Feeling Overwhelmed in Myeongdong and Namdaemun Market

Finally, on to Sunday, which yet again began a bit later than I would have liked. But what can you do? A group of us had plans to go shopping in Myeongdong, but we decided to grab lunch first since it was my roommate's birthday. Although it took a while and a little bit of wandering to figure out what we would all be happy eating, Pizza Hut was the final choice. Now, for those of you judging us for picking pizza, keep in mind that Korean pizza is different than pizza in the U.S. It was still a new experience. A delicious one, I might add. The "garlic bread" (it was sweet so I don't know what to call it) and dumplings from the almost salad-less salad bar were enough to fill us up, but that didn't stop us from snarfing down a bunch of pizza.

The bottom was BBQ chicken with a cheese stuffed crust. It was good, but
not as good as the bulgogi one above it with the most delicious crust ever.
Sweet potato and 12 cheese filling is revolutionary.

After leaving Pizza Hut, the adventure really began. There were just streets and streets of stores. I'd estimate it was about 1/3 restaurants, 1/3 makeup and beauty, and 1/3 socks. I'm not kidding, Koreans have a thing for socks. Not that I'm complaining since they're all cute and only about a dollar a pair. We made it to the end of one street, where there was a food stand for hoddeok. The older couple running it heard us all say how good it looked, so we couldn't really say no once they started handing them out to us. And I'm pretty sure we got one for free, but I don't really know for sure.

A street in Myeongdong.

Still in Myeongdong.

Hoddeok, with what I think was some kind of cinnamon-sugar filling.

Onward to Namdaemun market! Most things in Korea are cheaper than in the U.S., but we wanted cheaper. So we leave the streets of Myeongdong to find the even more overwhelming Namdaemun market. There were little stores on both sides of the streets, and even some little stands lining the middle of the streets. I don't think I've ever been so over-stimulated before. Smells, things, people. They were everywhere. Also, we never really came up with an efficient system to tell everyone else that we wanted to stop at a store, so there were multiple moments of thinking we'd lost someone.

Not being a fan of crowds, or shopping really for that matter, this all was very exhausting for me. I didn't even get any pictures because I was so overwhelmed. But we decided to take a break at a cafe. It was really nice inside and much classier than we were dressed for (at least half of us had bought snapbacks and beanies earlier in the trip), but we plopped ourselves down anyways. We had come for a reason: green tea bingsoo (shaved ice). Well, not me, since I don't like green tea, but I could make do with a mocha.

A masterpiece.

Yogurt waffle and a mocha.

Although we didn't want to leave the cafe since it was warm and there were couches, we continued on. More shopping followed, and somehow we ended up in a mall. If I remember correctly, it was called Lotte Young Plaza, and it sure had a lot of levels. I, along with two others, went exploring when we got bored of just looking around. Apparently, one's natural instinct is to go up as high as possible, so we did. And we found a really nice, peaceful rooftop garden. We stayed up there until the others found us, taking pictures and getting kind of giggly again. They were the same girls from dinner a few nights ago, so I guess it should have been expected.

Relatively shortly after that, we all made our way back to campus. However, we got off the subway at Ehwa University, an all female university one stop away from Sogang. This was done intentionally, as we wanted to look around the area a bit. Not all of the shops were open since it was Sunday night around 8 p.m., but we got a pretty good lay of the land. We then realized that we hadn't eaten dinner, so the struggle of finding something we could all agree on continued. And to make it worse, the one place we were going to try told us they were closed. It was 8:40 and their sign said they closed at 10 so I don't know what their deal was. But we found somewhere else. It was a little pricey, but tasted amazing. Finally, we could return to campus, with full stomachs and empty wallets. I did the homework I had been putting off all weekend and had the second roommate talk with Jen before finally going to sleep.

Field Trip!

