치킨 배달, 족발, 삼겹살, 볼링 : Chicken Delivery, Pig's Feet, Samgyeopsal, and Bowling!

Hey everyone!

Okay, so I skipped talking about my trip to Ann House because that would have been too lengthy of an entry, but on the way back from Ann House, the most AWESOME thing happened! We were walking up the hill towards are school when we saw by the convenience store a bunch of people holding red light sticks. They asked us if we could stand over to the side and wait for a few minutes. I thought there had maybe been some kind of accident, but we were actually witnessing A DRAMA BEING FILMED. It was not just any drama with any actor, but the filming for the sequel to one of my favourite dramas Let's Eat, starring B2ST's Yoon Doo Joon. And if you haven't figured it out yet, Yoon Doo Joon was in that convenience store, about 20 feet away from me. Things like casually stumbling upon an top Korean Celebrity in a convenience store do not happen to me at home, so as you can imagine I was internally screaming with excitement. There was a small crowd of people watching, and the employees were super strict about not taking photos...but I got a photo >_>

For reference, this is a handsome picture of Doo Joon:

This is the one I got. I tried my best. He is the one with the intense look of concentration/near constipation.

Not the best photo, but I tried. When they were done he ran to his van but said goodbye to the crowd...seriously it was the coolest thing.

The next day, after we went to the You Are Here Cafe (an entry I posted on the Coffee Shop blog about) we ventured out in search of a samgyeopsal place I had read about online. When we got to the restaurant it was full, so we ended up going to the restaurant next door. Even though out of my group of friends I maybe know the most Korean, I had no idea what kind of restaurant this was. They had a menu set which came with 3 things, so I ordered 2. It came with Kimchi Jjigae, some kind of noodle soup, and something I later realized were spicy pig's feet.  I, naturally, was all over that but some of the people in our group stuck to the soups. You have to wear plastic gloves to eat the pig's feet and they give you baskets to throw the bones in. The sauce was so spicy and delicious. 

The next day,  I had the goal of trying to order delivery chicken. A lot of websites let you order online but you need an account to do so...and to make an account you need a verified phone number or Alien Registration (which I will have this Friday.) My Korean friend actually ended up ordering it and having it delivered for us. There is a free phone app which I will use next time called Yogiyo...it seems like it will be much easier. I'm not confident enough to order in Korean on the phone yet... The chicken place we ordered from was called Ne Ne Chicken, and we got 3 boxes so it was about 56 bucks all together.  From the time it was ordered, delivery took about 50 minutes. The chicken was so yummy! There were two kinds, one was like a sweet chilli and the other like a cheesy kind. The cheesy kind tasted just like Cheetos to me. 

Anyway, on Friday I met my friend Ju Hyun again for Samgyeopsal. Samgyeopsal is a kind of pork belly that you cook right at the table. It's served with lettuce, garlic, rice, bean sprouts, and red pepper sauce. You cook the meat, cut it into pieces, take a piece and put rice or lettuce or whatever in it and wrap it up into a little ball. The place we went is really popular so we had to wait about 15 minutes for a table. Some of the best places here are really kind of run down/dirty on the inside. Obviously their food is so good they don't need to care about aesthetic. There is a lot of yelling and to get the servers' attention you have to be somewhat loud, which is something I'm not used to. This place was particularly good because they serve thick pieces of meat. We order a bottle of soju and drank it while we ate. After that, we ordered a serving of nengmyeon (cold noodles) and doenjangjjigae (fermented soybean soup) 

After that, we went for dessert to a place called Choco Blossom. They serve different kinds of hot chocolates as well as little desserts. And I mean little. We ordered a chocolate cake and a bowl of hot chocolate.

After saying goodbye, I ran into my friend Mark and his friends who were on their way to go bowling. They invited me to come along and we went to a bowling alley near Ehwa. It was 5,000 a game and we played 2 games. 

Anyway, I was going to write about Dongwoo's Parent's restaurant but I think I will save it for next time. 

See you!

<3

Lord Sandwich, 딸기골, Baskin Robbins, and the U-Plex Building!

Hey everyone!

This post is gonna be about a bunch of kind of mismatched experiences, but it's what I did, so gotta talk about it!

