I love malling

I love bad engrish in public places. (sign outside a mall in Yongsan)

The past few days have been tiring. Oh so tiring.

We've been out to a few nightclubs in hongdae and itaewon.

Quick backstory: While at the immigration office getting our alien registration cards, a random white male, let's call him *Kevin,* turns around and starts talking to us. He then invites us to his housewarming party near itaewon. Of course we decide to go.
He meets us at a random bridge, leads us down a dark alley, and then traps us in his room (jokingly, of course?) There are virtually no other girls in the apartment and we feel like high schoolers crashing a college party so we leave immediately (after taking the last bottle of soju with us). fail.

We then head to a club in Itaewon which Jenn found online. MAD SKETCHY.
I felt like I was at Club Purgatory in downtown Dallas on "college night." Think ghetto fabulous meets korean prostitute meets ajashi predator. yeah....

But last night we went to Dongdaemun, which is a huge shopping district with a bunch of malls that are several stories high and open until like 4am. If we weren't so dead tired (as usual) it would have been much more productive I'm sure. As it was, we bought like 1 thing each and ate some street food (which Amy tactfully dropped on a watch stand).

Goal: learn to haggle. and win!

Today we went to Yongsan, which is like Dongdaemun except for electronics. Like 8 stories of different electronics. Techies dream.

But at least Joyce and I finally got Korean phones!
So now when we got lost late at night in the streets of Seoul we won't die. Hopefully.

Coming Soon: A list of things we want to do and see in Seoul. And possibly recipes that we will be trying out (in our sweet kitchen!)

interesting subway rides?

okay so i should really start carrying around a camera with me...

but yesterday Annie (my roommate) and i took the subway to get our alien registration card (which actually took FOREVER. oh also while waiting for our number to get called, we got hit on by a 27 year old skinny white english professor. he invited us to his party on saturday. update on how that goes will probs come later haha) but yeah. on the subway we see this.. person.. annie's like oh look at that guy wearing a hot pink shirt. he's probably a b-boy (because my ultimate goal in korea is to find a korean b-boy boyfriend nbd.) and i'm like annie... that's a girl.. she has boobs. and the entire ride we're trying to figure out what gender this person was. person was wearing a hot pink baggy shirt with baggy jeans and boy sneakers. boy haircut. but carrying a tiny white puppy with a red collar... but when person stood up she def had boobs. so we decided that we just witnessed our first korean lesbian.

today i took the subway to go visit my grandmother. and i spotted my first korean school girl slut. most school girls here are pretty demure.. like long uniform skirts and such. but this girl. her skirt was hemmed suuuper high and tight. and her uniform blouse was skin tight and she had huge boobs. she walked around as if she owned the place. i laughed.

anyways. the weather is getting lots better. i'm not dripping in sweat every time i step outside..

OH. so annie and i decided to throw a floor party for the girls' wing cuz we wanted to get to know everyone. so we made these lovely flyers

so inviting right?? WE WERE OFFERING FREE PIZZA AND KOREAN FRIED CHICKEN. so we put them up before we went to get our alien registration cards and on our way back we're thinking omg my inbox is going to be exploded with emails!! i wonder how many people want to come! and we run into some guys in the lobby who are looking at the poster and we're like that's our party!! and they're all oh you should make it for the guys too! we really want to come it sounds like fun! and we're like haha yeah it's going to be a blast! so we get into our room and i check my email... i have ONE. FUCKING. RSVP. so we get pissed off and think we should make this party just for the guys and us since obviously the girls dont want to be social.. bitches.. but the girl who rsvp-ed was like maybe you should put up a sign up sheet because i think people are forgetting to email. so we graciously put up a sign up sheet next to the flyer when i left this morning.. i come back like 7 hours later. ONE FUCKING NAME on the rsvp list. ridiculous.

PICTURES!!!

korea is beautiful. we've just been in seoul mainly, incheon, and ilsan, but it's been a CRAZY adventure. lots of learning new things [like using electrical converters and korean public transportation] and meeting new people [fun europeans who like to karaoke] and figuring out how to live in a totally different country that's so foreign and familiar at the same time [seeing the people and language i've seen my entire life but not completely understanding them].

Pictures of the lovely bloggers: Patricia, Joyce, Me, and Jenn. Hanul is our fifth, and he's getting here next week! YAY!

Our first traditional korean meal made by a real korean ahjima! haha it was DELICIOUS. but like patricia said, the korean food, though wonderful, is starting to wear on us. i guess it'll take some time getting used to lol


Going out to dinner in Sinchon. As you can see, it was also a great meal.

The restaurant even had aprons. Jenn stole hers. LOL

at the bar lol

at the noraebang (karaoke) LOL

outside the noraebang with the owner of the noraebang. That's his face on the sign. haha

AND CUTE ASIAN BABY OF THE DAY:


AND A LITTLE MORE:



(click on it to see larger image)

YAY KOREA!

