a personal level, I was fine.

Wednesday, it was sweltering out. Well, it'd been hot that whole week, but that day was especially bad. We stopped in a Naengmyeon, cold noodles, restaurant for lunch hoping to battle the heat. Apparently, lots of other people had the same idea because it was packed. We grabbed the last three seats in the restaurant and a line began to build up out the door behind us. The people working there were frantic, ordering that we speak faster when we were telling them what we wanted to eat and running back and forth from the kitchen to the table. I had Bibimnaengmyun, cold noodles with hot pepper paste.  It was definitely refreshing on the hot day. We then went to a study room in a commons area of the university and I prepared for my Korean Mass Media and Popular Culture test that day, which I think I did okay on, though it hasn't been graded yet.  For dinner, a group of us went to a jjambong (spicy seafood noodles) and mandu (dumplings) restaurant, then went to a cafe. I had a total epiphany moment at the cafe, where I realized just how oversized everything in the US is. One of my friends was drinking a small cappuccino, and I realized that I don't think they even make disposable cups that small anywhere I've been in the states. And the larges here are what would easily be considered a small in the US. I thought back to ordering large iced coffees and such in the US, and how obscenely large that would be seen as here. It'll definitely be strange coming back to that for a bit.

Thursday, for lunch Ana and I ate Seolleongtang, a somewhat bland ox-bone broth soup with meat and rice in it, that you're supposed to add green onion, salt, and kimchi to until the flavor is to your liking. It was actually really tasty once I added stuff to it, and the kimchi was by far the best I'd ever had, which Ana said was because it's a really important element of a good Seolleongtang restaurant. For dinner that day, everyone had places to be the next day so needed something quick. I recommended we just grab some kimbap (Korean style "sushi") at a kimbap restaurant on the way and they agreed. Of course, when we arrived I was the only one who actually ordered Kimbap, and, also knowing the most Korean out of the group, had to translate the menu and place most of the orders. Then they were out of some of the stuff, and I had to act as the middleman between the woman working the restaurant and the rest of the group, of which I did a crappy but manageable job. We all ate, I collected everyone's money and paid. She told me in Korean that I was 1,000w (a little less than $1) short, and, not wanting to bother trying to argue in Korean, handed over the money. Once we were about three shops down the road, she came running out of the restaurant and up to me, handing the money back and explaining she'd miscounted. It was pretty funny, but I thought it was sweet that she chased us down to return a dollar.

Friday, I took the subway for about 45 minutes and met Ana at COEX mall, the largest underground shopping mall in Asia. And it was indeed gigantic. There were so many shops and restaurants, I don't think we even saw half of them. We wanted to see the new Batman movie, so we went and bought the tickets first. The theater was so large that you had to take a number to buy a ticket, then wait for it to pop up to go up to the register. Also, when you buy the tickets, you pick your seats before hand, which was pretty neat.
We shopped for an hour or so, I bought a necklace but that's it, and then we ate some dinner and went to the movie. Because we had assigned seats, there wasn't any need to arrive super early. We did, however, have to arrive at least on time, because in Korea they play commercials (product commercials, not movie trailers) until the advertised movie starting time, then immediately play the movie. The movie was in English, but with Korean subtitles, which I couldn't help but reading. Although I couldn't understand most of them, it was cool to see how they translated English phrases into Korean when I could understand (Example; "Not bad. Not bad at all." became in Korean "괜찮아요. 아주 괜찮아요/It's alright. It's very alright"). Afterwards, we decided to go walk around Gangnam station, which was three subway stops away. It was packed with people, but cool to see. The streets were permeated by the smells of sewage water (fairly common, even in Anam) and trash (less common), and were packed with nightclubs, bars, and noraebangs. There were tons of people handing out cards urging to visit which ever place they were trying to promote, and the ground was littered with fliers advertising for everything from restaurants to prostitutes. The prostitute ones admittedly shocked me; when I looked down to see a photo of a nude, spread-eagled Korean woman under my foot I was completely taken off guard. I asked Ana and she said prostitution is illegal in Korea, but they advertise them as "kissing-rooms" and can get away with it. We stopped to eat some green tea Bingsoo (even at 10pm, it was so hot out), then just walked around for a while before deciding to head back to our respective homes.

