Hellos and Goodbyes

As the last post told you: the semester ended. Now it was time for difficult goodbyes, and a big hello to one of my friends who came to South-Korea. And as promised, I will give you guys a bunch of pictures of those two weeks!

Palaces

Some of my favourite places to go, are the palaces around Seoul. I don’t know, I think they’re beautiful and very intriguing to walk through. You go back in time in a ever growing technological metropol.

 

SAF

I managed to get my hands on tickets for the SAF festival. So with Irem (obvious link to her blog) we checked it out. It was just the day-like festival that was held in one of the Halls of COEX, that was set up for the whole festival. It was very fun, especially when some artists came out! I don’t have good quality pictures though, so I’ll spare you the cringe!

 

Random

And some random pictures that I will just throw here, because I can!

 

And this is where I will end it. Hope you enjoyed the pictures! Stay warm y’all, and stay tuned for another post tomorrow!

Sniffing Historical Sightings

I visited some historical (and very touristical – not an existing word haha) spots today: Gyeongbokgung and the Bukchon Hanok Village, and I have a couple of pictures for you! Besides that, I don’t have much to say today. So enjoy the pictures and visit my instagram sometimes to see more random pictures! Next time I will type up a post again!

I might have caught an alien on camera.

At Gyeongbokgung (경복궁)

At the Bukchon Hanok Village (북촌한옥마을)

Brain Overload: Weekend Activities

While I am waiting for the washing machines to clear out so I can do my laundry, I might as well type up a blogpost about my weekend. My weekend kinda started on Thursday, because that night the Ewha Peace Buddies had organised the I-Party – held in a club in Itaewon. That was pretty fun, came back at the dormitories at around 1AM, and sat at the rooftop for a couple more hours after till 4:30AM.

And the next day I had to wake up for my 11AM class – which was just wonderful. And after my classes, I went to Seoul Lantern Festival with a friend from one of classes. This is held at Gwanghwamun every year for about a week or so (if I remember correctly, could be longer). The lanterns were huge and very pretty, so here, have some pictures.

 

That night I went out with some friends for food, and that ended up being a long bar crawl till around 5:30 or 6:30 in the morning – which might have been a decent decision if I didn’t have an important event to very next day.

The BTS Fanmeeting. BTS (Bangtan Boys) is my favourite K-Pop boy group, and I managed to get my hands on a ticket for their fanmeeting. So my hungover head of mine was a half an hour late to meet the friend (no problem, we had agreed to meet early), and around 2PM we were on our way to the fanmeet! And around the time we arrived, I was sorta alive, got myself a light stick, and we hung around until we decided to find our seats. It was held in this big baseball stadium (Gocheok Sky Dome), and 5PM it started. Those were about two and a half to three hours of pure fangirl happiness. The times they talked, I couldn’t understand the majority of it, because my Korean is not that good yet (I will just look for the English subtitles later), but I was looking forward to them performing the most. And they did encores, and it was beautiful, and then two of them started crying, and made me die a little on the inside as well.

Overall, it was such a good experience, I loved every minute of it. And the way back home, damn. So over a thousand fangirls (and the rare boy here and there) had to take the subway back. So we were there for a while. But after we got off of the subway to transfer to the other line to Ewha, it was way less crowded. I got home, and after hanging around for a bit, I had the best night of sleep ever.

And stay tuned for more!

Trip to Bukhansan National Park (북한산국립공원)

Second full week of the semester? Throw in a five day weekend! It was the time of the year that Chuseok (추석) walked around the corner. It’s a major harvest festival, that’s held on the fifteenth day of the eight month of the lunar calendar on the full moon (if I may quote Wikipedia for a second). For some of the major traditional holidays, the Koreans still use the lunar calendar for the dates – which I found to be quite interesting.

Anyhow, mini vacation! The first couple of days, I didn’t do all that much, but I did visit Myeongdong (shopping heaven of Seoul, I might add). Not as long as I would’ve wanted, because we went there for dinner, but when I go back there I will get some pictures ready for y’all to see!

On Sunday, the last day (cry-cry), a group of friends and I planned a trip to Bukhansan National Park, a great place to hike and climb the mountain! And yes. I brought my camera. And yes. I took pictures. More or less.

Because this? This is how we walked that trail. And this particular trail was a lot of rocks and stones that were put there to make the hike ‘easier’. We were aiming for a peak to get the nicest view, but I will get back to that. To reach that goal, we had to walk paths like these and worse.

At some point I gave up on holding the camera, since it was too damn tiring. Half way through, I think? I just concentrated on the rocks in front of me, so I wouldn’t trip and fall to my death off of the cliffs. You know, just the usual strain of thought for the day.

But it was really beautiful. Especially when the trees allowed you to glance through, it was breathtaking to see the view, even though we weren’t near the peak yet. That’s when we discovered you can’t actually go to the peak we were aiming for, because you had to be a mountain goat (or whatever those are called in English), or an old Korean person to reach that. There were groups of Koreans in hiking and climbing gear, just venturing to the top like they are doing this every day. I respect them so much, and I feel bad about my jelly legs. Two friends and I got pretty far, but two other girls from the group carried on like bad asses and arrived at an amazing spot with an incredible view (I am sorry, no pictures of that, maybe you can google). But when they told us they had to become semi-mountain goat, I was already noping out. I am not necessarily afraid of heights, but when there is almost no rope to grab onto and barely space to walk and keep slipping down… I’m out. Bye. Nope. Not gonna happen.

Especially not on my worn-out Converse.

Not such a good decision either.

Anyhow, we eventually went down again, got some food, and that was the end of the day, pretty much! It was a really fun and nice day, and the weather was great! Not too hot high in the mountain either. If I ever come back, I will get me some good shoes and clothing to be able to survive this. But my legs will be dead anyway, so… yeah. Have some more food pictures to end this blog!