College Life in Korea: Week 5

This week felt a bit of a blur to me tbh. I’m gonna do my best to recall what happened based on my expense sheet haha!

So anyways~ on Tuesday I went to meet Adeline and Kelly for the last time before they fly back! We wandered around Hongdae trying to find Air Cafe but failed badly so we just walked into a random cafe and found a really nice cosy spot! It’s called Are Cafe which literally means ‘the cafe downstairs’ hahaha. It was at a basement~

It was really cosy and they had shelves of books, and little corners for one person to study complete with power plugs and table lamps. ❤ I think it’s a study cafe. We sat down and gossiped as we usually do, and i pulled out a korean book ‘Love Smart’ and started reading lines to Adeline who insta videoed it haha. Practicing my Korean yes!!

Details for this cafe here~

we went to eat chicken + beer with Shery’ls boyfriend! Haha i didn’t think i would eat chicken + beer so much but it happened LOL. I invited Amber along since it was after our kimchi making class (which was quite fail actually) and during the whole night we were just teaching her Singlish and bad words LOL. So everytime Sheryl’s boyfriend swore Frederick would translate that literally and it sounded so crude. We also played plenty of Korean games introduced by Monica!! It was my first time playing so many games, in Singapore it’s either the usual 5-10 hand game thingy or just drinking lol. It was a hell lot of fun and Sheryl’s boyfriend and Amber kept losing so the two of them drank the bulk of it.

Luckily Amber had so much fun and she continued to tell me how much fun she had for the next few days, and she said she really loved us Singaporeans ❤ I was so happy and kinda proud of that LOL. It’s just like on my ask.fm account there was suddenly an outburst of anons asking me about Singapore and praising Singaporeans, and asking for some Singlish lessons, idek why out of the blue, but still makes me proud. More Singaporean than Indonesian clearly. Haha.

On Friday it was chicken + beer again haha. This time Zenn joined us! We went to walk around Edae to shop first because Karin and I agreed to find caps to buy! We found a shop selling pretty cheap caps for $10-ish but for some reason those caps looked realllly fake i mean i know they are all fake but that one had bad stitching and really poor looking fonts. So we left without getting anything ): I ended up getting just one pair of flats that i bargained from 28K to 15K HAHA. Just by hesitating a lot.

Then we all headed to find the rest and hereby begun our second round of chicken + beer that week!

This week was a little slow for me at least, didn’t do much in the weekends haha. Because of the chicken+beer session i didn’t wake up on time for Suwon that i initially wanted to go with Jasmine and her friends. So i skipped it and decided to head down to Inkigayo with Goh Hong since it was SNSD’s last stage for Mr. Mr. :’) it was a beautiful album and im proud to have been able to see the first and last music show in this short promotion period.

While waiting to be let in GH and I went to this Cafe Citta and the uncle was so nice!!! asked me where we are from and stuff, i took the opportunity to speak a little Korean, all basic stuff as usual, haha. It feels a little more natural now, like i can think in Korean, but i’ll still need to constantly practice! Forgot to take photo of the place thou it was nice and cosy ^^ I’ve run out of adjectives to describe cafes LOL they’re either cosy nice or pretty sigh

Oh oh on that note, let me post this cafe that we went to the day before called Roti Mom, it’s definitely not a local Korean brand HAHAHA but it was pretty! I won’t make a separate post on this as it’s far from Seoul and not really a common area, but yes it was nice!

I love the space!! There are also books available but they were in Korean. Sigh i swear korean cafes are like the love of my life

^^

After Inki on Sunday I headed back to dorm to rest and just slack the day away lulz.

phew finally done with the day-to-day updates .__. sorry for these posts i needa remind myself what i did thus the mundane details.

and btw wow there are 4 cafes in this one post hahhaa i consider that quite an accomplishment.

College Life in Seoul: Week 4

I was considering how i want to update and record the miscellanious things I’ve been up to in Sogang, because they’re not really anything out of ordinary yet they are still memories I want to record and remember in the future.

