Let's try

Discovered amazing BBQ ribs in Itaewon with an amazing price for rib day Tuesdays. I've totally fallen in love with this place. 10 ribs for 8,000원 if you order a beer or drink. So basically, 10 ribs and a drink for 10,000원.

It was Marcus's birthday but they did not let us eat the cake that we had brought in the restaurant (most places in Korea let you). So instead they gave us all free shots of Jäger.

I started exercising again. Despite the size and quality of our gym in the dorm. But it's doable and it makes me feel better to be keeping healthier.

One day when I was going back to my dorm room I was treated to this creepy blue glow. The lights in the hallways are always on except on my end of this hallway, just starting where my door is. The light flickers on automatically when I just about get to my door, but that's almost creepier than not coming on at all sometimes.

Melisa went back to Austria during the winter break so we had a going away party for her at her apartment. There may or may not have been quite a bit of drinking involved...

Then it was Christmas. We all felt kind of lonely and mopey around the dorms since the majority of our friends had left, the dorms were nearly empty, and none of us were spending Christmas with our families. On top of that, Christmas in Korea is mostly a couples' holiday and not a family one. So being single feels extra lonely. And if you weren't lonely enough on your own, your Korean friends would constant remind you that it was Christmas and that if you didn't have a date that was pretty sad.

I spent the morning of Christmas Eve watching movies with my friends in the lounge. It was cozy and felt as close to hanging out with family as it was going to get.

I met with one of the mentors from my cell and some of his friends and had some beers and chatted. I needed some cheering up, so it was nice. And then slept over at my friend's place in Itaewon where a bunch of us watched movies together. The next day, Christmas Day, Martin met me in Itaewon for dinner.

It did feel like having dinner with family on Christmas. So it was nice and comforting.

A few days later I had my first experience at a Pulsabang (Playstation room) which is basically the same as a PC방 but for consoles instead of computers. I was entertained by these permanently ruined couches haha.

I did some volunteering for an organization that made an event for Korean teenagers to relieve their stress and be able to comfortably think about their dreams and aspirations. It was fun and it was a valuable experience. We took our students to dinner afterwards and I bought them ice cream as well.

Then I had my first date with my boyfriend (the same mentor that I met on Christmas Eve...). We started dating on January 1st but since I had volunteering we had our date a few days later. For our first date we went to Insadong (the traditionally Korean part of Seoul that sells lots of Korean knicknacks and traditional Korean foods). We made a couple keychain of sorts that we each wrote notes on each side of and hung on a fence at the top of the building. It's a bit hard to explain, but Korean couples do this a lot. For example the 63 building and Namsan tower both have the same thing but instead of a vinyl note card they put locks. The top floor of the building was COVERED with them. Every tree and every open spot of fence.

After eating dinner we went to the trick eye museum. Which is a place where you can take all kinds of ridiculous pictures. It was really fun.

A few days later was Lux's farewell :( We went shopping, ate all the foods we love, and then took silly pictures at the cute photo booths. We wrapped up with a drink and a talk at one of my favorite beer markets in Sinchon.

The next day I explored Times Square with a few friends but there was nothing really that interesting to me there. On our way home, the bus we were on crashed into a taxi (or rather the taxi crashed into our bus even though the taxi got T-boned...) and we had to get out, walk across several lanes of traffic, and then walk home. What a bizarre experience. Luckily no one was hurt.

It snowed a lot one of the days that I decided to walk to the library to study. It was pretty much sleet. But it was pretty and it was nice to see Yonsei campus covered in snow.

Another thing that got me through finals:

Went with Martin to meet Melisa's friends and drink in Sinchon. It was pretty fun and I got to meet some new people so that's always nice. We met again the next day for dinner in Hongdae and went to Vinyl again since Melisa's friend from Germany, Johannes wanted to go there.

The other day Melisa and I met with SungGyu to eat dinner. We had 닭갈비 which is like spicy stir-fried chick and vegetables. You can add other stuff in there and usually after you finish eating they add rice onto the pan and mix it with all the leftover spicy sauce and stir fry that. We added mozzarella-filled rice cake to ours and ended up being too full to get the rice. Here's a picture before it was stir-fried:

Not much to say about this, but there were some pretty cute Christmas decorations that I saw. In our dorm building they set up this Christmas tree in the lobby:

And in a cute shop Martin and I found in Hongdae that had a lot of Studio Ghibli goodies we found this Christmas Totoro:

And lastly: the pet shop on the walk to/home from Hongdae that has the cutest but also saddest looking kittens and puppies:

Lately I've been struggling with not being able to sleep at night. I don't know exactly what happened. I'm usually a night owl, but my biorhythm must have been thrown off pretty badly because even if I would lay down in bed quite early I found myself still restless and awake until 4 or 5 in the morning. Here's the pretty view from my lounge at 5am when I went to get water:

My friend Aaron and one of the mentors in my cell, Yeji were having a performance for the club they were in. It's something of a band club? I don't know how to explain it. They all play instruments but there are too many members for it to be just one band so they sort of form smaller groups for specific songs? I'm not exactly sure how it works. Anyways, they did a performance based on Korean drama that's airing now called Answer Me 1994 that takes place in 1994 and focuses on music and culture of the time (the original drama was the same but in 1997). So they took their cues from that and did an Answer Me 90s' concert where they picked popular Korean songs from the 90s' to perform. Before every song they would play the original song with an accompanying video showing performances of the regular artists, as well as other pop culture images that were important at the time (movies like toy story and commercials for example). It was a really cute and enjoyable performance.