Today, I've been trying to get some homework and stuff out of the way, and just generally relaxing. Tomorrow, I have to meet with a group from my Korean Mass Media class to begin work on our group paper, so hopefully that works out okay. And hopefully I'll blog more frequently for the remaining two weeks of the trip!!

Even more pictures than usual follow!

Ddeokbokki cooking at the table

Ddeokbokki, with ramen, veggies, cheese, fish cake, and sweet potato dumplings.

Busy subway on the way to Hyehwa.

Hyehwa

The boys of the group looking super excited to be at such a girly cafe.

The notes hanging everywhere

Doshirak, pre-shaking

Doshirak, post-shaking

Our notes! From left to right/top to bottom: Ming (from Singapore but wrote in Korean), Torkel's very long note in Swedish, Leon's note in stereotypical British English, Peter's note in Dutch, my boring American English note, Philomena's (from China, but wrote in English) really amazing note/drawing, and Polly's (from Hong Kong) note in Cantonese.

Philomena's cute drawing. I'm on the right with the glasses.

Bibigo chain-bibimbap restaurant

My bibimbap

The crowd beginning to form at the cold noodles restaurant on the hot day.

Bibimnaengmyeon. I forgot to take a picture before I started cutting/stirring! But it looked really cool when they brought it out. Trust me.

Jjambong/fried Mandu

Seolleongtang, before seasoning.

This couple kept dozing off more and more on the 45 minute subway ride, they were cracking me up.

Welcome to COEX!

"Da-keu Na-ee-teu La-ee-jeu"

The entrance to the movie theater, you actually had to take an escalator down to get to the theater itself. There were restaurants inside and everything. Gigantic.

Waiting for our number to be called to buy tickets.

Gangnam station

Gangnam station

Green tea Bingsoo

Koreans are some of the most "plugged in" people I've ever seen. Every subway ride is like this, everyone looks down at their phone/tablet with headphones in.

생일

So last I posted was Tuesday, and quite a bit has happened since then!

Wednesday, I met up with Ana and Lily for lunch, we ran into Polly outside of Woodong hall and she came with us. Polly and Ana were both feeling a little under the weather, so we ate at a traditional Korean porridge shop. The porridge here is savory, with meat and vegetables in it. Mine was spicy with seafood, it was really good and I think the perfect thing to eat when sick (though I wasn't really sick anymore, which is why I got the spicy kind). Afterwards, Ana, Lily and I went to a Cafe while Polly went to the Health Clinic to buy some medicine for her cold. I had my Korean midterm that day, so I tried to get some last minute studying in.  Over all, I didn't do as great on my midterm as I'd hoped, but that just means I'll study harder next time. This class has been really intense for me, Korean class back at my home university was very relaxed, but here the class is taught entirely in (very rapid) Korean, and we blow through a chapter of the book every two days or so. I've already learned so many new grammar rules (I will most likely do something, I will maybe do something, I'd like to do something, I should do something, I have tried something/you should try something, I wanted to do something but then something else happened and I could not do that thing, etc. So many new ways of conjugating verbs!), as well as new vocabulary. It's strange, I know my Korean has improved a lot since coming here, but at the same time I feel worse about it. Back at IUP, my context for learning Korean was so different, as long as I knew everything in the class, I felt okay, but here, not only is the class so much more difficult, but I'm constantly surrounded by constant reminders of how little of the language I actually know. It's somewhat disheartening, but also really encourages me to want to learn more. Anyways, after classes, I met up with Kirsty, Peter, Torkel, and Leon and we went to go find somewhere for dinner. We ended up going back to the Chinese restaurant from earlier, where Kirsty (who lived in Hong Kong as a child) was able to pick out some good foods for us (though less than last time, we learned our lesson about ordering too much food).
Peter's birthday was the next day, Thursday, so Polly and Philomena set up a small "surprise party" for him. The plan was to meet at the downstairs lobby of CJ House (the dorm they all live in, though I'm in Frontier House) a little bit before midnight and then go up to his room and surprise him with cake and flowers at midnight. However, that plan changed slightly when an RA saw me, Polly, Leon, and Torkel in the lobby and asked for our IDs that showed we lived in CJ house. Torkel and I live in Frontier House, and she told us we had to leave. We asked if she could please just let us stay, and she kept saying no and we had to leave, but we just kind of stood there staring at here and not responding while she repeatedly told us to get out, until I think she finally realized that she couldn't actually do anything to get us to leave other than ask and gave up and said we had ten minutes, and had to stay in the lobby. By then, the rest of the group had come downstairs and we decided we'd change the plan and stay down there while Polly went up and got Peter to come downstairs. She did, and we all gave him flowers that Philomena had bought and sang happy birthday, while he ate a piece of cake Polly had picked out from his favorite bakery. Eventually, the RA came back and told us it was quiet hours now and we seriously had to leave, so we finally obliged her and left.

