Korean Face Masks

One of the things I really love about Korea is the extraordinary variety of beauty products they stock in their shops. Makeup here is pretty inexpensive, and shops will sell some weird beauty enhancement items. My favorite thing to do on girls' nights now is slap on a korean face mask.

Although they make you look like a ghost/ cadaver with melty skin, after finally peeling the mask away from your face you are left with skin softer than a baby's butt wrapped in cashmere. 

Jeoji House Dinner

This past weekend my house, Jeoji, threw its first ever formal dinner party. We spent Saturday setting up and decorating the atrium for the meal by dragging in tables and chairs and covering tables in black and yellow paper. Everything came together looking very nice.

When we arrived downstairs for the dinner there were invitation place cards at each seat. Unfortunately some of the students think my name is Kristine..... It's alright.

The meal was provided by the dining services, but it was admittedly better than the cafeteria fare. We had three courses, with the main course being chicken. I overate. 

The staff on duty during the dinner party -- Looking dapper ;)

Night Out in Jeju City

As it was Anna's birthday, we all went into town on Friday night to celebrate. It's kind of hard to go into the city since it's so far away, so going out is kind of a treat. We taxied into town and first stopped off at Wa Bar, a western style bar that has good beer. Next we went to our usual haunt, Island Stone, which has two for one shots on Fridays. We followed this up by a night of dancing and a final stop at Loteria for burgers. Mmmmm.

Lots of cheesy group photos. Feel like I'm back at uni --

Return to O'sulloc Tea Plantation

O'sulloc green tea plantation is a five minute bike ride from school, so it's easy to travel there when we have a bit of free time. We had a small meal at the cafe and then did the touristy thing and posed for a bunch of pictures in front of the giant, teacup-shaped bush. The weather was relatively warm and it was a pleasant outing. 

Jimjilbang - Korean Sauna

I forgot to post about this in all the excitement of traveling to Seoul and abroad, but my last Thursday off before vacation I went to a sauna, AKA jimjilbang with Anna. I was expecting an experience like a Japanese onsen, but it was definitely different than I imagined. 

We paid 9,000 won (about $9) to get in and that allowed us access to the saunas, baths, and upstairs relaxation room. It also got us some swiggity swag prison-orange chic pajamas to wear around the relaxation room on the third floor.

First thing we did was bathe, which was challenging considering the jimjilbang didn't provide anything other than bar soap (unlike onsens which usually provide shampoo at least), and there didn't seem to be any kind of shampoo/ soap/ conditioner/ body towels for sale anywhere. 

It was really nice to relax in the pools after bathing. There were three different temperature hot pools and then a cold pool at the end of the room. There were also a couple saunas. We sat in the "cooler" sauna for maybe five minutes and sweated our asses off. It was horrible. 

Many of the women in the sauna were walking around with sucker welts on their skin. At first I thought it was some strange skin condition but I guess there's a therapy where people vacuum suction their skin and it makes them feel healthier. It's an Asian therapy. I looked it up when I got back from the sauna, but I don't remember what it's called. Regardless it left large circular welts on these women's skin and it looked scary. I bet those bruises last for at least a week....

Once we were done bathing, we went upstairs to the relaxation room and bought snacks, sat in the massage chairs, attempted to do yoga, and laid around. The jimjilbang provides mats for people who want to stay the night or just lay around, so we dragged some mats into one of the warm rooms and properly passed out. 

Even though it was pretty cozy, it wasn't a good night's sleep because there were other people in the room, particularly men, who kept coughing and moving around and snoring. Also the warm room became less cozy and felt more like a sauna as the night progressed. But it was a good experience that I'm glad I didn't pass up. Can't wait to go again! ...But maybe not spend the night...

Our stylish orange PJs 

Chilling in the bone crushers.... I mean massage chairs....

Kyoto, Japan

I had a great time visiting Kyoto. I got to see many friends and pursue my old haunts from back when I studied abroad in the city. Almost three years has passed since then but not much has changed.

On the first night there I met up with an AKP friend, Akane, who is currently working in Osaka. We went out for pasta and parfaits at my favorite parfait place in town -- Karafuneya. This is a place that has a choice of over 300 types of parfaits. I defaulted to my favorite, which is the Japanese style parfait complete with rice balls, green tea ice cream, and red bean. So good.

Later in the week we finally got to go get more parfaits at the famous green tea place in Gion called Tsujiri. Usually people are lined up down the street just to get a seat at Tsujiri, but maybe because we went in the middle of the day on a weekday, we lucked out and were shown to a table straight away. The parfait was delicious, but not really worth all the hype, I think. 

Duh and of course we did puri kura! I love Japanese photo booths even though the majority of the people using the machines were high/ middle school-aged girls...

I also finally got to take a trip to Nara, south of Kyoto. Nara is famous for the deer that wander freely around the park and temple grounds. We went to Todai-ji, perhaps the most famous temple in the area. It was gorgeous and inside was a giant Buddha. The place was infested with school children. As we walked towards the temple we were approached by several deer looking for senbei crackers, which you can buy at stands along the road. The deer can be pretty demanding to get at their senbei, and so the school kids kept buying the crackers and throwing them at the deer and then running away. The deer swarmed around them like smelly ravenous beasts. 

