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

Fruit Market

So today was the day that my buddy partner, Jung-Won took me to this fruit market. We had to take the bus there but it was not a long bus ride at all. I can actually just walk there and get there in 30 minutes, but Jung-Won said it's complicated to walk there because of the highway that you have to walk through to get to the market.

When we got there, the market was really nice. It wasn't too big, but it was long. This weekend is the weekend before Chuseok, which is Korean Thanksgiving so a lot of people were at the market trying to buy things for Chuseok.

The fruits were not CHEAP, but they were better priced than the ones that I saw at Grand Market so I bought 3 apples for 2 dollars, 10 peaches for 3 dollars, 1 korean pear for one dollar, and 7 bananas for 2 dollars. After buying my fruits, Jung-Won took me to eat Dopoki ^_^

It was delicious. After this, Jong-Won also accompanied me to a department store and helped me buy my swimming materials. I found out that she doesn't like to drink or party...OMG, just like me ^_^ I think I have the best buddy ever!!!!

Language Exchange

Today I met my language exchange partner. Her name is Choo Jung-Won. She is a very nice girl and we went out to eat dinner. She took me to eat at this one Korean place which was actually pretty good and it costed around $7. I will be helping Jung-Won with her English and she will help me with Korean. Jung-Won is going to take me to this one place where they sell cheap fruits so I am excited. I hope to do a lot more things with her and be able to have more fun in Seoul!

Classes start...

Well yesterday my classes started. I had Taekwondo 9 AM in the morning. It was an interesting class. There was only me and one other white dude in the class; the rest were koreans. We ordered out uniforms and talked a bit about the class and all that introductory stuff.

At this point in my schedule, I was only registered for one real class that I needed so I was freaking out. I went to use the school library for the first time and researched more classes that would count for my major. I emailed a lot of professors along with my advisor back at Chapman University. I was able to come up with some classes that will work for my major if I get into them that is.

I went to a Food and Nutrition for Physical Fitness and tried to add the class. The professor turned out to be really nice so she signed my enrollment form so hopefully I can get into that class. What I realized about these classes at Yonsei is that every class seems to have at least one Teacher's Assistant.

One thing that sucks about my class schedule is that my classes are literally everywhere on campus :(

Today, I was so tired after going to my classes :( Even though there was really just one, but since it was like up in the hills, I was super tired. The other day, I got lost trying to find my classroom so I found out that there is this little village next to the building that I was having class in. I went there for lunch and it was very cool, just like in the dramas ^_^ After this class though, I got lost again. I went through the second forest that Yonsei has lol I don't know how many forests this school has anymore.

Today I also went to my first Korean Language Lesson and it was exciting. I am finally going to learn the language that I have always wanted to learn. However, in class, I was pretty discouraged because I was very slow at getting the material, but I am going to make up for it this weekend by studying extra hard! Fighting! I will let you all know how my studying goes lol although I know it is not the most interesting for me to report to you about lol

Today my friend Joan finally moved in to be my roommate so that is also exciting. Tomorrow, we are going to go shopping for the room!

Hmong people at Yonsei!

This was an exciting day for me! I officially met a Hmong girl today. Her name is Paoyee Lee. She didn't look Hmong at all so when I heard her say that she was Hmong, I was shocked. This was all thanks to Max because he was friends with them so I met her through him. It was a great time. I got to speak Hmong!!! There are two other girls that I know are Hmong here at Yonsei and they are Vangs too. I am not going to approach them though lol I think that if we are meant to meet, I will meet them, just like how I met Paoyee ^_^

Well anyway, classes start tomorrow so I am both excited and nervous. I have Taekwondo in the morning at 9 am and then a korean placement test at 4 pm. I still need to be added to literally 5 classes so I am so nervous that I won't get into any class :( We'll see how this goes...

Seoul Tour

Yesterday, my school took exchange students to tour the city of Seoul. I was super excited to go on this tour. We started at 10:00 AM by visiting the Blue House, which is like the White House. 

Next stop was Bukchon Hanok Village

Jogesa Temple

Insadong Street

MBC Studio

Parliament --> Place where Joan and I got left behind :( Fun times lol

World Cup Stadium

After all of the sites, I was so tired, but that was not the end of my day. When Joan and I got back to our dorm, Max told us that he wanted us to go have dinner with his uncle, who is town that day. The cool thing was that his uncle is good friends with Peter Underwood, who is the great grandson of the founder of a college at Yonsei University. Therefore, he was a pretty big deal. We all went to eat Korean BBQ together and by the end of the night, I was sssooooo full i couldnt walk straight. I think I was actually having a difficult time digesting. I found a boba place also and that made me really happy. However the boba drink actually made my stomach worse. When I got back to my room, I just sat down and relaxed. It was quite a day!