So I guess I will be having these “College Life in Seoul” themed posts, probably mostly labelled by weeks, to cover the more ordinary things we do in school, rather than things like traveling. For example, this post is gonna talk about how I did my hair at Edae, the noraebang we went to and the Sogang magic show, among all things. Non touristy stuff, more of an exchange student kind of stuff. I’ll try to highlight the things that happen, or otherwise I’d just list in order of days~ these posts are meant for my personal record and it’s pretty much a post you can overlook unless you’re super in love with me and want to know the littlest details, that’s possible too 그럴수도있지뭐 ㅋ

This week was a bit of a crazy week for me. First of all of course, i made the random decision to dye my hair, post here. I wrote a review for Juno Hair because i was so pleased with everyhing!

And the day after that, we had a crazy Noraebang session! It’s really cheap here, I paid only about $5 for 2 hours of Noraebang~ One of the perks of Seoul that Singapore doesn’t have!

Friday is unofficially our bonding day because we all have the same last class that day and so automatically gather together. We again visited the Intl Cafe that day and played pictionary!

Hangout area for us! Coffee + Bagel cost only 2200 won, which is about $3!! 😀 And it’s a normal bagel size with awesome cream cheese heh. When the cafe closed we moved to this nice quiet lounge area that was actually reserved for MBA students but well who’s checking right.

We got lured into attending a magic show hosted by the magic club in Sogang with free food, but there wasn’t really free food HAHA. Regardless it was kinda entertaining i guess although i kinda fell asleep halfway i’m sorry but i did think they were great at the magic tricks!!

So we headed out to eat ourselves and treat ourselves to patbingsoo!!

Introducing one of my favorite yet most unhealthy meals in Korea. Budae Jjigae. It’s tricky because some restaurants use proper chilli powder and spices for the soup, but many other restaurants use ramen seasoning. I’ve learned that it’s usually the price that makes it obvious, one that costs 5000won or below is most likely ramen seasoning. Those with proper seasonings are 6000won and above. The difference is so small so it’s still tough differentiating T_T

Anyway this Budae Jjigae was ramen seasoning which made it so super tasty but so sinful. Budae Jjigae is a typical spicy army stew kind of soup, with SPAM, sausage, rice cakes (a korean classic), kimchi and ramen, topped with sinful melted cheese. Served with steaming hot rice. One of my favorite meals but I try to avoid it especially those that are served with ramen seasoning T___T I’m hungry just talking about this.

Then we treated ourselves to Patbingsoo!! Classic Korean favorite in summer. I’ve used the word classic too many times in this post. This shop was a nice cosy shop that was packed with customers even on a wintry night. I really loved the mango one!! The other one is green tea shaed ice with red bean toppings. The owner was really nice, pulling chairs from everywhere to give us space to seat!! 🙂

I also conversed for the first time in Korean with someone else on that day. This sounds weird because i have been speaking Korean here, but i don’t recall really talking in Korean to another Sogang schoolmate since i’ve been here for some reason…. well anyways, had a nice chat with her and she’s actually of native Japanese origin but has been living in Korea for a long time and is now studying Korean as a degree. Cool stuff. And also Sogang kids always seem to think business is a hard major to take, each time i say business they will exclaim saying “Isn’t business hard?” well i take it as a compliment i guess, perhaps Sogang business school is prestigious?

Saturday was very lazy because we were supposed to attend Lineatte’s buddy’s friend’s event that day so we planned just for the afternoon. We ate at the same tofu place that i’ve went 2 times before with Zenn & Yonsei kids and with Vanessa and her mom. Well it is a nice tofu place with free rice and tasty seaweed and eggs, only for $8. The Sogang kids seem to love that place too~ Then we nua’ed around and finally decided to go to the War Memorial since it’s a lazy day after all! I will write a separate post on it ^^

The second time we were lured into attending an event with free food that week. This time it’s a swing dance performance haha i admit i was expecting some sort of theatre or bar but it turned out to be a dance studio ._. regardless, the old school style was awesome! We also did receive the free food this time, chicken and beer! Classic korean favorite.

Sunday was Seoul Land, a small theme park in Seoul!! Again, a separate post will be done for that one ^^ I’m keeping my travel journals separate from this kind of weekly posts so that I can do a proper review of my experience ^^ Granted, the war memorial and Seoul Land that we visited on Week 4 weekends weren’t extraordinary, i might combine them into one post.

Till next time~~