So the day (Saturday) started out late again because sleeping in is a wonderful thing. Well that, and I didn't have anything to do until 12:30, when I had to leave to meet for a field trip. It was organized by the club that does and organizes things for the exchange students, and it was free, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to go. Personally, I was just excited to be going to see something else besides what is right around campus. In any case, we all met up, tried (and failed) to take a decent group picture, and then piled onto the subway. Dang, that thing was crowded. I felt kind of sorry to the people on the subway who were just trying to go about their Saturday, but were attacked by a swarm of loud foreigners. But you know, there was nothing I could really do about that.

We eventually, and somewhat chaotically, made it to our final destination, Bukchon Hanok Village. For those who don't know what this place is, because I didn't before I got to Korea, I'll give a quick introduction (with a bit of help from Wikipedia). It is a traditional Korean village that was home to important, higher-up people during the Joseon Dynasty, and it's located between a few of the palaces in Seoul. So we get there, and then the different groups head off to their activities. I chose to traditionally dye a handkerchief because, as my roommate pointed out, you get a souvenir that way. The dying itself was like sped up tie dying, minus any tying. Basically, you throw on some rubber gloves, toss the pre-printed handkerchief into the bowl of dye, squeeze it a few times, andddd you're good. Well, you stand there for a minute or two and let the color sink in after you take it out of the bowl, and then you rinse and dry it. It was really easy, but a cool experience nonetheless.

I stole this off of someone else's Facebook, but here are the handkerchiefs.

Afterwards, we were given some free time to explore the village, which to a few friends and me meant getting overly priced coffee at a really cute, two-story cafe within the village. I kind of regret not looking around a bit more, but I was really tired at the time and coffee sounded like a good idea.

A door.

A view from within the village, of the village (I think).

Everyone on the field trip then piled back onto the subway, now en route to a chicken restaurant. The group ended up splitting into at least two smaller groups to fit into different restaurants. All I know is that both had chicken, but our's was boneless. Therefore, our's was the best.

I got back to the dorm at some point, hoping to do homework. Let's just say that that didn't really happen. Talking to friends for hours is more fun anyways.

Karaoke Time

Considering it was almost 3 a.m. before I feel asleep last night, I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise that I couldn't wake up until about noon. But who cares, right? It's not like I had somewhere to be. I eventually managed to get ready, and I headed out to go exploring with a friend. We weren't really sure where to start or what to do, so naturally hitting a cafe was the obvious choice. This time it was one called Twosome Place, where they make unbelievably delicious mocha chip frappes.

Scoping out the cakes and pastries at Twosome Place.

Afterwards, we popped into Daiso yet again because it was right next door, so why not? From then on, the exploration really began. We would sort of just pick a street and walk down it, going into any stores that caught our attention. Being girls, these were basically just accessory and stationary stores, but they were so fun to look through.

Welcome to Art Box, where you can shop for an hour and still not see everything.

A quick snack at the food stand right at the front gate of campus tided us over until dinner at the cafeteria in the basement of the dorm. I finally used my first meal swipe! The food was alright, but at least I saved a couple extra bucks by eating what was already prepaid.

And now to the fun part. Karaoke! Now, I know most people at this point are like "Uhh, ok? Who does karaoke for fun?" Koreans, that's who. And exchange students. So a whole group of us (I think there were 13) crammed inside of a room and sang our hearts out. It was awesome. I can't wait to go back again. After our time was up, we popped into a nearby bar for a bit, but I was too busy panicking and trying to help someone find her phone to really pay much attention. The phone finally turned up, so we turned in. Well, not before hitting Burger King and the convenient store for some snacks. Walking around a lot really makes a person hungry.

And yes, I know this is two days late. I was busy doing things with people.

That Time an Ice-Breaker Actually Worked

If anyone pays attention to the times at which I usually post these, you'll realize that I am quite late tonight relative to other nights. And I know what you're all thinking: "Maggie, did you actually do something tonight? On a Thursday?!" Why yes, yes I did. Well, sort of, but I'll get to that later.

