Chicken in Korea

Tonight Paoyee and Cristina went out to eat and we decided to eat some chicken. Cristina knew this good chicken place so we went to eat there. As we walk in, we notice a lot of SNSD pictures. I then realized that this is probably the chicken that SNSD advertises for lol

We ordered some spicy chicken. It was very good however very expensive (well to me it is).

Updates on my classes

So I have decided that I am going to drop my swimming class. There are several reasons why I want to drop this class. First of all, I don't like to be half naked in front of people. A majority of people in our class are guys. The teacher doesn't instruct in English even though it is supposed to be a class taught in ENGLISH. I am also the only non-korean person in the class. The pool is not large enough for 30 people so I can't even practice comfortably. I can't see since my googles aren't the kind that is made for people who can't see without their glasses :( It's 9 in the morning. My classmates don't really attempt to befriend me so it's very lonely in the class. I don't know, I just made a decision while walking to swimming class today that I was not going to take the class anymore.

I walked all the way there and then just walked back to my dorm to eat breakfast; kind of dumb lol

Well, my hip hop class is getting pretty fun since I get the choreography more now :) My korean language class is moving tooooo slow. I am tired of saying the same things over and over :( My food Nutrition class is pretty relaxing and easy. The other day in class, we measured our blood pressure and this upcoming class we are going to measure our body mass and fat percentages. That should be fun. As for my creativity class, it's pretty interesting. However, it does get confusing and repetitive at times. My textbook for this class hasn't arrived yet so thankfully I have a classmate who is nice enough to let me borrow his textbook.

Last but not least is my FAVORITE class: Taekwondo!!!
This class is soooo fun. I don't know why, but I enjoy this class so much. The teacher is super cool and my classmates are all cool too so I look forward to this class the most lol

2nd attempt at Dongdaemun Shopping District

So today is the day that Cristina and I went back to Dongdaemun to go shopping for clothes and shoes. We first went to eat some Mexican food because it was Independence Day for Mexicans. We enjoyed chicken burritos. It was surprisingly good lol

After eating, we walked to the subway station and took the subway to Dongdaemun. We explored a total of four malls today. Most of the malls were 8 stories high.

The interesting things that I would like to point out are as follows:

1. These store managers are scary and annoying at times. I mean, they kind of force me to try on their shoes and clothes. They have less manners I feel, than those in the states. Seriously, it makes me not want to take more than a few seconds at their booths.

2. Made In Korea = Expensive
    So the story is that I saw this really cute sweater so I asked how much it is. She told me that it was 15,000 won so I told her I would think about it. I moved on and a few minutes later, I saw the exact same sweater so I asked what the price was; to compare prices. The lady told me it's 28,000 won. I was like "so expensive" so I was about to leave, but she stopped me. She asked me what the other people's prices were. I told her 15,000 won so she said that it is because hers is made in korea and therefore it is better quality; the other one was made in China. I didn't buy it of course. When I was about to buy my tennis shoe, the owner of the store was like, it's made in Korea that is why it is expensive. From now on, I am watching out for those Made In Korea products!

3. The products that are on sale, you have to buy with cash or else they won't sell it to you. I was so shocked at this! Plus, I was not happy because I didn't bring any cash!!! Cristina had to help me out :(

4. A lot of these places don't have a fitting room so if you want to try something on, you have to wear a skirt they provide you with and just change that way...I'm going to be so uncomfortable with this!!!

5. Finally, the thing I am most pissed about is that I don't understand and speak korean that well at all. Therefore, these people can rip us off really bad. I feel like I was ripped off for my shoes :( There are like no price tags on most items!!! They know that you are a foreigner so they will purposely give you a high price to start with and then lower it to make it seem like they are making it cheap for you!!!!!!! URGH, I have to take a korean person next time!!!!

So I did end up buying three shirts for 5,000 won each. My tights were also 5,000 won. My shoes were 30,000 won and my snack was 2,000 won ^_^

Cheonggyecheon and supposedly Namsan tower...