The next day, after classes Peter had invited a group of about 15 of us out to dinner in Myeongdong, his treat, which he said was customary in the Netherlands to do for your birthday (ironically, he said, the opposite of "going Dutch"). We met at Woodong hall after classes, then decided to go back to the dorms to drop off our bags. After figuring we were already going back to the dorms anyways, the girls (myself included) all decided to change clothes to wear something nice for the birthday celebrations. We took the subway, which took about 30 minutes, and after three transfers arrived in Myeongdong. Although it was around 8pm, it seemed light outside because of all of the night life and bright neon signs. We walked to the restaurant, where we were split up into four tables all in a row due to the size of our group. Ana and I were at a small table together, and we ordered a meal set that came with spicy octopus, mussels, bulgogi, and sesame leaves (for wrapping the octopus in). I love spicy foods, but the octopus was a little spicy even for me. Even Ana, who's Korean and accustomed to spicy food, was having some trouble. The flavor was really good though. It was also my first time eating sesame leaves, which have a very strong, somewhat lemony, peppery taste. Really hard to describe. Peter had made one of the stipulations in treating us to dinner that we all had to sing a birthday song for him in our native language. Everyone sung happy birthday in English and Korean (though Ana and Han were the loudest for that one, while the rest of us stumbled over the lyrics), Peter's Singaporean roommate and I sung in German, Philomena in Mandarin, Kirsty and Polly in Cantonese, Torkel in Swedish (turns out their birthday song has like 8 verses too), and probably a few other versions sung that I can't remember. We had a very large and very diverse group! Peter stood up, thanked us, and then sung the Dutch version for us to hear, which was cool. Afterwards, our stomachs were all burning a bit from the spicy food, so we went to find a place that sold ice cream. We found one, and ordered some bowls of frozen yogurt to split. During all of this, Han and Polly snuck off from the rest of the group, and returned with a large green tea and sweet potato cake for Peter, and we subjected him to more singing and photos before we all dug in. Polly also presented him with the URL for a blog she'd created where we all signed in and posted Happy Birthday messages. She even tracked down his family on Facebook and had them post! (If you're curious, http://peter23rd.xanga.com/ ). Eventually, the workers at the ice cream shop came and told us they were about to close so we had to go. We wanted to go to a bar, but we couldn't find one in Myeongdong, so we decided to go back to Anam and go to a bar there. It was around midnight, so the subway was about to close and we decided to stop and get taxis. It was raining, so we all stood with our umbrellas and tried to flag them down. For about thirty minutes we stood on the side of the road, either getting passed by completely, or having them pull over, ask where we wanted to go, and then speeding off when we told them. Ana kept telling us how rude all of the taxi drivers in Korea were, which I fully believe after a half hour in the rain. Finally we flagged one down that would take us, so four of us got in while the other five waited for the next taxi. We all managed to arrive safely (and still rather cheaply, about $5 a person). We went to Han's favorite bar, where we ordered a bottle of vodka, some Cranberry juice and Tonic water and went to town. Polly suggested we play a game called "First Impressions", where we divide up by gender (which we had already inadvertently done, with the five guys on one half of the long table, and us six girls on the other), then assign the members of the opposite gender group numbers, then give them situations and have them vote who out of our group would be most likely to do that thing using the numbers they assigned us, then at the end we have to try to guess our own numbers. It was really fun, and funny too. Finally, at 3am we left. We were going to go back to the dorms, but instead decided to buy some rice wine and soju from a convenience store and sit outside of Frontier House and drink and talk some more. At this point, about half the group left, so it was just me, Peter, Torkel, Leon, Polly, Kirsty, and Ana (who I had told could stay in my dorm for the night since my roommate was gone and she lived about 40 minutes away). We stayed and talked for a while, until at around 5:30 when I said I was tired and was going to go up to bed. The subways reopened at 5:30, so Ana decided she'd just go back home. It was a fun and very memorable night!

