The first adventure was the Hello Kitty Cafe! I met up with Hanna, one of my best friends from high school, and she took me to the cafe in Hongdae. It was so crazy cute! I posted pictures on facebook. The entire cafe is pink! Even the exterior was pink. I ordered a latte and cake, both of which resembled Hello Kitty. The latte had the cinnamon on top sprinkled in the shape of her face, and the entire cake was made in her likeness. It was pretty much the cutest thing ever! But the sweets in Korea are significantly less sweet than in America, so the cake wasn't very tasty. I'm still really glad I got to go, though!
My second adventure was to the War Memorial of Korea. Ironically, I didn't go to the museum to learn about the Korean war... I definitely just went to go see the One Piece exhibit they had this month... For those of you who don't know, One Piece is an extremely popular anime/manga series (and for those of you who may not know what anime/manga is, anime is the Asian style of cartoon show and manga is Asian style comic books). The anime has over 650 episodes and is nowhere near done yet! So they had a whole exhibition in the museum dedicated to the popular series. It's really hard to accurately describe the exhibit. It was very impressive! The whole thing was in a castle-like motif, so all the walls were textured like stone bricks, and each room included figures of the characters, interactive exhibits, clips from the anime playing on projectors, etc. I took a ton of pictures, so I'll get those up on facebook soon! It was incredibly fun to see the exhibit, but it was also the most nerdy I have ever felt in my life....
My third adventure was a two-part adventure! The Konkuk University Festival! Each university in Korea has an annual festival. The festivals are usually held in Spring, but Konkuk delayed their festival because of the tragic ferryboat incident that occurred last spring. So Wednesday and Thursday were bustling with excitement as the festival took place for literally two days straight. The daytime included music, demonstrations put on by clubs like the Kendo and dance clubs, and booths stretching in all directions of students selling food, juice, crafts, etc. But things don't get really exciting until the evening, when everyone is done with classes! Some of the booths (like the crafts) close up so that the students running them can go have fun. Other booths begin opening at night. The most popular ones were booths selling alcoholic beverages and booths that were essentially restaurants: they had tables, menus, and very long lines to get in! The pathways of campus were absolutely filled with people, both students and members of the nearby community coming to enjoy the festivities. In addition to the booths, there were also concerts throughout the night by fairly famous kpop stars as well as DJ dance parties out in the school's amphitheater. To me, the festival seemed to perfectly sum up the Korean "going-out" culture: things don't get exciting until it gets dark, and then the night is meant to be enjoyed! In my dorm, our curfew is 1 am. If we stay out past then, we get a penalty point. However, even the dorms cancelled curfew for the festival! The latest I was out at the festival was 3 am, and when I left there were still plenty of Korean students out and about. it really was amazing! Why do we not have these in the states?!
My fourth adventure was going to see a movie in 4D! Well I guess that was actually two adventures in one... I met up with Hanna for this, but I ended up getting to the subway stop we were supposed to meet at a whole 2 hours early. Luckily for me, the stop just so happened to be right next to Yeongdeungpo Rotary Underground Shopping Center! So I spent two hours perusing the underground shopping mall. Once Hanna got there, we headed to the movie theater to see Maze Runner in 4D! The theater was really nice, but again very different from those in America. First of all, you had way more food choices! There were a variety of different food vendors, selling burgers, hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, and even coffee! They didn't just sell normal popcorn though, there was a stand dedicated to all sorts of different gourmet popcorns. Hanna and I got both onion and caramel popcorn. Both were delicious! And the 4D experience was absolutely incredible. It was seriously like an amusement park ride. The seats would move (sometimes in conjunction with the characters, sometimes in conjunction with the camera angle), it would blow air at you (like when a knife would fly right past the main character), provide smells (when they were in the forest, it actually smelled like trees!), and even poke you in the back with a roller ball thing (the monsters in the movie had stingers, and every time they would sting someone, it would poke you! That was pretty terrifying.). Unfortunately, I was very upset about the actual movie. I was a huge fan of the Maze Runner book, and the movie wasn't really a movie adaption of the book. It was a movie loosely based on the general concept of the book. They changed way too much, and maybe I'm just bitter about that, but I didn't like it. The 4D made it totally worth a watch, though! Definitely not a waste of money.
My last adventure was climbing Mt. Dobongsan. My study abroad group went with our Korean "buddies" that were set up by the university. From what I had heard about the mountain, I expected it to be a pretty easy hike. One lady I met in the subway even told me it was the mountain where all the old people went to hike. When we arrived, our group was surprised that most people there seemed to have pretty heavy-duty hiking equipment: hiking boots, hardcore outdoor clothes, and even the mountain climbing walking sticks. Didn't they know the hike was pretty easy? Wow, were we ever wrong! The hike turned out to be really intense! The entire way was really steep, and consisted of climbing up rock after rock. There were hardly any nice, relatively flat paths like hiking in America. It was essentially climbing up rock stairs most of the way. But our group struggled through it! About halfway up, we stopped on a giant rock flat to eat lunch. At that point we were all tired and drenched in sweat! After lunch, we separated into two groups: the weak group and the strong group. The weak group called it quits and went back down the mountain. The strong group powered through the second, more difficult, half of the hike to reach the top. I figured I was already halfway up, why not just finish the hike? So I joined three other American students, one Korean student, and my study abroad leader and made the trek. It was very intense! And to get to the summit, the last bit of the hike was absolutely insane. It was literally just a rock face slanted at almost a 90 degree angle. You had to climb up it, relying heavily on the provided handrail for support. It was fun, difficult, and terrifying all at the same time! I really don't feel like talking about it even does it justice. But the view from the top of the mountain was gorgeous! You could see the surrounding forest, some other mountains, and the city of Seoul. I felt so accomplished! The hike back down, although easier, was also more dangerous. At a lot of points on the mountain, there was a lot of dry, loose dust and gravel. It was pretty common for us to slip. But nobody got hurt, so praise the Lord! We made it to the bottom safely and all went out to Samgyeopsal, which is Korean Barbecue. What a wonderful and absolutely exhausting day! What amazed me was that the lady in the subway was kinda right... there were a ton of old Korean people hiking the mountain! How are they able to do that?! I'm young, but I pretty much had a heart attack climbing that thing! It made me realize that maybe there is a lot more truth than I thought to the stereotype that Americans are lazy. Hopefully I'll still be out climbing mountains when I'm old!
Well, that finally brings me to the end of my adventures for this week! Hopefully I'll get a little more rest in the days ahead. I can't complain, though! It's been amazing!
Wow, what a week! That hike sounds crazy! You must take after Trevor and Brent! :)
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