So I had class again today. After having such a long break, one kind of forgets that that is how school usually works. The classes were pretty uneventful, except for the fact that someone (a Korean) actually sat next to me in one of my classes. They don't really do that unless it's the last seat in the room, which this one was not. So, you know, that's exciting I guess. I am fairly sure that he glanced over at me a few times. Not sure if it was the hair color or my long eyelashes that were so fascinating, but I was just impressed someone was brave enough to sit next to a foreigner. We're really not as mean and scary as they all apparently think we are.

In another class, I learned that professors from New Zealand also love a good ice-breaker to make an awkward class more - I mean less - awkward. We had to kind of work our way around the room and just chat individually with the other students in the class for three minutes a piece. To be honest, it was probably one of the least painful "get to know the class" experiences, so that's a bonus. And I actually ended up meeting someone who had been here last semester and knew someone else that I also know. The two of us, and a couple other people, ended up getting some coffee and sitting in a cafe on campus for a good two hours. I had to run off to yet another orientation after coffee. This time it was for the Korean language class that begins next week. Thankfully, it was really short, which meant I was free to do whatever I pleased with my night. Going to Emart again was clearly the obvious choice.

There were three of us who went. I can't say that it was a super eventful trip, but at least it was something to do. Afterwards, we grabbed a late dinner back on campus while nearly everyone else was getting ready to go out to some big club thing tonight. None of us were interested, so instead, we sat at a table in a little mini cafeteria and got extremely giggly. Apparently, we're all just tired and stressed from everything that's been going on this first week in Korea, and it resulted in us being a bunch of weirdo Americans eating dinner together. Not that we really cared because we couldn't really stop laughing even if we wanted to.

From then on, the three of us popped into each others' rooms, just because we wanted to see them. We ended up in my room, just chilling for a bit before we all decided that we very much just wanted to sit on our beds with our laptops. So off they went, and it's just been me in my room since then. So any expectations you had about my crazy Thursday night have now been shattered, but I don't know why you were expecting anything in the first place. However, it is technically the weekend for me, as I don't have classes on Fridays, so who knows what I'll be up to in the next few days.

Business School Welcome Dinner

Today was probably even less interesting than yesterday, if that's possible. Like, there wasn't even anything worthwhile to take a picture of. Class wasn't exciting (when is it ever, really?), and I realized that students here aren't as big of over-achievers as I had thought them to be. I say this because probably half of the class today had no idea we even had a reading assignment due. So at least I'm not actually as bad at this whole school thing as I feel.

I spent the rest of the day just chilling in my room, although I should have been unpacking. I'll do it eventually, I swear. But then there was a welcome dinner/party for the business exchange students. I, along with two other girls, panicked beforehand about what to wear. We had kind of heard that it would be casual, but what does that mean in Korea? Anyways, we all managed to settle on something, and then left for the dinner. The dinner itself was pretty uneventful, that is, besides the fact that there was a buffet. They know us foreigners and our love for food well, apparently. It was good food, too. The worst part of the whole evening was having to go up on the little stage and introduce yourself when your home university was announced. Hating public speaking, this part was especially awful, and I don't think I even remember what I said when I was up there with Stephen (who was naturally calm and collected).

Now I'm just back in my room, thinking about how I should probably read for my macroeconomics class tomorrow, but nah.

Just Class and Some Food

Today started out like it did yesterday, with class. However, this time I had three instead of one. I can feel it already that Tuesdays and Thursdays might drag on a little bit, but thankfully today didn't. This would be because all of my professors figured it wasn't worth doing anything besides going over the syllabus and class policies. Well, I guess that doesn't include my macroeconomics professor who decided that today was a good a day as any to start chapter one, but then he gave up because the microphone he was using to lecture seemed to catch on that none of the students really wanted to sit through a lesson on the first day.

At some point, I popped into the Office for International Affairs here on campus and turned in my Alien Registration Card application and course approval form. The moment as I walked out of those doors was probably the happiest moment of the day. They basically told all the exchange students about everything that needed to be done back on Saturday, and we only have a few days to get it all done. It is definitely a bit stressful.