The next day, I woke up to pounding on my door at 10am, I stumbled out of bed, exhausted, not even bothering to put on my glasses, and found a little old Korean cleaning lady outside of my door. I let her in, and she cleaned my bathroom and left. I immediately went back to sleep until 4pm. It was the most I've slept in a very long time, but the week prior I was up every night late studying for midterms, then waking up at 7am for my 9am class, so I think it was much needed. I sent out a message to everyone on facebook seeing if anyone wanted to get dinner later, and at 8pm, Peter, Polly, Philomena, Kirsty, Blair (another Marylander!) and I went out. We grabbed some Korean food, then went to Cafe Bene and got some gelato and waffles. It was a nice, relaxing change of pace from the night before.

Today, I've just been trying to get some homework and such done, so not much exciting to write about. I've officially been here a whole three weeks now. It's strange to think in another three weeks I'll be on a plane back home. For once, I'm hoping time drags instead of flies.

The aftermaths of our porridge lunch on Wednesday (mine is the bright orange spicy one!)

McDonald's delivery, I see these everywhere and finally managed to catch a picture Wednesday. They crack me up.

Peter with his flowers and cake during his midnight surprise 

Myeongdong!

Spicy Octopus, fish eggs, wrapped in a sesame leaf

Torkel singing Peter a birthday song in Swedish

Me, Ana, Rei, Kirsty, and Monica at the restaurant in Myeongdong.

The entire group in Myeongdong!

At the icecream shop

Peter and his cake!

The whole group at the Ice Cream shop with the cake

Us at the bar in Anam

Post bar, red faces everywhere!

바쁘다!

So it's week three of the six week program, which means one thing:

Midterms!

Which (somewhat) explains why I haven't been posting this week. Or at least provides a convenient excuse for my laziness. Last I left off was the weekend, so we can start there. But, I do have to study Korean, so it will be a shorter blog post, for that I apologize.

So, Saturday I went to Yeouiro for my US Korean teacher Soyoung's wedding. It was my first time navigating the subways by myself, and took three transfers and around an hour of travelling. I did it though! Soyoung told me her English speaking friend would meet me outside of the subway station at noon and we could walk to the wedding together, since I didn't know where the place was, but 12:30 rolled around and he hadn't showed up. So my minimal Korean skills came in handy and I asked for directions to the name of the building Soyoung had provided me with (turns out it was a gigantic building I could see from the subway stop the entire time, of course..). I got to the building, but it was 15 stories and I had no clue which one the wedding was on. While attempting to comprehend the floor directory, Soyoung's friend came in, saw me, and apologized for being late and we went up to the wedding. Soyoung was in a fancy room sitting on a chair so that people could go and have their photos taken with her. We did, and said hello for a short while but there was a lot for her to do so it didn't last very long. We stayed for part of the ceremony, wherein some of Soyoung's high school students sang, which was really cute, then I headed back to Anam.

Sunday, Lily and I went to the Korean War Memorial in Samgakji as part of our homework for Korean Mass Media and Popular Culture class. I didn't expect much, but I was blown away. It was gigantic; a building surrounded by a man-made lake, humongous statues, and old planes, tanks, and submarines. We walked around the outside, admiring the statues, looking at all of the planes, before going into the three story building. The building was filled with weapons and artifacts from the Korean war (and in one section, Vietnam as well), as well as memorials for the fallen soldiers and historical information. While admittedly it was heavily biased towards the South Korean side of the war, it was still very cool to see.

