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.
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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.
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| A street in Myeongdong. |
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| Still in Myeongdong. |
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| 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.
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| A masterpiece. |
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| 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.
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