Tuesday, July 17th
I went to Cafe Namoon for lunch with Bjorn and I finally got to eat a real salad for the second time since coming to Korea. (Yes, I'm keeping track.) I also got a slice of apple pie, but it was more like thick bread with a thin layer of apples. Sadly, we had to scarf the food down in about 8 minutes since we were afraid we would be late to the Pavilion Exchange with Switzerland.

The Pavilion Exchange was good. I had signed up for it since I really liked the Swiss Pavilion and thought it would be fun to see behind-the-scenes. They gave us about a 30 minute tour and then actually had us work for the next couple hours. We rotated positions every 30 minutes and I had to speak a lot of Korean on the go since I obviously didn't have their spiels memorized like I do with the ones at the USA Pavilion. It went fine though except for one position where I was saying stuff that just made no sense. I think it just amused the Korean audience though because they smiled and just told me to continue even though what I was saying had no real meaning.

Wednesday, July 18th
I got lunch with Rachel and George and then caught my train to Seoul. I went shopping in 이대점 (an area in between Ewha and Yonsei Universities) while also looking for housing. I had three places to check: I couldn't find one, the other was at the top of the largest hill I'd ever seen in my life, and the third place looked dirty and sketch. I also grabbed some bubble tea because there is no bubble tea in Yeosu. Actually there are a couple places that serve it, but it's not good, so I got some while I was in Seoul. Then I grabbed dinner at a Mexican restaurant. I think it was called Habanero, but it had some generic sounding Mexican restaurant name. It wasn't that great unsurprisingly. Afterwards I went to 민성's (Minsung's) house and then we went to cafe, she to study, and I to do Yonsei research.

Thursday, July 19th
I went to COEX early in the afternoon and and bought a Korean textbook that I hope will encourage me to study Korean. Then in the afternoon I met 기완 (Giwan) and 병훈 (Byung Hun) for the first time in 2 years along with their friend 광준 (Kwang Joon) in 강남 (Gangnam), where we grabbed lunch. Then we were bored and looking for something to do, so I suggested getting bubble tea. One of them didn't even know what bubble tea was, but they googled and found a place where we could get it, although it required a bit of a walk. I would also like to add that I was walking around in rain boots the entire time because it was supposed to be raining, but instead there were clear skies and it was insanely hot. Anyway, after the bubble tea, we went to the movie theatre but there weren't any tickets available for anything until 26:00. We didn't even know what that meant, but apparently 26:00 means 2 am the next morning. Now I know. I also know now that you should never try to catch a movie in Gangnam because it is impossible. After that Kwang Joon left and the rest of us headed to a 노래방 for two hours, which was insanely fun. After that I went back to Minsung's place, where I ate dinner and watched the MBC Concert in Los Angeles with her family. You could definitely tell that Korean media was trying to suggest that Korean pop music was huge in the U.S. because they refused to show audience members who were Korean American and who I'm sure made up half the audience. They just kept show white people going ballistic over these groups. I realized though after about five minutes they were just showing the same eight or so people over and over again, but Koreans wouldn't be able to tell, so it just seemed like every American was in love with Kpop. It's weird to see your country misrepresented because you want to correct the mis-perception but it's not like I could call up MBC and ask them to clarify. My friend actually wrote a great piece on how Korean media likes to show that Korean culture is incredibly popular abroad, but then at the same time otherize foreigners (http://seoulbeats.com/2012/06/mbc-the-vilification-of-foreigners-and-hallyu/).