The first place I want to tell you guys about is a sandwich shop right in front of my dorm building called Lord Sandwich. Bread in Korea is not....like bread as we know it in the States. A lot of time it is kind of puffy, pasty, or airy and tasteless white bread. This place, according to a friend who previously studied here, is where you go when you start missing real, crispy, hearty, bread. It did not disappoint in that aspect. When you go on, there is a menu board right by the door. You order and pay and they give you a number. You go upstairs to find a table and they bring you the food when it's ready. I ordered a cheese sandwich, which cost about 9,000KRW.  This place is definitely expensive and they only serve you a small side salad with the sandwich, but the sandwiches themselves are delicious.  The walls are decorated with baroque-era portraits and they play classical music. So classy. So Lord Sandwich.

This blog entry doesn't really have a linear sequence because I can't recall exactly what I did when on this day, so I'm just going to talk about specific places I went. The next place is a restaurant called 딸기골,  or Strawberry Town. Strawberry Town is a restaurant I've actually been to like 6 times since I've been here, but it's an essential for students living in International House or SK Global because it's super cheap, tasty, and right by the school. I can eat a hearty dinner there for about 4,000KRW.

The same night we went to Strawberry Town, Kelsi, Lulu and I attempted to see VIXX at a fan signing they were having at the U-Plex Department Store.  Before that, we went to Baskin Robbins. Baskin Robbins here is 100 times more cute, 100 times more pink, and 100 times more adorable. I haven't been to a lot of BRs in the states but I'm guessing it's more expensive here as well. Right now they are using SHINee as their spokesmodels so they had a CF of them playing on repeat on all the TVs (not that I'm complaining.) I went all out and got a banana split. It was maybe 5,000KRW and it was kind of little but it was super delicious and came with cheesecake cubes.

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So the U-Plex Department Store is about 10 floors of different kinds of stores. They vary in price from reasonable to really expensive. We travelled through each floor until we got to the floor where VIXX was supposed to be. Obviously it was in a closed auditorium and we couldn't see inside. Oh well, next time! I did buy a sweater and some leggings on a major major sale and it was fun looking at all of the clothes I couldn't afford. 

Saw my bae Kim Soo Hyun chilling.

That's really all I have for this entry. Next time I will write about BBQ with Ju Hyun and going to Dongwoo's father's restaurant. I am actually going to skip over Ann House and You are Here Café because they are quite involved entries and I already wrote about them on my coffee shop blog here!

See you guys <3 

클럽에 가는 건 완전 실패였다! 적어도 인피니트 콘서트에 가게됐다!: (Trying and Failing) at Clubbing in Hongdae! At least we got to see Infinite!

Hey, guys! Sorry it's been awhile.

I wanted to continue this blog with what I did on the same Saturday as I met that friend from Instagram. My other friends from the dorm and I had plans to go out clubbing in Hongdae, and were looking for places with no cover charges, as some of them can be 10-20,000KRW (Too much! D:)
There are also, unfortunately, a lot of clubs that will not let foreigners in. Anyway, we had a place in mind but when we got to it it ended up being more of a bar than a club, and since we were more interested in dancing we decided to look elsewhere. Of course we got lost trying to find the next place, and once we did we found it was not open. After much frustration, we decided to try for noraebang, or karaoke, instead. Because there is a curfew for high school students after a certain time, you have to have ID to get into some of these places. All of us had our ID except for one person and even though the employee was willing to let us all in, his superior said no. We left the noraebang in a sad mood, only to have our friend recover her ID. We went to noraebang for about 2 hours, which cost about 5,000 per person. The prices change depending on what time you go, so the best time to go is on a weekday between 6 and 12. It was so much fun and I am itching to go back. They have a HUGE selection of songs, including songs in Japanese, English, Spanish, Thai, you name it.

Before that though, we stopped at a little place that sells cocktails in a caprisun type bag...actually it looked like an IV drip bag. It's not every day that you can drink a cocktail from a plastic sack. I got a peachy-pineappley one.

While we were deciding what to do we stopped at this ice cream place that had really pretty ice cream so here's some photos.