On Saturday I had plans to meet up with Lux and we had DELICIOUS Coco Curry for lunch.

Afterwards we went to a, wait for it, A MANHWA CAT CAFE! In case you don't know manhwa is the word for Korean manga or comics. And a cat cafe...well that's self explanatory right? So they serve you delicious drinks, you get to pick the comics you read, and occasionally a cat will saunter by and you can stick your hand out and they will headbutt you. What could be better?!

One day when I was walking out to campus I found that they had set up a Christmas tree. It's huge and it's right at building at the end of the big main road on campus. A really nice centerpiece to keep our campus festive :D!

More late night walks home:

And then I settled in to start prepping to study for finals. Including a lot of staying up late, and pasta dinners.

I finally dragged myself out of bed to make it to one of our Korean class meet-ups for lunch. We had a few times where a bunch of the kids in our class got together for lunch, dinner, drinks, or movies but I only ever made it out twice. This was one of them. We went to a 순두부 place (Sundubu is a spicy tofu stew, sometimes with various other veggies or meats in it). We had a fun time and joked around before we headed back to go to class.

During our ten minute break in Korean class:

Melisa invited Martin and I to join her and her Korean friend HyungSun to go to a traditional Korean performance. We went to this big beautiful theater where we watched what amounted to an orchestra made of Korean traditional instruments. They also combined that orchestra later with samulnori and then in the second half did opera-style covers of popular Korean or English songs. I have to admit some of them weren't that great and I, like the 6 year old Korean boy sitting next to me, dozed off a few times.

Afterwards we headed off in search of dinner. We ended up going to a night food market. First we set off to eat 육회 which is raw beef, raw egg, sesame seeds, and sesame oil all stirred up. they serve it with slices of pear too, which is a nice compliment to the taste of the beef. It's surprisingly good. Of course we enjoyed this with the compliment of some soju and 소맥 (beer and soju mixed).

Afterwards we were still hungry so we ate 빈대떡 which is a Korean style pancake made with mung beans and green onions.

Lastly, we ended the night properly with noraebang (karaoke) and of course, more drinking.

And the next morning we got quite a bit of snow~

Main differences are:SK Global is more expensive, has single rooms available and has separate bathrooms (not shared floor bathrooms).

On Saturday, I spent most of the day lazing around. Martin and I both had nothing to do so we met for lunch. Afterwards we went back to our respective rooms and continued to do pretty much nothing. Since we had no plans on a Saturday night, we felt kind of bored so we contacted our friend YoungHak to see if he wanted to grab dinner with us. We ended up eating with him at a restaurant on the other side of campus and agreed to go to the birthday party of a mentor that we know later that night. While waiting for him, Martin and I knocked out a game of LoL at the nearby PC방.

We met the mentor for his birthday party at noraebang and I saw a few other familiar mentors there. We sang for an hour or so and then headed somewhere to drink a bit. We had a good time and joked around for a while. It was around 2am and while Martin and I don't have a curfew for our dormitory YoungHak does. He suggested we go to his friends apartment in Itaewon and drink and chat some more so we ended up taking a taxi and heading there. I figured we only had 3 and half hours before the subway would start up again but Martin passed out really early and we all ended up sleeping around on his floor there.

It was extremely comfortable and cozy there. We all woke up in the afternoon and lazed around sharing youtube videos and staring purposelessly at our cell phones. We had the "traditional" Korean hangover breakfast -- i.e. ramyun. It's cheap, quick, easy, and everyone always has it in there house.

The next day after class Melisa and I went to get ddeokbokki again at our favorite place in 이대. I had gone there to get a haircut anyways so we went afterwards. This time we tried the 부대떡볶이 which is basically just army base stew (a mishmash of cheap delicious bad for you snacks) and ddeokkbokki. As usual, it was delicious.

And when I got home that night, I finally got the care package my parents had sent for me <3~~~ They sent me my favorite macaroni and chesse, candy, allergy meds, a coat, and some other necessities. I'm really excited to share Reese's peanut butter cups with my Korean friends since they don't have them here, but I've heard that most asians say they are way too sweet.

After classes I planned to go to Itaewon with my mentor. I've never been and it's one of the places in this city I felt like I should go to at least one. Itaewon is known as the foreigner/international neighborhood of Seoul. We weren't sure what kind of food we should eat and I was leaning toward trying Turkish food but we ended up seeing a Southern Style BBQ restaurant and could not resist the thought of BBQ ribs. We ordered BBQ ribs and pulled pork topped cheese fries. AMAZING. It was totally expensive, but I savored every moment of that deliciousness. I also enjoyed for once being totally familiar and fluent with the servers and the serving style and watching my mentor struggle with culture shock haha.

