January 25, 2013

What happened before I left 대한민국 ;)

Posted in Uncategorized tagged adapting, airplane, airport, art, asian, back, booth, bowing, bus, cafe, cat, check-in, cit, city, coex, cook, cooking, cupcake, cutlet, department, dept., dinner, dishes, dutch, ehwa, european, 대한민국, farewell, food, gochujang, goodovening, habit, hall, homemade, hotel, hyundai, into, kitchen, korea, korean, lotte, macarons, mart, monster, museum, myeong-dong, national, of, on, palaces, park, party, phone subscription, photo, pizza, pork, rapokki, rice cakes, samgyupsal, samsung, seoul, sinchon, sleeping, society, soup, south, spicy, station, store, strawberry latte, tapgol, tonkatsu, ttokbokki, university, UOS jacket, water, woman's at 3:45 pm by Kirti

Hey everyone ^^

I know it’s been a while but I’ve also had to ‘adapt’ a little back into my old society.. for example. I still bow at people when exiting or entering a store. My little sister actually noticed and laughed at me, siblings can be so great sometimes 😉

Furthermore, I would like to show you what the food I ended up making, looked like;
This is called ‘Rapokki’ it’s basically ttokbokki (spicy rice cakes) and ramyun (noodles) together. I was also in the kitchen for a short while.. and this was the only time I actually managed to ‘cook’ in Korea ^^.

The intention of this evening was to show us how to make certain Korean dishes, and it was quite interesting to learn. I’ve been trying to make my favorite jige (soup) back home, but it hasn’t been a success yet as I don’t know how to get the soup water right.. Anyways this evening was quite interesting since we went to Seoul station to shop at the Lotte mart there ^^. After this I went to Myeong-dong for a cat café with someone I met during the food preperations. I also received a homemade card from someone there, the text was really touching ^^.

The next day I went to dinner with my friend, we visited her favorite café (Café On) the daughter of the woman that owns it, is quite fond of her.. so whenever we go there we also end up getting things for ‘service’ which is quite nice. I tried the strawberry latte there, and it’s one of my favorite drinks there ^^.

Furthermore, on Tuesday, I went to COEX. For once, I was walking around and just taking my time without having a real specific purpose.. this lead to me ending up in the Hyundai department store that is apparently linked to it. I hadn’t eaten yet by that time..and for some reason fate led me to this on this particular day.. I first ended up eating them when I got home though..

And looking at this made me a little greedy too, but luckily I didn’t buy anything there :

Furthermore I shopped a little for accessories and other things that are only limited to Korea ^^.

Wednesday I had my own  ‘farewell party’with some of my friends. We went to a restaurant that made it’s own pizza’s. The owner had been in Italy to study; and I got to say.. the pizza’s were delicious ^^. I actually lost my footing while we were on our way to the station, and made a sound that vaguely resembled ‘Nyah!’ one of the people I was with, misunderstood and said ”When you die, you really want your last words on the epitaph to be ”Nyark?!” Hopefully not ;). But it was really slippery downhill that night.

Friday I went to Tapgol park with one of my friends, we were supposed to meet up at Jonggak station, and we had lunch together (breakfast for me) it was the only place where they sold homemade pork cutlet. I also walked around there, the snow made it look beautiful, I also saw the ‘Avoid horse alley’ something that has been a  few centuries old, and just like the park, just in the middle of the fast-pacing society and high buildings that Seoul stands for.

My final Saturday in Seoul was spent.. shopping.. I really had a few ‘last things’ I had been meaning to buy, but never managed to get there. So in the afternoon we went to the student district and went around Ehwa to have breakfast. Moreover, we decided to go to Myeong-Dong to visit the ‘Goodovening’ cupcake store. They were delicious, but they didn’t look as awesome as the ones we had the next day ;).

Sunday we went to the national museum of Korea, I’ve seen a lot of interesting artifacts there too, and I got to say, Asian art is completely different from what European art is like. Moreover, even the lay-out of the museum was quite large and intimidating, unlike some of our museums back home. Another interesting thing, was that the entry was free, but it was also evident that Samsung had invested a lot of money in this. This showed as .. 80% of the tv’s that were in the museum were Samsung-owned. In the evening I had promised to meet my teachers for dinner, so we met up at Jonggak station. The funny part is, that I’d already been to the same restaurant and eaten the same thing as we were about to eat that day ^^. The first time was with one of my friends her buddy. who had told me that the food there was delicious. For some reason, the chicken and the vegetables really taste like my mum’s cooking.. so I definitely wasn’t complaining ^^. Afterwards we went to a café and after this we had to say goodbye. I actually went home by bus that day, which was quite an interesting experience too.

Tuesday I met up with another friend of mine, we had lunch together around Sinchon, afterwards we went for samgyupsal (pork belly fried in a table) with lettuce and gochujang. I had seen the photo booths before, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it at first.. my friend and I went in and took a few pictures, and edited them too.. they are incredibly cute ;). Afterwards I went to buy a card for my buddy’s grandmother. She had been really good to me ^^.

On Wednesday, it really was my final day in Seoul. I met up with my buddy and we cancelled my phone subscription. Afterwards she went to class, and I went to City hall to meet up with one of my friends. She was already in the library, I guess it was my way of saying goodbye to the city.. I found her and we talked for a short while, I walked past the entrance of one of the palaces, and ordered something to eat first. Afterwards she had to go to work, and I walked to one of the bookstores, above ground since.. I really wanted to see certain landmarks once more before leaving. I finished packing and threw out a lot of things. I also made a few bags for the people who were staying for longer for things that might supposedly come in handy later (cookies, paper, necessities). At 5 pm I went to the housing office and handed them back my keys, my laundry basket and my access key. At 5.15 I was back up since I forgot to bring my UOS jacket (left it in my closet, it’s so good to be me sometimes -.-) Luckily I had someone to help me with the suitcases, and I was severely grateful to this person for helping me out and even waiting while I ran to get my jacket ^^. At around 6 pm my friend who had finished her classes for the day, met us at the entrance and we could head off towards the airport.

We had dinner at the airport and went to the hotel, there we relaxed a little bit until we went back to the airport at 10 am the next morning. I was in time for check-in at 11, so she could have breakfast with me; and then head off back to school.. I spent the rest of the hours at my own leisure while waiting for the airplane. When I got back home I think I experienced something that could resemble a reverse-culture shock, but more on that later.

Thanks for reading this incredibly long post. And.. until next time!

Love,

-Kirti

Permalink Leave a Comment