Ice Cream Fondue!

Baskin Robbins is kinda a big deal here in Korea. You can find a store every other block or so, and some big hangout spots even have a posh Baskin Robbins Cafe. So in order to live to their high-profile rep, the Baskin Robbins here have many specialties not found in the US, one of which is their ice cream fondue. Basically, it's a wonderful plate of various bits of frozen ice cream, cakes, and even tomatoes set around a nice warm bowl of melted chocolate fondue.

After hearing about it for several weeks, I decided to take advantage of Ning's visit as a good excuse to try it out. The first attempt was a complete fail because I couldn't understand the staff's response after ordering it in my broken Korean, so we ended up settling for a regular cone. The second time, however, I brought my Korean co-teacher with us, and... Success!! It's was bit expensive even for Korean cafe standards (12,000 won for a set), but it's a delicious dessert nonetheless and well worth the experience. So if you're craving something sweet, pick a nicely decorated Baskin Robbins Cafe and chill out with their ice cream fondue.

A Snack at the Local Markets

One of my favorite things to do here in Korea is just walk around various subway stops until I find a local market. I absolutely love walking around the local markets, because they have all sorts of yummy looking foods, and almost every time I've gone, I've discovered at least one new food item. :D

A couple weeks ago when I was wondering around the downtown area, I stumbled onto this great market just off of the Jongno-5-ga station. It's a really large market where one half is devoted to clothing, bedding, and textiles and the other half is devoted entirely to food. There were a lot of great food stands, but unfortunately, I was way to full at the time to try anything.

Therefore when Ning came to visit, I decided I had to take him to this Jongno-5-ga area market because 1. it's one of the biggest local markets that I've found so far and 2. one of the things that stood out when I found this place was there were lots of pacheon-type foods (yummy Korean pancakes) stands and I knew Ning's a big fan of pacheon.

So after a whole day of walking and eating many meals from various street food vendors, we headed over to the Jongno-5-ga area market, and we ordered a huge pacheon. It had to be our 6th or 7th meal of the day, but it was delicious that we devoured the entire thing even though it was absolutely enormous. There's gotta be no better feeling than getting a great pacheon from the local market...

Our wonderfully delightful pacheon-like pancake

Seoul Drum Festival

One thing I absolutely love about Seoul is all the random festivals that they have. So far since I've been here, there's been at least two or three festivals going on for each weekend. The main event for last week was: the Seoul Drum Festival.

Drumming is big here in Korea. It's a big part of traditional culture and performance, and there's many, many modern re-interpretations of the traditional instruments. So needless to say, when I found out that there was going to be a Drum Festival in Seoul, I knew it would be good, and it didn't disappoint.

The Drum Festival is an annual event that highlights the different drum styles of Korea and abroad. It took over Seoul Forest by setting up a huge stage in the middle of the lawn, and jsut going in was kinda interesting. Because of the whole swine-flu precautions, everyone that enters the festival first has to walk through thermal sensors to see if you have a fever. Then, there's at least 3 staff people standing by the entrance to give you hand sanitizers. It was quite high-tech for a random lawn festival.

Upon entering, there were lots of booths set up for free promo stuff and drums for you to play with. There were all the different types of Korean drums, and it was really cute watching the little kids play with the drums. Some were actually really good and knew what they were doing.

After messing with the drums for a bit, the show finally starts. Again, there were two M.C.s, and they kinda made a big deal out of the opening ceremony (apparently, they made the world's largest drum for this festival and so of course they needed a lot of pomp and circumstance when the major or whoever he was made the first strike). They tried to make it sound so dramatic that it was quite comical, and for a bit I was a little skeptical as to the quality of the performances.

The rest of the show after the opening ceremony, however, was really great. There were 8 or so different groups that performed, a couple of which were international groups. There was one group from Mexico, and another really flashy group from Brazil. The Brazil group was the only one to not play the drums. They just did different Samba and Salsa numbers to a beat, but they costumes and performance was so out there, that it didn't really matter they didn't play the drums themselves.

The other 6 or so groups were Korean. They all featured different kinds of drums and all had their own unique styles, so every performance was unique and did a great job. There was one group that used metal fans to hit the drums, and there was one performance with the traditional drum dance with the ribbon hats.

Overall, Ning and I were both pleasantly surprised by the quality of each of the performances. The only downside to the entire experience was that since it was for 3 hours outdoors, it started to get quite chilly outside. And of course, me being the pansy that I am to the cold, I actually got sick by the end of the night, so poor Ning, he had a sick host for most of his visit. : /

Owned by the Korean ATM

So after finally getting paid, my coteacher was nice enough to go to my bank with me to show me how to pay my bills with the ATM machine. (Korea is super nice in that everyone pays all their bills through the ATM. Takes like a sec and bam, instant payment.) Well, the process turns out to be super easy. This ATM, however, is a special ATM that's different from the normal cash withdrawal ATMS and is only available in Korean.

I basically memorized which buttons and in what order to push, so no problem. But my sweet coteacher, worrying that I would be confused next time, actually introduced me to one the Korean staff at the bank. (There's staff that stands around these ATMs to help old people work the machines, lol.) So the person she picked doesn't speak English, but she told him my situation and asked him to remember what I looked like so next time I come in, he'll know what to do, LOL. (My coteacher's uber cute, and she constantly worries whether I can handle living in Korea)

Here comes the really funny/sad part of my ramble. After we paid my bills, we were heading back to the school. I mentioned how I was suprised my phone bill actually ended up to be less than what I remember her telling me at the store. I thought that I had just lucked out in that the phone company made a mistake. She asked to see my bill, and it turned out it was less because the bill wasn't mine!!!

