Summer in SoKo

The whole last few days on Korea were too full of goodbyes for me to want to think about right now. I'm feeling a bit heartsick over it at the moment, is all. Just know that I've discovered 2 sucky ways to say goodbye to good friends, and I recommend neither of them. Here are some instructions if you don't believe me:

Oh, Incheon airport, you were the easiest foreign airport I've ever navigated, and you have to have cute shops and yummy food conveniently sprinkled throughout both departures and arrivals? Did you mean to make me love you so much on purpose?

Aleh, you are now, and forever remain the best selca taker EVAR.

The Charlie Brown cafe was close to the Hello Kitty cafe. Korean people, how do you ever choose between all the cute, even at the airport?

After Alejandra left, I wandered around until my plane took off. Funny story: after landing in Salt Lake, I was waiting for my luggage at the carousel when I looked to my left, and Mitt Romney was standing 5 feet away from me. I quietly said, "Nice to meet you, sir," and he graciously shook my hand, but it wasn't until hours later that I realized I bowed to him as I did it, since I was still in full-on Korean mode. Oops. Awkward.

I leave you with this picture I took in Myungdong a couple days before I left, which perfectly sums up my feelings about leaving my friends and leaving Korea:

The saddest Mario in the world...

To be honest, it felt a little weird to "graduate" after only studying Korean for a month, in spite of how intense that month of study was. On my last full day in Korea, they held a graduation ceremony for all the classes - we watched slideshows, videos, some dances, and then the certificate ceremony:

I know Mom sent out these pictures way back when, but in case not, here are the pictures from when I got to meet the husband/wife Canadian blogger team Simon and Martina, from the blog eatyourkimchi.com. They blog about korean culture, music, food, you name it. I've been watching their videos for a couple of years now, dreaming about going to Korea, so when I heard I could meet them at a fundraiser my first weekend in Seoul, it just had to happen.

P.S. I brought the Avengers cups for them since they're pretty big fans, and they decided we needed to pose with them. In the first picture, the guys (Simon and our new friend Eshvin, who we met in line) are having an "aegyo" (cuteness) contest, while us ladies (me, Alejandra, and Martina) are not amused. Fun side note: this was the first day Alejandra and I met!

I'm officially back in the States, and fully jet-lagged out of my mind...so dead during the day, awake like a vampire at night...eesh.
Anyhow, I got behind blogging during my last week in Korea due to finals, concerts, packing, spending last moments in Korea with friends. In short, my heart is broken, but I'm glad to see family and friends back home too.

Sooooo, my last weekend, I got to go to the rehearsal of Inkigayo, a music show that K-pop groups showcase newly-released songs from the past few weeks. I'm not sure of the details, but during the live broadcast, somebody (either the audience, or the tv viewers, idk) votes on who is #1 single of the week on that show. There's one of these music shows for each of the major broadcasting networks - Inkigayo is on SBS - so it's lots of good music for us, but the poor K-pop bands have to do EACH show EVERY week for 5 weeks at least after releasing a new single. And some bands have released a new song every 2 months all this year. Like, whoa. The groups honestly get NO sleep and NO downtime with their schedules. So I'm torn, not wanting to support this, but people go into this knowing full well what kind of craziness they're getting into...hmmm...is it unethical for me to like this? (but I still like this...)

In short, Inkigayo - SO FUN! We weren't allowed to take pictures or video, so I'm gonna get some links to the live broadcast from the day we went so you can see some of the groups that we saw. A lot of groups I know/like were there, so it was even better. The bus driver wasn't given the right address, so he took us to the main SBS building - which Inkigayo is NOT filmed in - and was totally ticked when he was told the mistake, rightly so. It took us over an hour to get there, only to find out on the way home that it's about a 10-min. drive away. Pffft. But by then, we were still on cloud 9 from the performances, so we didn't care.