All in all, the night was kind of a bust but noraebang was so much fun! The next day was super exciting for me because Kelsi and I were going to see INFINITE!! If any of you read my Europe blog, my last entry was about seeing Infinite in London. I LOVE Infinite and I kind of got these tickets on a whim because I was trying to get tickets to see BTS, but they sold out in about 5 seconds. This concert still had tickets available and were half the price of the BTS tickets. The concert was at the First Gymnasium at Seoul Olympic Park. It took, by subway, about half an hour to get there. Once we got there there were peoples selling all kinds of merchandise EVERYWHERE, and people were waiting in really long lines to get said merchandise....the lines were so long that I was unsure where the actual line to get in was. We had to walk a bit but we found the gymnasium and the will-call tent. I bought my tickets through INTERPARK which has a global ticketing site where you don't need a foreigner registration number in order to make an account. If you are going to Korea, this site along with YES24 are great for buying tickets to certain concerts.  We got the tickets and I bought an Infinite official lightstick because I am a nerd like that. They also had stand up cutouts you could pose with along with different outfits from each era displayed. 

Once we got inside, we found that our seats were literally the second to last row. I didn't really mind this though because the last time I saw Infinite, I was so close that I could see the sweat on their faces, but I couldn't see the elaborate dances they did. This way I could see the entire dance. It is also extremely forbidden to take pictures in these concerts, and I noticed that most people respect this rule and don't try to record anything. They also don't stand during the concert, but sit and dance and chant in their seats. This was actually not a full concert, but a fan gathering. They had an MC who asked them questions and played games with them and the audience. Randomly picked people got to share sandwiches, be picked up and carried, and take selfies with the members. All in all they played maybe about 7 or 8 songs.  We met an adorable little girl who said she loved talking with foreigners. 

I hope I can go to a lot of concerts here! It was really so much fun!

Next time I'll talk about Lord Sandwich, Strawberry Town, Baskin Robbins, and the U-Plex Department Store!

내 21 번째 생일하고 칱구랑 샤브샤브 먹는거! My 21st Birthday and Eating Shabu Shabu !

Hey, everyone!
So last Friday was my 21st Birthday! WOO I'm 21!  It was a little anticlimactic because I was already of age in Korea, but I can now legally purchase and consume alcohol in the United States! The morning of my birthday, though, I had to take care of a rather grueling and boring task: registering for my Alien Registration Card.

While getting to the Immigration Office was straightforward and easy, the actual registration process was not. You have to go up to the 3rd floor, get the appropriate form, take a number and wait. Easy, right? Well it would have been if I had known that you had to pay the registration fee in advance on the second floor. I think they also only accepted cash so, (you'll be proud to know) I exchanged currency entirely in Korean! I ended up having to do a lot of running around and waited maybe a total of an hour and a half. I was also suffering from a really bad Yellow Dust-induced cold and was thus very grumpy.  After registration was complete, we had to go back down to the 2nd floor to provide fingerprints. Since there were maybe 5 of us in the group we were probably at the office a total of 4 hours. I have to go back there in a couple weeks to pick up the card as well. -_- After that I went back home to prepare for dinner with my close friend Ji Won and her sister Kyu Won. We went to a traditional Korean food restaurant and she treated me to a big feast. I don't remember what everything was called but it was delicious!

Then we went to a nearby bakery and she bought me a cake! They gave us candles and matches so we could light it there. The cake was so cute!

The next day I met up with a girl from Instagram! isn't that funny? She was so nice and so pretty, unfortunately it was a little hard for me to communicate at times, and there were sometimes awkward lulls in the conversation. We went to eat Shabu Shabu, which is where you cook vegetables and meat in broth on the table, then cook noodles in the broth, and then when there is a tiny bit left, you mix in an egg and rice. It was so good! 

After that we went to a Caffé Bene and ate Strawberry Bingsu. It was really big so we couldn't finish it all. 

After that I asked her if we could go to Artbox, which is a  stationary /cosmetic /furniture /apparel /accessory store. As you can see, you can buy many things there...which is what I did. On the way a girl stopped and asked to take our picture and we had one taken on our phones too~

We got to Artbox and, yeah, well...I spent too much money...but how can you not in a place like this??

 

Look at all the cute, yet unnecessary crap I bought!

Needed? Maybe. Wanted? Yes.

Next time I will talk about our attempt at a night out in Hongdae and the Infinite concert!

<3