Monday, for lunch I went with Ana and Lily to a Japanese restaurant. The food was good, and quite different from the spicier Korean style meals I've begun to grow accustomed to. It was shrimp, egg, and onion over rice, and while I don't know anything about Japanese food other than sushi and therefore have no idea if it's authentic, I can say it was tasty. Afterwards we went to a cafe until class started. It's crazy, food here is so cheap, for most meals I pay the equivalent of <$5, but the cafes keep more American style prices, so you can pay more for a coffee drink than you do for an entire meal (which, as a matter of fact, I did today). After classes, I ran into Philomena, Polly, Torkel, and Peter about to leave to go to a pasta restaurant, and joined them. We couldn't find the pasta restaurant so instead decided to eat at a Chinese restaurant. We left the ordering to Philomena and Polly, since they're native Chinese speakers, which worked out well because all of the food was delicious! We had meat on sticks that cooked over hot charcoal at the table, as well as some sort of sweet/spicy pork dish, sweet eggplant dish, a cabbage dish, and a spicy pork dish boiled at the table. There was tons of food, and it was the most expensive meal I've eaten since I've been here (which is saying something, because it was about the equivalent of $12 a person and we couldn't even finish everything) but it was all really tasty. Somehow during the conversation, we started talking about our languages. Polly gave Peter, Torkel and I all Cantonese names (mine came from the words for "beautiful" and "silk", which I thought was nice). Then we were talking about different accent marks in the languages, and all had a good laugh when Polly said that the sounds made by the accent marks in Swedish were "sexy". After dinner, we got icecream at, get this, Baskin Robbins. And in case any of you were wondering, the Baskin Robbins here is right next to a Dunkin Donuts, too. I got walnut ice cream, which was tasty enough to remind me of home, but different enough to make me feel like I'm not cheating by eating non-stereotypically-Korean food.

Today, after classes I went with a group to a pizza/pasta restaurant. It was the first time I've had "Western" food since arriving in Korea, which admittedly was a nice break. Although, it was still pretty different from American style pizza/pasta. We ordered an appetizer, a dish of "cream oven spaghetti" pasta, and two pizzas between the seven of us. The first pizza was pretty standard; regular crust, cheese, meats, vegetables, etc. The second pizza, however, was very different from what I'm used to. The crust was filled with sweet potato puree, instead of red sauce it had some kind of spicy/tangy sauce, and was topped with vegetables and shrimp. Surprisingly, I really liked it, moreso even than the more "typical" pizza. I'm pretty sure none of us had eaten such a high amount of carbs in one sitting since arriving here though, so it left us somewhat uncomfortably full and ready for a nap.

However, no naps were had, because now it's time to study for midterms!

Soyoung looking beautiful as she walked down the aisle!

Statue outside of the war memorial

Me being a tourist

We could leave messages at the end <3

Korean style Japanese food

Polly, Philomena, me, Torkel, and Peter at the Chinese restaurant

Chinese food, meat on sticks

All of our other Chinese dishes... so much food.

Shrimp and sweet potato pizza!

The "normal" pizza

노래방

I've managed to come down with a nasty little cold, so sorry for the posts becoming less frequent.