It was addressed to me, but it was a bill for the previous tenant. So I actually ended up paying someone else's bill! Then my coteacher, bless her heart, asks me in all sincerity why I didn't read it and just paid it. Cuz the entire bill was in Korean and I couldn't understand it, lol!!!

I felt SO silly! In the end, everything turned out to be okay because my coteacher called the phone company and got them to reimburse me. But for someone who's been so independent the past few years, I kinda feel like I've gone back to being like a child. So utterly dependedent on my coteacher for so many different aspects of my day-to-day life...

My First Paycheck ^__^

I just got my first paycheck today!! (For some of you, you might find this blurb a bit silly, so sorry in advance for all you folks.) But it's such a great feeling openinig your paystub to find out how much you've made for all your work, lol. :P

Granted, I've worked at SC, and I've had odd jobs here and there (lol) but it's not the same. This is my first full-time job, and to get paid knowing that I don't have any major expenses to pay, it's a good feeling! :D So with that said, I can't wait to have some fun with this!!! ^__^

My First Guest is...

...Ning!!!

I'm so excited! He's coming in tonight and chilling for the weekend before he starts teaching himself in China.

I've been really lucky to meet a lot of great people here so far, and it's been so much fun getting to know them, but I still miss my SC peeps a lot! It's just not the same. So, I'm UBER excited about Ning coming, and I've already got the whole itinerary planned. I only wished that I could've taken a day off work, but unfortunately, the school won't even let me leave early (even during my "planning" periods where I basically just sit in front of my comp!) : / Oh wells, will just have to make do with the weekend! Yay! :D

My First Korean Concert --- with Big Bang and Super Junior!!

This weekend, I went to my first concert in Korea: the Asia Song Festival. The festival featured Big Bang, Super Junior, Girls Generation (3 of the 4 biggest pop star groups in Korea. If you walk around anywhere here, you'll hear their music coming from every which direction), and other various artists from around Asia. I don't know how they did it, but the entire concert was free and open to the public. You just had to go online and download a ticket. So of course, I didn't miss out. The show was awesome, but getting into the show was quite an adventure...

First, was getting the tickets. Luckily, there was an English version to ASF's website with a special section for foreigners to reserve tickets. Unfortunately, we had missed the deadline to get through the English site, so I had to register through the Korean site, lol. Luckily, my friend who I was going with speaks Korean, so she walked me through it. No problem.

The fun part, though, was that ASF's English site said that the downloaded ticket wasn't an actual ticket. It needed to be exchanged the day of the show for real tickets, and the ticket exchange opened at noon. (The concert started at 6:00) My friend and I figured if we lined up at 10, we'd be able to get tickets for good seats.

So, we meet up at 10 on Sat. We go to line up, but there's a million different lines. We try to ask the staff which line we need to be in, but no one seems to know what's going on. We finally decide on the "Foreigner ticket exchange" line. After an hour of sitting in the blazing sun, though, we realize that our ticket print-outs look different from the people around us, and then we figure out that we've actually be lining up in the wrong line!!

So we move over to the right line, and after another hour of waiting, the staff starts to come. We think, finally, we can exchange tickets and go home for a few hours. The staff, however, divides us into sections from our print-outs. Soon, I start getting the feeling that we're actually in line to go in...

Unfortunately, I turned out to be right. It was 12:30 by the time we figured this out, and the people around us were waiting to be let into the stadium. The concert doesn't even start for another 5 and a half hours!! So after waiting in line for over 2 hours, my friend and I decide to leave and just come back nearer to the show.

When we get back later that day, it's completely packed. Getting in was a madhouse. There were thousands of fangirls pushing and shoving to get in. Not fun... But when we do get in, we luckily get some great seats facing center to the stage! It was pretty high up, but much better seats than I expected for showing up so late.

I went with 3 other people: Jenny, TJ, and Dan. Jenny's like me in that she watches Korean dramas and knows the basic K-pop stars, so we had a blast!! The other two guys, however, had never heard of any of these groups before and were basically in it for the experience. We felt bad in the beginning, but after a few beers (which btw were in the funniest cups. The outside of these cups are printed to look like a glass with beer and foam in it, lol) and seeing the craziness of all the fangirls around them, I think they had an enjoyable time.

The concert itself was a lot of fun. ASF did absolutely a wonderful job. I still don't know how they managed to make it free. One funny thing to note is that it's meant to be a concert, but they randomly decided to throw in an awards show in between the performances. That was amusing.

The groups also performed really well. Each did 2 or 3 songs. Of course, Girls Generation did "Gee"; Super Junior did "Sorry Sorry"; and Big Bang did "Lies". I'm not gonna lie. When Big Band did "Lies", Jenny and I shared a super fangirl moment. We ran down all the way to the front of our section and just danced and sang to our hearts' content. It was way fun, and I'm sure Dan and TJ were super amused by us, lol :D

The stars...

Girls Generation

Super Junior

And of course... Big Bang