While I am here in Korea, I met these two twins from London, Cindy and Lucy. On the second day of Chuseok,  I went with Cindy, Lucy, Cristina, and Lucy's Language Exchange partner, Da Woo, I believe that's how you spell his name lol Well he took us around to see some traditional things about King Sejong. Then we visited Cheonggyecheon, which is a river that connects many cities together so you can just walk along the river and explore all the towns in Seoul.

I went inside the river and it was deeper than I thought so I got my pants all wet. None of my friends would go in with me, but it was still very fun; I almost tripped and fell because it was very slippery lol

After this we walked to Insadong and just looked around. We got to try poop bread and rice drink, but sadly it wasn't that good. Oh well...From Insadong we went to try and find Namsan tower. Before we got to the cable cars which will take us to the top of Namsan Tower, we had to walk up this steep hill. We were all so hungry too :( When we got to the place with the cable cars, there was a LLLOOOOONNNNGGGG Line :( Seriously, it was a line going from the outside of the building all the way up to the 3rd floor. There was no way we were going to wait that long. We decided to go look around and come back another time. Next time! Next time!

Bampo Bridge 2nd attempt

So on Chuseok, Joan, Max, and Paoyee we went to Bampo bridge hoping to see the water show. So we get there at 6 pm and that is supposed to be the last show of the day. And.....there was a show!!!

Yes, it was water shooting out of the bridge, but NO COLORS!!! Well since it was still light out, the colors wouldn't have shown anyways :( So all of us were really pissed and disappointed. The group decided to order chicken to eat by the Han River. I didn't feel like eating chicken and plus I feel uncomfortable just eating with people who I just met. So I walked to a near by Family Mart and bought dinner for myself. my dinner only costed me 3,000 won.

I finished my dinner and the group's order of chicken hasn't arrived yet, so Paoyee and I decided to go take a walk. We went across the street to go explore and this was what we saw:

All of a sudden, Paoyee yelled out to me that the water show is on and there are COLORS!!!! OMG, we both ran all the way back to where our friends were. It was a good run since we were on the roof of this 5 story building. While running back, I almost dropped my camera lol

When we got there, the show was ON and there was music playing and the water was actually turning different colors. It was so amazingly beautiful ^_^ I'll show you :)

If you want to see more pictures or even a video, go to my facebook ^_^

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002352595158

After watching the show, I was so happy!!! We all went back to our dorms ^_^ Mission Completed!!!

Dongdaemun Shopping District

So a few days ago, I went to Dongdaemun Shopping District, which is supposed to be one of the biggest shopping areas in Seoul. I went with my two friends, Paoyee and Cristina. We went on the Sunday right before the Korean holiday, Chuseok, so most of the stores were closed. We should have known better :( Oh well, there was one shopping center that was open so we went inside that one.

There is 8 floors to this shopping center and every floor is a different theme. One the first few floors it was female clothing then there was one floor for male clothes. About three floors were dedicated to accessories and shoes. The top floor was where the food was.

The prices for the clothes were reasonable. There were some clothes that was about 10 dollars and goes up to 50, depending on what you are buying. Since none of us spoke korean, it was very hard for us to communicate and ask them for the prices. We fear that since they know that we are foreigners, they will purposely cheat us.

As we were walking around looking at clothes, we saw this older women pull us in to look at her store. She was advertising to us in korean and seemed very very desperate. She took out the clothes and put it up to us, trying to fit it onto us. I was curious so I reached to grab the price tag and saw that a shirt was 38,000 won, which is around 27 US dollars. The moment I did that, the ajumah grabbed my hand and took it away from the price. She did it so fast that I was so shocked. She kept on saying discount to us. We started to walk away but she reached out to grab Cristina and just kept asking her to help buy it. She told us that she is hungry and all that stuff...Paoyee just said that we have no money either and left. We all walked away...

After walking around the shopping store, we went out to eat. We ate at this one place and it was actually really good. We only ordered two servings because we didn't know how much food it was going to be. The food we ate was just chicken and fried rice, but it tasted awesome!

Cristina and I decided that we will come back to Dongdaemun next weekend when things are open, and buy clothes next time. So we'll see what happens next time lol