About 1/2 of us (they didn't allow any of the guys) got to stand right by the stage on the left side, so we were feet away from the idols' performances. There were a few Korean teenage girls sprinkled throughout the group, and let me tell you - I've never heard such high-pitched, loud sounds coming from something human in my life, and I work with 3-6 year-olds with autism. Someone from the program wanted to record it and use it as a car alarm. And these girls knew everyones' names, like "DONG-WOO OPPA!!!!!!!" or "YOSEOB OPPA!!!!! AAAAHHHH!" *Side note: "oppa" means "older brother" or "older male friend" for a younger girl, and indicates a close relationship, which these girls imagine they have with the idols. Also, typing in all caps does not due the shrillness justice.

On to the performances!

One of the first performers that I got really excited about was Ailee (pronounced Ay-lee), who grew up in the States, and only debuted in Korea last year. She has a diva voice, but she seemed so down-to-earth and friendly with us and her back-up dancers before and after her song. AND she has meat on her bones, which cannot be said about another girl group we saw, who were scary-skinny, as in their upper arms were skinnier than their elbow bones. Not natural, just starvation. Not my girl Ailee. She just gets on with her bad self, while being gorgeous.

My last weekend in Korea, like every other one I've spent here, was filled with trying new and delicious foods. Let's get right to it!

Before...

It had rice cakes, noodles, hard boiled eggs, fish cake, ramen, cabbage, carrots, rice filled dumplings, green onions, and spicy seasonings. Also a little sugar, to be sweet and spicy.

After...mmmm...so good...

Another day, I went with some friends, Delilah from Mexico and Veronique, to their favorite dessert place nearby.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...

Pancakes with Nutella and bananas...oh gosh...

And now for the piece de resistance...may I present Oreo Bingsoo:

Yes, it really is as big as it looks! It's shaved ice on the bottom, then ice cream mixed with Oreo cream in the middle, then a tower of chocolate shaved ice/ice cream covered with crushed Oreos. Apparently there's a method to eating it correctly so the tower doesn't collapse (which we saw twice in neighboring tables). We were instructed to eat dorm the top, then mix all the bottom stuff together. I can't describe...I can't even...give me a moment...

On the walk back, we saw another restaurant that was used in the filming of the drama "Beautiful Legacy", which had one of my favorite actors, Lee Seung Gi, in it, so I took a minute to fangirl it up a little. It doesn't take much for me to be happy...

One thing Alejandra wanted to do was try on hanbok, or traditional Korean dresses. We knew there were "hanbok cafes" where you could rent one to wear, but it was  expensive, and we didn't want to have a tea party wearing them, like apparently you do at those kind of places. We found at the tourism center in Myungdong, you could sign up to try one on for free for 15 minutes, which is all we wanted anyways. So last Saturday, we got there right when it opened (because time slots fill up fast) and picked out a hanbok:

Alejandra in her hanbok

It's me, with too broad of shoulders to look right in a hanbok, but still having fun!

The best picture of the day

After that, we wandered Myungdong a little, got taro bubble slushies and some brown sugar candy/cookie things that I'd seen on a Korean show I like:

The grandmas who make it press a shape into it as it hardens in about 5 seconds, and the trick is to break off the outside without breaking the shape.

I totally won, by the way. Alejandra broke hers right away. Yep, I'm pretty proud of this.

The saddest Mario in the world...

Often they'll have people in big masks to advertise some place, like a guy in a Garfield mask for a "cat cafe" (that's a real thing, by the way, along with "dog cafes"). Seems like a pretty awful job to me in the summer heat, which is maybe why he's so depressed.

Since I have very limited time left in Korea, the bulk of which will be taken up with final exams, interviews, presentations, and graduation, I don't know how many more posts, if any, I can get up here before I leave, so the rest might have to wait until I'm back in the States. Sorry guys.

Here's a little miracle in a bowl: chijeu bap, or cheese rice. Sounds kind of boring and greasy, right? Oh, friends, we were so wrong. For less than 4 dollars, you get a piece of heaven, and it comes out sizzling. Here's what it looks like up close:

Still weird, right? That's because you stir it like craaaazy, and it turns into this:

You can pick different kinds, like tuna, sweet potato (which is delicious actually), but the one I got above is kimchi galbi (korean short ribs). The ones with kimchi are spicy, while the goguma (sweet potato) was pretty mild and kind of sweet, actually. I've already been back Monday for lunch.