So, on Wednesday I tried Korean Chinese food for the first time, specifically 짜장면 (Jjajangmyeon), a really popular dish in Korea (they even have a day, Black Day, where everyone eats it), consisting of noodles in a black bean paste sauce. It was tasty, but a little too heavy for my tastes I think. It was definitely interesting to try though. I can now say I've eaten American-Chinese, German-Chinese, Italian-Chinese, and Korean-Chinese food, and they're all very different. Afterwards, we decided to go off in search of some sort of dessert. While wandering aimlessly around the back streets (we didn't want to go to a chain, and we figured our best option was to stay of the main street if we wanted some good hidden place) we saw a little hole in the wall selling waffles. And I mean hole in the wall literally; it was a wooden wall with a small square window that said "Order" over it, you walked up, told the man inside what you wanted, he gave you a number, you waited by a little door until your number appeared on the screen, the door opens just long enough for a hand to jut out, take your number, hand you your waffle, and then it closes again. I got a waffle with coffee and yogurt ice cream, Anna got one with green tea ice cream, and Lily got one with apple jam. They were delicious, and great on the hot summer day. That night, I went with a group of about ten to dinner. I'm not entirely sure what we ate, since I wasn't paying attention when we walked into the restaurant and when we ordered, but it was good. Some sort of vaguely spicy stew with meats and noodles in it. We all chatted for a bit, including some pretty heavy discussion about the EU (which I feel like I learned way more about than I previously knew, thanks to the Europeans at the table).

The next day, the last day of classes for weekend, my cold was in full swing, so I opted to skip lunch (and accidentally one of my classes, whoops) to take a nap. I felt better afterwards, so I joined our group at 6:30, who were planning to go to dinner, a bar, and then 노래방, Noraebang (Karaoke). I figured I'd just get dinner and then go back to the dorm, but walking around in the fresh (well, as fresh as a city can get) air was already helping me feel better, so I decided to wait and see how I felt. We ate at a restaurant specializing in chicken soup, where half of our (16 person) group sat at chairs and the rest (including myself) at a table on the floor with our shoes off. It was a cool experience, but my feet started falling asleep about halfway through, so I don't know if I could get used to that. The food was really delicious, and tasted like something one should eat when they have a cold. Afterwards, I felt mostly normal and decided to stay for the rest of the night's festivities. We went to a place called the "Barket", a beer bar where you grab your own beer from the refrigerators and then bring your empty bottles up at the end to pay. I drank a bottle of some Swedish apple-flavored beer, then grabbed a bottle of a Chinese beer when it was suggested that we play a drinking game. I jokingly suggested "Never Have I Ever", but it took off and that's what we ended up playing. I feel that we all learned more about each other than we expected we would on this trip. And my American-ness came in hand when I was able to pull such cards as "I've never been bilingual". I'm pretty sure I was the only one at the table not drinking for that one. Afterwards, we went to find a place for Noraebang, which we did pretty much immediately after leaving the bar. The way karaoke works in Korea is you rent a room by the hour, and then your party is the only one in the room and you can all sing together and have fun without the pressure of judgment from strangers. It's much nicer than karaoke-bars in the states. Our group was so large that they made us buy two rooms, and after arguing for a few minutes over how we were going to be divided, we decided to all just cram into one of the small (very, very, small) rooms, which management didn't mind since we'd already paid. It was a lot of fun, I normally don't sing during those kinds of things (especially not when I have a cold that makes my voice all nasally and scratchy like last night) but I did, including a duet with Anna in Korean (내가 제일 잘 나가 by 2NE1, not a slow song either!). We left at around midnight, and I immediately crashed upon returning to my room.

Today, I've just been lounging around and studying. For dinner, I walked around and found a little hole-in-the-wall (not literally this time) Kimbap restaurant, where I think I surprised the wait-staff. It was completely empty sans one Korean woman sitting in the corner eating soup and reading a newspaper. Nobody knew any English and there was no English whatsoever on the menu on the wall, which was awesome. I told a woman my order, tuna kimbap, and she sat me at a table and brought it to me with some soup. It definitely hit the spot. I think when I come back to the US, I'll start packing myself kimbap instead of sandwiches for lunch.

Tomorrow, I'm taking the subway by myself for the first time to go to my US Korean teacher's wedding, about 40minutes away. I'm nervous, but excited!

Jjajangmyeon

Waffle-window!

Anna and I with our waffles

More Korean-Mystery-Stew

Wednesday dinner group

(1/2) Thursday dinner group, sitting on the floor!

Barket!

Group at the Barket! You can kind of see half my head... kind of.

Noraebang!

Noraebang!

Polly and Philomena singing a song in Chinese!