A few of us hopped off campus for a late lunch at a nearby restaurant, guided by an exchange student who was here last semester as well. I thought the restaurant was Japanese, but I'm not too sure anymore. It doesn't really matter to me because it was good. In fact, it was finally my first full meal in Korea! I wasn't really hungry enough to eat all of the katsudon I had ordered, but I did anyways. Much better than bibimbap, I must say. And I tried kimchi for the first time, too. To be honest, I'm not really a fan. I'll give it another chance some other time, but for now I'll just say that I'm not too impressed with it.

Rice, onions, fried pork cutlet, and cheese (that doesn't really taste like real cheese). Yum!

Time for some dessert? I think yes. We head off to get some bingsoo, which is so delicious. The place itself was a warm, cozy haven out of the rain, and I will certainly be going back.

Frozen milk with some berries and other ingredients. It was too good to question what was in it.

Upon arrival back on campus, I regret not bringing an umbrella with me because I know my hair is all matted down. Of course, I had dragged it around all day to class when it wasn't raining, and then I leave it in my room once it starts. In any case, I'm about ready for nap after all the food and the rain, but I decide it might be wise to check if I have any reading due for class tomorrow. Well, crap. I sure do. And I haven't even thought about getting any books yet. I found someone to come to the bookstore on campus with me, who luckily used to work at a library. This bit came in very handy when trying to find my books out of shelves of seemingly unorganized books. She managed to find them all pretty quickly, but the check out line was another story. It was long. But I didn't really care because at least I had my books now. Oh, and get this. I only paid about $125 for my books. Four of them for that much. I'm still very happy about that. But because I got my book for tomorrow and was able to read, at least I'll be comfortable being back with all the overenthusiastic freshmen tomorrow who have probably already finished the next assignment, too.

First Day of Class

Not wanting to be beat out for the front row seats in my Introduction to English Literature class at 9 this morning, I made sure to wake up extra early. That's what they told us to do at orientation. But then I laid in bed for a while because who wants to go to class after being on break for two and a half months? Not me. Besides, I don't like front row seats anyways. I still ended up being 15 minutes early, but the classroom was already more than half full. Good for them, being enthusiastic about their education. I learned later as the class progressed that many, if not most, of the students in the class were freshman. And in Korea, the first semester of a school year begins in March (the current semester), so it was the first day and first class of university for these kids. No wonder why they were so excited to be there.

It was pretty obvious once class starts that I'm one of two exchange students in the room. The other girl was from Germany, so when the professor asks if there are any native English speakers in the room, I alone slowly raise my hand up. He then asks what my name is, which results in everyone turning in my direction. Yup, hello everyone. So I tell him my name, and he then designates me as the person to go to if anyone has questions about English. Great plan, considering they all can probably form a better sentence than I can. At least they (hopefully) won't notice my strong Wisconsin accent, with subtle hints of Canadian, because other Americans around here sure have.

That class, my only one for the day, ended, but my day was just beginning. Good lord, it felt like I did so much today. A few of us went to open bank accounts on campus for various reasons. We stroll in thinking this will just take a few minutes, we'll sign some stuff, and we'll be good. Yeah, I don't even remember how long we were in there. I felt bad for the young woman helping us. We probably seemed like the least competent people ever. We'd write something wrong, or be confused about something else, or forget to check some box. There seemed to be an unending number of pages in the packets we had to fill out, and we apparently couldn't do anything right. She smiled through it all, but I bet that smile got a lot bigger once we left. Anyways, we then attempted to find the place on campus to pick up my SIM card. Naturally, that wasn't easy either, but I managed to get it after walking completely in a loop and asking (having Jen ask) some guy nearby at another phone place where to go. I still don't even know if it's working properly, but I'll deal with that tomorrow.

So we then take to the streets to find the two girls I'm with somewhere to get some kind of phone plan/service for themselves. We go to one place, and they tell us to go to another branch nearby. So we go, and they tell us to go somewhere else. At that point we called it quits and found somewhere to get coffee (not like it was hard since cafes are everywhere here). Today it was Namu Cafe, where the drinks and honey bread were quite good. I also may or may not have answered the worker's question with "Si," I don't know why I suddenly thought I was in Mexico, but it was definitely super embarrassing.