This is another treat we accidentally discovered while in the subway station in Myungdong. Not sure if the little corn shaped pastry is called a manjoo, like in the store's name, but they are goooood. They squirt batter into little corn-shaped molds, and then they rotate until they are cooked and automatically pop out of the molds. They taste like yummy, slightly chewy pancakes filled with warm custard. Mmm. Not sure why they're shaped like corn though.

This is the empty subway station exit where I go to get to church here. I know the subways in general are pretty quiet here on Sunday mornings, but hardly anybody but a stray grandma uses my exit, every single week. Kind of creepy...

Speaking of subways, when Alejandra and I went to Insadong, we got brown sugar syrup-filled pancakes from a street cart right before we had to go home, and decided to not eat them on the subway (kind of messy), and there wasn't a bench in sight. What are 2 foreign girls to do? Find an almost empty stairway up an exit behind a 7 Eleven sign to sit and eat your hoddeok. So many stares from the few people going up or down, but there wasn't really a choice, not really. We HAD to.

Part of Gyeongbokgung Palace

Our culture class went to the Palace Museum last week. I was wondering where all the furnishings had gone since all the palaces I've been to are pretty empty, except for a replica of a throne or something. It was right next to Gyeongbokgung Palace, which is the biggest palace in Korea.

The king's casual wear. Comfortable, no? Hmm...maybe not.

Maybe when compared to this crazy get-up. Question: did the beads on the hat ever hit him in the face?

A present to the Korean king from the United States - now it's one of like 3 of its kind in the world.

Record of every day of a king's reign - apparently you can look up individual days chronicles on some online database today.

After the fieldtrip, I wanted to check out a traditional market nearby, and ended up passing by part of 

Cheonggyecheon in the daytime:

Also passed by an area that specializes in lighting and light fixtures. Both sides of the whole block looked like this:

Bet it looks awesome at night.

Gwangjang market was totally legit. Just a bunch of ajummas and ajusshis selling all kinds of stuff in little stores and stalls for a whole city block, I think. It's also the oldest market in Seoul, and it's famous for their mung bean pancakes - way better than it sounds. 

They have huge grinders that grind the beans into a paste onsite, then make the batter in these huge vats and fry them in oil. The whole place smells so good.

They sell many traditional things, like these pretty hanboks. I love the one in back with coral and light yellow! You can get them made to order, but from the prices listed on the sign, they're about $200-350, give or take. While they are beautiful, I'd have to get one custom made for my broad western shoulders, etc., for it to look ok on me. How do I know? That'll have to wait for the next post...

P.S. I totally wrote the last post in Korean entirely by myself. Not bad for just a month of study, right? If anybody reading this speaks Korean, please don't look too closely...eep.

한곡 문화 수업이 정말 재미있었어요! 사실을 배웠어요. 그리고 장수도 갔어요.

너무 커요!

탈춤하고 서예를 배웠어요. 미국에 탈춤을 없어요. 그래서 춤이 정말 재미있었어요.

슀어요...

또 서예도 재미있었어요.

이 부채를 씄어요! 어려웠어요...

지난 주에 고궁 박물관에 갔어요. 역사기록을 배우러 갔어요. 미국에 왕이 없어요, 그래서 박물관을 좋아했어요. 박물관이 경복궁 옆에 있어요.

경복궁...너무 아름다워요!

왕 옷을 좋아해요.

궁 도서관이 참 멋있어요!

저는 한국 음식을 너무 좋아해요, 그래서 요리를 좋아했어요. 김밥하고 잡채하고 불고기를 요리했어요.

맬린다 씨, 미셸 씨, 챠키 씨 - 멋있어요!

음식이 너무 맛있어요.

요리 수업하고 김선생님 - 예뻐요!

두 주 전에, 버스로 야구 관람에 갔어요. 미국이 야구를 있어요, 하지만, 한국 여구 게임을 너무 즐거웠어요!

정말 재미있었어요! 야구 봤어요. 그리고 노래도 했어요. 그리고 떡볶이도 먹었어요.

줄리아 씨하고 크라우디아 씨하고 저 있어요!

떡볶이...먹고 싶어요...

1A 906 수업! 화이팅!