Thursday, May 21, 2009

School Pride

The grass is green, perfect for a picnic!
So as you know, it's school festival week for Korea University! There were tons of activity happening everywhere around the main gate and public square all week.
Lots of freebies and games!At night, the tents turned into a huge conglomerate of club houses where people drank + ate all night.
KUBA had their own tentThe girl in the middle is Albeta from Taiwan. She's in my Korean language course and at the beginning of the semester, the professor got us mixed up quite often haha
I guess we do look very similar when we look down and our hair covers our face!
Remnants next morning ---
A bunch of us found this new (superdelish) Italian restaurant just outside of campus. Their daily special is only 5,000won (approx $5CDN) and it comes with a drink and bread! This is a pamadoro with prawns and "you know... the guy in Super Mario with the big head that makes you bigger?" Me: "............ mushroom?" haha cute.. that's what happens when you hang out with people who are ESL.
FOOD in Korea
From my experiences so far, the only 3 cuisines Koreans can churn out well are Korean (obviously), Indian, and Italian. The Italians rave over all the pasta and Italian-style pizza they eat and those originally from India say the Indian food is authentic. Don't bother trying any Vietnamese or Chinese food here or you will be very (very very) disappointed no matter how much you pay. Japanese food is pretty decent in most establishments (we have it good in Vancouver) except I've only come across one that serves OK rolls. They looove Tonkatsu here! Mexican food depends on the person -- definitely not authentic, the Mexicans say, but edible. Greek food is pretty much nonexistant... I've seen a Nepali restaurant near Insadong. They do have a few stands that serve street food from Turkey here and there around Myeong Dong and Hongdae. There's a Moroccan restaurant some foreigners deem as amazing I have yet to try in Itaewon!

Hanging out with Mami (from Japan) after class --- she's the happiest, most lighthearted person I know ^^
Ice tea!
Yesterday, I attended the KU concert called Ipselenti (32nd) a block away from CJ near the Tiger Dome!

Schools have been having concerts all week. It's quite a big production and tons of students come out.
This is Yonsei's from last week -- a sea of blue (their school colour).
It was raining a lot yesterday -- everyone bought ponchos to wear.
Looong line up to get into the arena and the line up didn't end until Super Junior came on (around 5 hours later).
I didn't get in until about an hour after the performances started. At that time, all the students were chanting, singing, and cheering to KU songs - it was AMAZING -- all the energy and hearing their voices so loud and proud and in sync!! Never would anything like this happen in Vancouver, especially at this extent!
Students told me they had to attend an orientation when they were in 1st year @ KU to learn the actions and lyrics to these songs for events such as these.

The first performers = After School - a pretty new 6 member girl group. My friend is friends with the manager of After School. Lucky guy -- the girls are hot from far away! lol Diva diva diva diva!

Drunken Tiger (an old group that raps) and TASHA!!! She was great. I was really surprised to see her because she has been MIA for quite a while 'cause she got married and had a baby, but I think she just came out with a new album. I have all her CDs on my laptop -- she's half African American and half Korean and both raps and sings.
Baek Ji Young!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone was in love with her.
I think someone proposed to his girlfriend on stage through a rap...

House Rulez (the same group I saw perform at Club Answer during my first week in Korea) performed except they didn't sing the Strawberry Ice Cream song...These 2 guys were wearing the Canadian maple leaf on their t-shirts. They sang a ballad rendition and a rock version of SNSD's Gee which was fun to sing along to. Surprisingly, a lot of the guys in the audience knew all the moves to this song......
The performers also got the whole audience to sing "We Love Rock & Roll" and "We Are The Champions"!
Super Junior! Sang 3 songs - their new song, It's You, Rokkugo, and of course, Sorry Sorry. haha the stage was too small to fit all of them and for them to do their full song. I think they changed the dance to Sorry Sorry a bit at the end, which was refreshing! Kangin! Heechul!! Hankyung!!!Then this old guy (a KU grad of 1977) called Lee Mun Se (?) sang 3 or 4 songs. I wasn't familiar with him nor his songs, but he was very popular among the students.

Then we cheered the same songs as at the beginning for about an hour, but this time, I learned the dance and some of the lyrics!
We left a bit early in a large group to go eat at a BBQ restaurant (had Samgeopsal (fatty pork)) organized by KUBA at 11PM.

The whole event was so much fun, I was so impressed!
In a couple hours, I will be going to Kyunghee University to watch their concert with Rain and Hyori. That is, after I do a bit of school work, of course.

[Edit] OK I've decided to be a good student so I'm staying in today to do some homework...

5 comments:

  1. you didn't go see Rain and Hyori?! Nooooo! I'm so shocked! good for you, but nooooo! lol at least you already saw Rain in action. *hot*

    anywho, is this a hint? "Greek food is pretty much nonexistant..." :P well, if they allow it and you carry my suitcase, some s-pies could be in order!

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  2. LOL of course the guys know the moves to GEE..
    LOL their fanbase is all guys man! And you can tell since all the male celebrities also know the dance moves.
    See their fanbase is like the total opposite of DBSK.BUt that would've been so cute to watch! so see the guys do GEE LOL...

    your school had such a good line up! OMG drunken tiger I love them!!

    I was hoping to see hyori live to get a picture for my friend cause he's in love but too bad for him

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  3. just a correction... the rolls you are referring to when you talk about japanese food and having it good in BC are not japanese. Rolls with lotsa stuff is an american concept. developed in the 80s in LA. if there were many TRUE sushi places in BC, there would be a lot fewer california rolls, spicey tuna rolls, etc. korean "rolls" are different true. but if you go to a "real" japanese restaurant, they will have nigiri, maki, or hand rolls... period. maki will only contain one ingredient. Korea is a stones through from japan and has the most similar culture... so much so that Korea and Japan share the same raw fish tradition. For some truly good raw fish... go to a chamchi hweh place... when you go, order the cheapest set (it's all you can eat), sit at the bar (not a table) and slip the sushi guy a 10000. you'll get stuff so get, you'll have dreams about it...

    chinese food in korea is far from authentic. it's completely koreanized... but that's because it has to be. chinese food tends to be oily (having been wok cooked), and koreans cannot stand oil. if they eat something oily, they say it's "neukki heh"... so they koreanized it to the korean taste. If you're looking for real chinese in korea, invest in a 300 dollar plane ticket to hong kong... that's what i'd say.

    Italian food is better in korea in some instances because koreans don't like oily pizza. an entire brand (Mr. Pizza) was built around non oily pizzas.

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  4. Anonymous:
    Thanks again for clarifying. One thing I'm looking forward to seeing this weekend when I go to Japan is exactly how different Japanese food is in Japan as compared to BC.. but I guess some Japanese restaurants would now serve a more western concept so it may be hard to tell. It's not really how many ingredients they use here in Korea, it's how FRESH it is.. but then again, it could very well be the places I've been to. I'm not too sure authentic Japanese rolls would have cream cheese in it either.

    Thanks for the raw fish tip!! One thing that is just as excellent here as back at home is their raw fish for sure - in a different sense. Very tasty stuff.

    It's interesting how popular deep fried street food + donkatsu + fried chicken are here - especially when they don't like oily food. But I guess at least it's not as oily as KFC at home.

    If Seoul cooks international food as well as Hong Kong does, I would be able to live here for the rest of my life nooo problem!

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  5. I just wanna say. I love your blog^^
    Im going to apply to Korea uni. and reading your blog, is helpful ^^ really cool. dont stop writing about your life in seoul! =D

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