So sweet, but so good! (Don't worry, we split it three ways).

We do a little shopping at some makeup and beauty stores because we're in Korea, so you basically have to. If I don't leave here with flawless skin, I want my money back but I still want to keep the strawberry hand cream. It smells amazing. So then we actually went to Daiso again. I was in desperate need of a little sewing kit since the buttons on my jacket keep falling off. But then we returned to campus, and it was maybe only 4 p.m. To be honest, I haven't left the room since. It felt like a full day, but it really wasn't. However, to cap everything off, our room lost power less than an hour ago. Jen unplugged something from the outlet, and then almost immediately afterwards we heard something pop/click and the room went dark. Great. Jen went downstairs to get a maintenance guy to come to our room. Apparently, this happens a lot, and the guy got it fixed in just a few minutes. We were worried we'd be in darkness until tomorrow, which would be awful, but it's all good now. I just have to convince myself to go to sleep now because I don't really want to go to class tomorrow.

Arrival and the First Few Days

So the past few days have been pretty busy, which is why I've had to put off writing this first post. In the future, I hope to post something everyday, but this one is going to cover my first four days. I'm warning you in advance, it's a long one.

2-26-2015
The start of my 28 hour day and Asian Adventure began at 4:30 a.m. on the 26th when I woke up before leaving for the airport just after 6 a.m. Although we had known in advance that there would be snow (you know how Milwaukee and Chicago are in winter), the three hour car ride to the airport felt long enough for me to have already reached Korea. But I wasn't there yet. Not even close. After meeting up with Stephen, who is both from SLU and studying at Sogang, we made our way through the completely empty security area and to our gate. The flight was delayed an hour, but we eventually got on our merry way. Well, it was merry until shortly after the first in-flight meal. Of course there were other options, but I chose the bibimbap because I figured I might as well try Korean food for the first time. That plan backfired, and I ended up with a stomach ache for at least the last half of the plane ride.

It tasted good going down, but it wasn't a great start to things.

2-27-2015
At some point it became Friday after crossing the International Date Line. I think one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced was flying for 14 hours straight with constant daylight. In any case, we landed safely, and extremely smoothly for such a large plane, at 5:30 p.m. Korea time (2:30 a.m. back in Wisconsin).

Land ho!

I am so thankful that Stephen was confident about where we had to go because I would have taken ages to figure out how to get a ticket for the train/subway thing to get to the guesthouse we were to stay at. He also had printed walking instructions once we had reached our stop. I'm seriously so glad he was there. After checking into the guesthouse and dropping off all of our luggage, we headed out to explore for a bit. We actually ended up walking all the way to the Sogang's front gate because we figured why not, since it was relatively close. Returning to the guesthouse shortly afterwards, we both passed out pretty quickly. Like I said, it had been a LONG day.

The only picture I managed to take the first night without completely seeming like a tourist.

2-28-2015
Saturday morning rolled around, and I sure did not want to get out of bed. But the heated floors, which are a pretty common thing in Korea, helped to make the morning a bit more pleasant. I, as quietly as possible, got ready and left the room, but I know I definitely woke up the other two girls in there (I think they might have been from Beijing). A short taxi ride brought Stephen and me to the back gate of campus where our dorm, Gonzaga Hall, is located. The short walk, I mean hike, from the street to the dorm's door seemed to last forever as I dragged almost 100 pounds of stuff behind me in my suitcases. That certainly made me wish for a moment that I hadn't packed so much. My calves are going to be no joke when I get back with all of the hills and slopes in Seoul. I'm serious.

