Last Night:
Went to 명동/Myungdong, which is a big international shopping center, and it was extremely interesting (maybe even chaotic). I went with my pretty friend, Soae. We spent Christmas in Paris together in 2010. It's been 3 years and it was so good to catch up. 명동/Myungdong is a huge tourist location. They have all the major stores there: H&M, Zara, Uniqlo, all the Korean cosmetic stores, outdoor stands, and a multitude of food stands.
We ate at this place called Battery Park. It was a fusion Italian+Korean restaurant that played a lot of hip-hop music. I was skeptical to try Korean pizza, but this place was actually delicious. We shared vongole pasta, which is spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, and clams:
We also shared an apple gorgonzola pizza with this deliciously thin and crispy crust. Highly recommended:
I forgot to take a picture first, so you can see we already started enjoying it. Oops :)
We wandered around 명동/Myungdong for a while, just browsing. Then, I realized that I needed a new backpack, so we went to this one Korean store, which I forget the name of. It was simple and classic, but I wanted something different. I found my new backpack at an outdoor stand that sells various bags. It was perfect. I asked for the price and the lady said 30,000 KRW. We (more Soae than me) haggled it down to 26,000 KRW!!! This was my first haggling experience and it was exhilarating. We can't really do that kind of thing in the states. Here is the product of our haggling:
명동/Myungdong is extremely busy all the time. It is full of people from all around the world. The cosmetic stores even target Japanese customers, with employees stationed outside marketing their products in Japanese. Apparently, Japanese customers tend to buy cosmetics in larger quantities, so companies in 명동/Myungdong market to them. I heard so many different languages, mostly Chinese, Japanese, and English. 명동/Myungdong is a lot of fun and very, very lively. Here are some pictures of the crowds of people and quirky stands at 명동/Myungdong:
The last photo is of the shoe inserts that men put into their shoes to make them taller. Korean men tend to be very short. It contributes to their pride to be taller, so they put in these inserts, find shoes with tall heels, or both. It is quite interesting to what lengths Korean men will go to make themselves taller.
After walking around a bit, we went to this place called Nu Look that combined 막걸리/makkuli/Korean rice wine with fruit juice for 막걸리/makkuli/Korean rice wine cocktails:
This one had 복분자/bokbunja/small strawberry juice:
This one was with 매실/meshil/plum juice:
They were quite yummy, but also quite pricey.
Today:
Before orientation, the AU-KU dual master's degree students had lunch together. We went to this Korean-Chinese restaurant. Shiloh and I ordered 짜장면/jjajangmyun. It's a noodle dish with black bean sauce with vegetables and meat:
We started our KU GSIS Orientation at 1p.m. today. For 5 hours, we listened to so much information being thrown at us (a lot of it was useless information). To be honest, I was ready to go to sleep in the middle of it. Interestingly, there was a session on sexual harassment and gender equality. KU has a Center for Gender Equality. Apparently, there was some inappropriateness between students AND between students and professors. There was also a recent scandal, but I'm not aware of the details other than that it involved a professor and a student. *Heard it through the grapevine. I don't know the facts.*
Moving on, after the orientation, there was a fun bonding night for everyone. We had dinner and unlimited drinks for 3 hours at this one place. That was fun. Here's a picture of the us AU-KU students when we were there:
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