<3, Amy

its 12:46 pm

and i'm awake.

in response to patricia's lovely blog about her hotel-like apartment, let me tell you about the international dorm that i am staying in (called I-House). it's a SHIT HOLE. i'm not even exaggerating (okay maybe a little) but i don't think they've cleaned any of the furniture/walls so they have stickers and tape residue and dirt all over them. and it's super small. and the closets are suuuuper tiny. i legit dont have enough space to store my stuff.. unlike the other girls i do not have a walk-in closet. aand the bathrooms. are smelly ALWAYS. and the shower stalls are separated by glass panels (i discovered this while i was showering and turned around and saw a fuzzy outline of the girl next to me shaving. very. awkward). and the showers all share one drain that doesn't really work so the last time i showered i was standing in a pool of soapy water. and the other day i had to kill a spider. I HATE BUGS. then i hallucinated in my sleep that i had spider bites all over me. no joke. i remember scratching them at night only to discover this morning i have no bites. OH. and there's the lovely construction going on right outside of my window that promptly wakes us up at 7am EVERY MORNING. and i'm convinced that they're not even building anything. all they're doing is drilling and cutting metal rods then dropping them into large metal bins to make the loudest noises possible.

and it's really hard to meet people in the dorms... but my roommate and i are going to have a floor party at some point.. with no alcohol obviously because we're not allowed to have that here in the gender separated dorm (i hear people have gotten sent home from breaking that gender barrier)

buuut with that all said, i'm sure i'll appreciate being on campus more once classes start. and it's given me and my roommate annie to explore the near by area and go SHOPPING. everything is soooo cheap here. loves that.

and to end this extremely long entry.. this is the type of mail we get from yonsei

"Hello, everyone!^^

How are things going with you? Is your heart parpitating with expectation

for upcoming life?

For those who long for meaningful second semester,

we, Yonsei Global, provide a number of good opportunities.

Oh! As you can imagine, Yonsei Global is a student association under the

International Office of Yonsei Univ."

i'm pretty sure they used freetranslation.com or something to compose that delightfully confusing message. haha

-Jenn.

its 11am

and Amy is still asleep...

Update: our apartments are REALLY nice
Like hotel style - we get our linens changed once a week and there's free breakfast during the week.
There's a kitchen stocked with pots and pans and cups and plates and a rice cooker (most important).

However, the rules here are really strict
We can't have any visitors in our rooms, and they have to leave after an hour. We also can't have anyone sleep over [sorry Sisi! :( ] or drink in the apartment. But that last bit's okay because apparently drinking in public is totally acceptable here.

Which brings me to my next point, which is the 711.
There is a 711 in the main floor of our building which has become the hub of our life, haha.
We sat outside of there and soju'd the other night before going out to noraebang, and go on late night Pocky runs when we're hungry.
Also, we still haven't gone grocery shopping, so we've been getting a lot of meals there as well.
Tip: Do NOT try the "스바개티" It's pretty much ramen noodles with ketchup.

Right now, I'm sitting in the common area watching tv on our FLAT SCREEN with our other roommate.

This post is really long so I'm going to go. Craving American-style breakfast foods. We'll see how successful we are...

korean drinking games

are super fun.

koreans know how to rage.

....

things they don't warn you about in Korea:

backsweat.

(ask Amy)

we're heeeeeeere

12 hours of sitting on a plane - not as fun as it sounds

Guface and I lacked a group of rowdy, drunk Russians. But we did have chatty neighbors. So chatty. She. Wouldn't. Stop. Talking.

However, we did fly Singapore Air-and the $1000 tickets come with perks
We had our first international cocktails as soon as we left San Francisco.
Singapore Sling > Keystone
Hot towels - still not sure what they're for. The man across the aisle politely cleaned out his ears with them...

Built in screens with movies and interactive games as well as language learning programs.
Key phrases:
maek ju - Korean; "beer"

We were also the only two people on the entire plane playing the interactive games.
Can you guess who won?















Either way, we're finally here!
Staying with a friend of Amy's family...

I (Patricia) am the only non-Korean speaker. And they don't know any English.
I felt incredibly awkward at first. I think I am finally starting to realize what I've signed up for.

But with Amy's broken toddler-esque Korean and my common sense, we've been okay so far-
Our Konglish is really improving.

An-yong-hee-gah-say-yo.

Sah-rang-HAY!
Amy & Patricia
(Kimchi & PCakes)

my internet is in korean and i dont know how to fix it.

So before I board my plane and I'm waiting at the gate, I always like to look around at the people there and hope for someone cool to sit next to me.. maybe some really hot guy or a jetsetter.. or at least someone who doesn't smell. So after I board I'm anxiously waiting at my seat, and I can't help but think of all the weird people I've sat next to on planes... From the overly excited passenger telling you everything about their pretty ordinary lives to old men who wouldn't keep their shoes on to hide their smelly feet... and in walks a huge crowd of russian men. AWESOME. I mean not that they were particularly attractive of anything but they should be interesting right? aaand things got interesting. when they started to drink. and wouldn't stop. the flight attendants had to argue with them. pretty sure the one next to me threw up in one of those throw up bags. they got soooo shwasted. and to top it off, they smelled.

-Jenn.

First Post

We're five Dartmouth students living in Seoul for 4 months on an exchange program.

Here's to our adventures!