Anyways, we checked in and headed off to our respective rooms. I walk into mine to find Jen, my awesome and super nice roommate from Hawaii. Oh, but she's also Korean so I basically have the best roommate ever. We can talk for ages to each other in English, but she can hold her own out there on the streets and in shops. Honestly, I couldn't be luckier. We end up heading out to Emart with her friend Leo (also from Hawaii and super nice) to buy, well, everything. Emart has everything. EVERYTHING. It was a bit overwhelming, but still completely awesome. Also, shout out to that nice sales lady in the shampoo section that saw me agonizing over what to get, tried to help me figure out what was going on with all of the package deal things, and then gave me a free body wash as "service" in addition to the one already taped to the set I chose. Yeah, she seemed nice. Anyways, we put our strength to the test, hauling everything back to campus on the subway in cardboard boxes. Let me tell you, laundry detergent, shampoo, conditioner, juice, instant rice, and other things are heavy. But I finally had a pillow and blanket after the trip so it was totally worth it.

Orientation took up the rest of the day, starting at 3 p.m. I was naturally exhausted as I always am, but the jet lag hit me hard. Somehow I made it through two hours of orientation and a tour of the campus (which I only remember about half of). Dinner came next, but when the menu was announced, I couldn't have been less enthusiastic. Bibimbap. Again. My stomach still wasn't completely better from the plane food, and I definitely didn't have an appetite for the same thing that had screwed it up in the first place. If I had to guess, I'd say I barely managed to eat just under half of it.

So at this point, I'm beyond tired and I have no idea what is going on with my stomach (this time around the bibimbap seemed to sit okay for those who were curious). And we still had dorm orientation at 8:30 p.m. I briefly fell asleep three times in the hour and a half between the dorm orientation and dinner, and I might have been awfully close to being out cold during the orientation. At least I'm not the only one who has no idea what went on there. The microphone didn't work well at all and there was only one little projector screen.

Now, everyone was planning on going to an after party planned by this student organization on campus that does things with the exchange students, but being in my state of exhaustion, I didn't end up going. I was going to, I really was. I know that no one who knows me well will believe that, but I actually wanted to go. But I didn't go. I went back to my room and passed out within a minute of my head hitting the pillow. Classic Maggie move.

3-1-2015
And then I woke up the next morning after getting about 11 hours of beautiful, wonderful sleep. The mattresses here are rocks though, so I don't know if it was actually the most restful sleep, but whatever. I tried to figure out what I was going to do for the day, bouncing between shopping for some smaller things I still needed for my room at Daiso (basically the coolest dollar store ever) and going to the National Museum of Korea. I opted for the museum as I had yet to do anything fun and touristy. A group of seven of us made our way safely and easily on the subway, which is just as fantastic as the one in London. Organized, efficient public transportation is something to be very thankful for, always. Anyways, we didn't even make it into the museum before deciding we wanted to eat. Six of the seven present were Americans and all of us were girls, so yeah, we like to eat. I did try a piece of ddeokbokki for the first time. It was as spicy as I had imagined, but much chewier.

Eventually we made our way to the actual museum. But wait, what's at the top of these stairs? Oh, some pretty sweet scenery with Namsan Tower, or N Seoul Tower, in the distance.

Naturally, many pictures were taken before we finally, and for real this time, entered the museum.

That tower though.

We looked around a bit in one room before the guided tour in English started. Our tour guide was so sweet, her English was great, and she was super informative.

Plans were changed around a few more times after we returned to campus. Some of us decided we might go to Hongdae for some dinner and shopping. But then we realized that the yellow dust levels were a bit high to be wandering around outside for a long time. Ditching that idea, we donned our surgical masks and headed out to find Daiso (the awesome dollar store I mentioned earlier). Finding it proved to be a bigger challenge than we thought, but we were eventually successful. I personally bought a bunch of stuff, most of which I needed. As for dinner, we hit one of the many food stands that all sell the same things. I will most certainly be returning in the near future, it was so good! We kind of got a bit lost finding our way back to campus, but we figured it out pretty quickly.

Seriously so tasty.

The group narrowed down to four, as we dropped all our purchases in our rooms and went to a cafe right across from the dorm. We sat for almost two hours chatting about all kinds of things (Kpop and the attractive barista were definitely the highlights). Although it was a school night, I didn't go to sleep until about 2 a.m. as Jen and I had our first of, I'm sure, many roommate talks. And then I passed out, because, well, that's just what I do.