Seoul Trip

Friday June 22nd
I woke up at 9 am and wandered around Minsung's apartment for a bit before realizing there was nothing I could really do while she was still asleep. I also still felt tired, so I went back to sleep at 10 am and woke up at noon. Minsung and I ate lunch and watched an episode of some drama she's watching before heading out to the phone store. We went to a multi-level tech mart that had a whole level dedicated simply to cell phones. I thought that looking for a phone would be overwhelming then since there were so many to choose from, but it quickly became apparent that was not the case. The first place we tried, we found out that even though I can buy alcohol in Korea, I can't buy a cell phone because I'm a minor. I don't really understand how that works. But the sales clerk kept asking if my parents had come to Korea to and I kept insisting they hadn't to his surprise. Besides that, my current visa is an Expo visa, not a student visa, because I can't change my visa status until I'm done with my summer internship. He just kept telling me my visa status was wrong though and I had to have a student visa to get a phone with contract. So that totally failed and we ended up just going shopping for a bit on the first floor since even though it was a tech mart, the first floor consisted of clothing. That night I met my host mom and we went back to my host family's apartment, which was definitely a more awkward experience than I thought it would be. Even though I had tried to keep in touch with my host family throughout these two years, there was still an obvious distance both due to the language barrier and the fact it had been such a long time since I had seen them. Eventually it became less awkward though as we just sat around and watched TV. My host dad came back home next and joined us, followed by my host sister who I hadn't actually ever met before. She didn't get back until about 11 due to her job. We watched the show Gag Concert, which I had heard of, but never seen. It was really over-the-top humor so I didn't really find it that funny, but my host family was dying. Around midnight we headed out to a neighborhood cafe since I needed to use the internet and there was no wifi in the apartment. After that we watched an episode of some Korean crime drama about a super competitive high school.

Saturday, June 23rd
I met Rachel in the morning to look at 하숙집 (boarding houses) for the school year. The first one was absolutely frightening. It was essentially a box. There weren't any windows and the room consisted of a bed, desk, and clothing rack made out of piping. Those three things filled the room it was so small. I had an internal freak out because if all the 하숙집 looked like that it was going to be a disaster. I can't live in a such a cramped place. I need some breathing room. I don't need a gigantic room, but if there is that little space in a room, I will have nowhere to put my two suitcases, which would be a huge problem. The next couple kept improving though and I found one I legitimately liked. The lady wasn't sure if she would have an opening, but she said we could contact her to find out. After that I went shopping with Rachel at U-Plex, which had prices akin to US malls, hence we didn't buy anything. Malls here are also more iffy as to whether they'll let you try on clothes. I pretty much on principle try something on before I buy it, but here sometimes they won't let you at all or, in one place, you couldn't try on clothes that were white. After that Rachel left and I headed back to Yonsei to find the bus stop so I could go visit my host cousin. I saw a whole bunch of buses going by, but I couldn't figure out where they were all coming from. I stopped by one bus stop and it had only 2 local buses coming to it, so I figured that maybe I wasn't at the main entrance of campus. Thus I headed into campus, which is absolutely gorgeous. There's a whole wooded area, which is a surprise since Seoul is so crowded and cramped. It was really relieving though to walk around after getting so stressed looking at housing and feeling like they were all just little boxes. I could finally take some deep breaths. Anyway, 15 or 20 minutes later when I reached the other side of campus, I finally realized that the place I had entered campus was the main entrance, so I turned around and headed back in that direction. I ended up in the medical area of campus, which was a bit of a spider web to navigate, but I knew the general location of the main entrance, so it wasn't that bad. However, getting back to the main entrance still didn't solve my problem of not knowing where the buses were stopping. I finally realized that the buses were stopping in the middle of the roads. Yes, the bus stops were in the middle of the car lanes, meaning you had to walk halfway across the intersection to get to them. So I tried one that looked promising only to find out none of the eight buses I could take came there. So I had to cross another three intersections or so to get to the right one. By the time I found the right one I was pretty tired, so I didn't even bother to ask the bus driver if it was going in the right direction. I just sank into the seat and called it done, only to realize I was not going in the right direction. It didn't matter that much though because it just went in a 15-minute loop arriving back to Yonsei before heading off in the right direction. Another 20 minutes and I was finally at the right bus stop. I got off and called my host cousin, but she couldn't see me, so I had a brief internal groan, thinking I had messed up yet again. A moment later she saw me though, so that was good. We walked back to her parents'-in-law apartment, where she is living with her husband and baby until sometime in July when they move out to their own place. Her baby is absolutely adorable with the fattest cheeks I've ever seen. I also learned that Korean babies have what appear to be bruises on their feet and butt when they're born, but they disappear when they're toddlers. She didn't know the English word and I had never heard of it before, but I just looked it up and apparently it's called a Mongolian Spot in English. (Wikipedia link if anybody's interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_spot). Since I'm vegetarian, she didn't really know where we could eat out, so instead, she taught me how to cook some vegetarian Korean food. We made 호박 파전 (squash pancakes), 김치 파전 (kimchi pancakes), and 감자 파전 (potato pancakes). I was planning on going back to my host family's apartment afterwards, but it was about an hour and a half away and a bit complicated, so I decided to just spend the night there. I stayed up late doing more housing research before going to sleep at around 1 am.