First Week of Summer... in Asia!

The first full week of “summer” break! I sleep in on Sunday (4.29) morning – naturally – before getting up to take care of some last-minute travel plans. I’m so excited to be spending an entire month overseas before I start my residency! In the early afternoon, I attend a friend’s senior harp recital. She is graduating from Boston College in just a few weeks! It’s my first time at a harp recital, so I’m not entirely sure what to expect. It is absolutely lovely!

After the recital, I rush around for some last-minute errands – mainly to get a converter for my electronic devices. I decide to splurge on a universal converter, just in case that backpacking trip through Europe happens. I head home after I manage to finish everything, but now it’s time to seriously pack! Living out of my suitcase for an entire month will definitely be interesting. I also download a few new books onto my Nook to have with me on the flight. I LOVE having an e-reader! It makes it so easy to have several books with me at once. And I’m so excited about traveling; I can barely sleep a wink on Sunday night.

I’m up before dawn on Monday (4.30). My first flight leaves Boston at 8:35am, so I wake up at 4:45, get dressed and drag myself onto the train. I’m a little nervous because this is the first time I used airfare.com to book a flight. Fortunately, I have no problems when I check in at the Virgin Airlines desk! The security guards heckle me (in a good-natured way) for wearing a Philadelphia Flyers sweatshirt before letting me through. The only negative part of my flight is that Virgin Airlines does not give out snacks for free! I break down about three hours into the six-hour flight because I am STARVING and the cheese plate my neighbor orders looks too good to pass up.

I land in San Francisco for a short layover. Oh, and our grades are published! Given how sick I was throughout the semester, I’m not surprised that my overall GPA is now a little bit lower. Only a smidge, though, and I still have plenty of time to bring it back up! I call my mom to tell her the good news, and she is equally pleased that I was able to make it through the stressful semester. Most of Monday is spent flying, and then I lose a day because of the 12-hour time difference.

I land in Seoul on Tuesday (5.1) around 7pm and hop on a bus to Ilsan to meet my great-aunt. Ilsan is technically a suburb of Seoul. The densely populated capital started to have “spillover” into the neighboring areas; now many folks live just outside of Seoul and commute in and out of the city. I say it’s “technically” a suburb, because it’s not at all like an American suburb! It is chock full of apartment buildings and shopping centers. I’m staying with my great-aunt while I’m in Korea. She lives close enough to Seoul for me to go back and forth freely. My great-aunt gives me some blankets and a thick mat to sleep on during my stay.

Wednesday (5.2) is spent drafting my section of the Chinese wine industry paper. I know the IFS trip sounds like all fun, but we actually do have to do some work! I find a teahouse in the Insadong area and hole myself up for a few hours. Once I have a cleaned-up draft to put in my team’s Dropbox, I decide it’s time to explore! I’ve been to Korea before several times – the last time I was here teaching English for an entire year! There’s always something new to see, though. I wander around Insadong for a bit. It’s a great little neighborhood chock full of traditional teahouses, and a good place to pick up traditional souvenirs – masks, hanboks, embroidery, tea sets and name seals! I stumble across a public park and take pictures for most of the day before heading home.  

My view from the second floor window.

Cute little coffee shop!

"Street sign" in Insadong!

On Thursday (5.3), I go to the Hongik University area. Hongik University is known throughout the country as the best art school. So it’s no surprise that everything in and around the university is all funky and cool. This is the only area I’ve seen tattoo parlors in Korea. Tattoos are still something of a taboo in Korean society; it is considered to be disrespectful to your parents, who “gave” you your body, and tattoos are also linked to gangs. A lot of the popular younger Korean celebrities have been getting them, though, so it’s not quite as stigmatized.

Being a university area, there are a ridiculous number of small little coffee places and restaurants to choose from – I stumble across a hidden gem called Coffee Lab and grab an iced caramel latte to go. It’s been unseasonably warm for the beginning of May in Korea, with daily highs of 80+ degrees (Fahrenheit). Oh well! That doesn’t stop me from walking for almost three hours. Then, a bright pink monstrosity stops me in my tracks. The Hello Kitty Café looms before me in all of its Pepto-Bismol glory, and I just can’t resist! I stop in, order myself a Hello Kitty-shaped waffle, and then spend several hours reading Game of Thrones on my Nook while lounging in a Hello Kitty-shaped chair in a nicely air-conditioned café!  

Too cute!

Hello, Hello Kitty Cafe!

Friday (5.4) is “see the family” day. I make the trek south of Seoul down to Osan. It’s quite a trip from Seoul, but the train system in Korea makes it possible to get almost anywhere. I have lunch with two of my uncles, and then dinner with another uncle and one of my aunts and their kids (my cousins). It’s nice to see a small part of my extended family. It takes me almost three hours to get back to my great-aunt’s house, and I’m exhausted when I walk in the door at 1 in the morning.

Not surprisingly, I wake up a little late on Saturday (5.5).  My great-aunt takes me out for a late breakfast for one of my favorite Korean meals – 설렁탕 (seol-leong-tang), which is a traditional soup made from bone marrow! It’s delicious, and once I’m stuffed, it’s time for my daily adventure. My great-aunt drops me off at a nearby bus stop… and I start off the day by getting completely and utterly lost.  I’m not paying attention when I get off the bus, and I end up walking God-knows-where for about an hour before I give up and hail a cab.

Eventually I wind up in the La Festa shopping area in Ilsan. I find shelter in a CoffeeBean & Tea Leaf café. Have I mentioned that Koreans are completely obsessed with coffee? Another iced caramel latte for me (except it’s more expensive and not nearly as good as Coffee Lab’s…), and I’m back to work on our paper about the wine industry. I majored in Chinese Studies during my undergrad days, so I find this project pretty interesting. I edit my team’s rough draft, make a cover page and write a short abstract for our paper before I start working on my backlog of posts for this blog. I’m a little behind. Once all the writing is done, I take a stroll around and look at the shops!  

I stop by a music store and buy two CDs featuring my favorite Korean group – BigBang! They’re probably one of my favorite groups to come out of Korea in a while. The five members occasionally break off into pairs or do solo projects, and I actually buy ALL of their music on iTunes. I really like the artwork and design on their CD packaging, though, which is why I end up paying 25 dollars for a semi-outdated technology!

After picking up a pair of new sunglasses (my aviators are inexplicably scratched), I catch a bus and get off at the right stop… except this time I can’t seem to find a cab to take me the rest of the way to my great-aunt’s house! I walk the three miles instead. My great-aunt thinks I’m crazy for walking that far in the sun without a hat or sunscreen. Oh well!