Afterwards I wanted some kind of dessert. While I was craving ice cream, frankly I was more interested in walking around and looking at all the unique, interesting, international restaurants, bars, and cafes.

Most of the places in Itaewon are a bit fancy and on the expensive side, so I definitely won't be back there for a while. But I bet it would be nice to go back for a date or a special occasion.

Eventually we stumbled upon some baklava and found a cute cafe to eat in. Because I suggested that baklava was too sweet to simply consume by itself. But I don't drink coffee so I had hot chocolate with it... I suppose that defeats the purpose, but it was good so I don't care.

It snowed for the first time in Seoul today. Everyone at KLI was outside taking pictures and videos and ooh-ing and ahh-ing. A lot of the international students are from places with no snow, so they were particularly thrilled. I just love the first day it snows so I was happy about that. I remember back in high school whenever it was the first day of snow I would always grab hot cocoa with my friends to celebrate.

After classes I took a quick nap and then met Kyung-Il at a PC방 to play LoL. We lost every game and I was getting hungry since I hadn't had dinner. Kyung-Il told me it was his birthday the next day so I offered to buy him dinner as a present. He said he wanted to eat intestines because they are expensive so I took him to eat intestines and try them for the first time. I ended up trying (raw?) cow liver, a mystery meat that was pretty good, and intestines for the first time. It was fun to try something new.

After drinking a bit at the intestines place he offered to introduce me to a nearby cocktail bar where he said the bartender was really cool. So we went to the cocktail bar and chatted with the really nice bartender. They gave free shots to everyone there, did a fire show, and gave kyungil a red-white-and blue cocktail that was on fire that he drank out of a straw for his birthday. It was a good time.

Hiked Ansan again with my friends. The weather was pretty chilly, but hiking in this weather makes the mountain seem different than the last time I hiked it. I got some really nice photos again as well.

Afterwards we went to Mr.Pizza to eat because some of us hadn't eaten anything yet. And hey, we hiked so pizza is okay right? (not really but oh well...) We had time to kill before the kalbi restaurant opened so we decided to go to a cat cafe and hang out there until it was time for dinner. If you don't know what a cat cafe is, it's a place where you buy coffee, hang out, and pet cats.

Here are my two favorite cats there:

Martin is in cell 8 in Mentors Club and I'm friends with his mentor and another mentor in that cell so they invited me to their meeting. Compared to our cell meetings it was really small. Only two of the mentors showed up (the ones that I know) and 4 of the buddies (including Martin). In total there were 7 of us. But it was a bit more intimate since there were so few of us so that was nice. We ate at a Japanese curry restaurant in Sinchon and then went to Kaya to drink fruity soju cocktails --- SOOOO amazingly delicious <3

While waiting for seats at the curry place I found this lovely building across the street...

And noticed that in the women's bathroom in Kaya there were mushrooms growing out of the back of the toilet. I hadn't drank that much so I felt momentarily confused. Like, "I'm not drunk enough to be imagining these mushrooms right???!". My friends didn't believe me so I sent Annie in to confirm.

What the heck???

Also at Kaya I found myself totally mesmerized by this couple who were just staring off blankly, sitting next to each other, facing us, and not saying anything. It was just REALLY weird.

Anyways: Have some more night walk home pictures:

I really like walking through our campus and through 이대 campus at night. The mood is always really nice.

Went with some friends to Hongdae on Pepero day to get some heattech at Uniqlo during the heattech sale. Gotta get prepared for winter, you know? Anyways it was Pepero day, 11/11. Pepero is like a stick-shaped cookie dipped in chocolate. The date 11/11 is meant to resemble the shape of Pepero. They sell them in boxes and in various flavors. You give them to your crush and to your good friends. Although not everyone does it.

My friends went to Jeju island so I got some Jeju chocolate from them too. After coming back from Hongdae I started my plan to spread some cheer. Since I had been having a rough time, I wanted to cheer myself and some others up at the same time. On the walk back to campus from the subway station I started gifting strangers Pepero. The reactions were varied and entertaining. It made me feel good and it was a lot of fun. If I had had more time I would've prepared Pepero with notes of encouragement on then and randomly left them for people who were studying in the library. But by the time I got back it was already 9:30 or so.

I went to meet up with a friend after class one day to go see Thor 2. We chatted a bunch and talked about games and then watched the movie. I'm obsessed with this commercial about adipose fat tissue because they made it so damn adorable. I see it on the subway a lot and it usually plays before movies lately.

Afterwards we had dinner (even though it was late) because I had gone to the movie directly after class. I ordered doenjang jjigae but they put seafood in it. Usually it doesn't have seafood but they put mini shrimp and clams in it >< I didn't want to make a fuss so I just tried eating the broth with my rice but it still messed up my stomach the next day.

Another night I went with Martin to get Japanese ramen at this place that he fell in love with in Sinchon. It was reasonably priced and really good. Perfect for the cold weather too.