Todai-ji

I think autumn was the perfect season to go to Kyoto. The leaves were just starting to change color and the weather was perfect. it was in the 70s every day, quite warm, and then temps dropped at night . A typhoon blew through the region the day before I got there, so I avoided all the humid, hot, rainy weather.

I celebrated Halloween in Kyoto with Mike, who moved on to Kyoto after a brief stay in Seoul. We met at the hostel I stayed with in Seoul, Ed House, and decided to meet up again in Japan. Such a good idea. Mainly we perused the streets taking pictures with all the people in costumes.

My last full day in Kyoto was on Friday and I met up with my host mom from my study abroad days. She took me out for udon followed by a parfait at this very traditional parfait place in Gion. I wish I took pictures because it was gorgeous. We walked in and removed our shoes right away. We were led to a large room with several tables and were seated on the floor. The room was decorated in the traditional style and had a lot of wood and sliding paper doors. To one side was a wall of windows and outside, a small and peaceful garden. It was so nice to see my host mom again and just chat about everything that had happened since I'd seen her last (nearly two years ago!). It was also nice to realize I could still understand Japanese and speak enough to communicate.

Seoul 7 - Gangnam Style

I love Psy's Gangnam Style, and of course the hit song has made the posh area of Seoul, Gangnam, quite famous. As avid fans of the song/ dance and His Majesty Psy, we HAD to go to Gangnam and check out what all the hype is about. Some others from our hostel joined us. 

The area itself kind of reminded me of downtown Manhattan. The streets and sidewalks were wide and lined with tall buildings. We stopped in at a Krispy Kreme for fall-themed doughnuts and then headed to the 9th (?) exit of Gangnam Station where they have a stage set up dedicated to Gangnam Style. We sung and danced the song like stupid foreigners and then dragged this Korean man up on stage with us. He even looked a bit like Psy :0

I'm seriously missing Seoul so much. It was a great vacation and it was all made possible thanks to the coolest hostel ever. We stayed at Ed House in Hongdae and met amazing people. On our last night we celebrated Rachel's 22nd birthday and everyone came together to party, eat cake, and then later go out for karaoke. Missing everyone!

Seoul 6 - Hanbok

Instead of going to visit yet another temple, Reesha and I opted to go to the Bukchon Hanok village, a replica of an old traditional Korean village. I had been to the village before on a previous trip to Seoul, so I knew it'd be a prime (and cheap) place to try on Hanbok (Korean traditional dress) and take pictures. 

We were SO out of place in the hanbok, but whatever, so worth it: 

Reesha wore the queen's outfit

The village is set up for tourists, and to teach about Korean culture, so there was a lot going on outside including these guys making mats from straw, a taekwondo performance, and calligraphy practice. In general a really nice and peaceful place. Wish we had longer there but we arrived pretty late in the day and decided to head out early.

Seoul 5 - Sightseeing

One of the days we took a trip to visit Ehwa Women's University, since we heard a lot about the shopping around the area and how beautiful the campus is. It was so nice! I've never seen a campus like it. The main building is set into a hill with the middle hollowed out. You can walk up through the center of the hill and on either side there are giant buildings that are underground. On top of the buildings, which is technically the hillside, are gardens that you can walk through. 

View of the campus from ground level - The main building is cut straight into the hillside. 

We also went to the Museum of Korean War, which displays artifacts from all the wars throughout Korean history. It was an interesting place, and mainly I was excited to learn more about THE Korean War, but unfortunately I wasn't able to explore the museum as much as I wanted to. One reason is that the museum is MASSIVE, but also we got stopped by this guy in the military who was working with a special art display containing pieces designed by soldiers currently in the army. The guy we chatted with had a sculpture on display, which he showed us. We then took a picture with him (which will apparently be in the newspaper !?) and he showed us around the displays on the basement level. He spoke decent English, but it took some time to make our way around the displays and when we finally got through the ancient Korean warfare section, we were feeling pretty exhausted. We rushed the rest of the museum, but I'll totally check it out again next time I'm in Seoul.

There were also some interesting outdoor displays of old Korean military equipment and amazing statues. We didn't get to see much of those either, and I really want to.

Seoul 4 - FOOD

Seoul has some of the best food of all the places I've been. Not only because it's delicious, but because it is omnipresent and inexpensive. I gorged on so much street food including hotak (fried dough filled with melted sugar and nuts), custard egg tarts, baked sweet potatoes, spicy rice cakes, and potato swirls on sticks. OMG. 

We also went out to eat quite a lot and since Seoul is so international we were able to try a variety of food options that aren't really available on Jeju Island. 

Not to mention -- KOREAN BBQ. I ate more Korean BBQ in that one week than I ever have in my life. Thankfully it's pretty much my favorite thing ever so I didn't get sick of it. On our last full day in Seoul we went out to lunch at an all you can eat Korean BBQ place and just got impregnated with massive tons of grilled meat and octopus. We stayed there for a good hour and a half just gorging ourselves until we felt like we'd explode with food.