"Nothing Dropped."

Came back to Vancouver yesterday around lunch time.

Closed my eyes but didn't sleep a wink on the plane.
Watched 3 good movies (17 Again, Sunshine Cleaning, and a Korean movie called Scandal), 3 funny TV shows, and listened to 2.5 albums (Could have been the lack of bass from my headphones, but besides her hit radio songs, Lady Gaga's album isn't too great :/).
And I only had 2.5 hours of sleep the night before (got home at 5:30AM, woke up at 8AM).
I was sooo extremely exhausted. I don't think I've ever been this tired, unable to sleep in my life.
Went for dimsum with my parents and grandparents after they picked us up from the airport~
Somewhat unpacked, lounged around for half an hour, then crashed really quickly (I didn't realize how much I missed my bed!) ---
Not sure just how much I am jet lagged yet.
I'm still in a daze - I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing with myself for the next couple of days because I don't feel quite with it enough to go out nor do much.

Anyway, I'll still be blogging for about another week or so. I've got quite a bit to catch up on =)

Got a trim, a hair manicure treatment, and my hair colour "corrected" at Fiore in Gangnam. I went there because I got a 50,000won gift certificate when I attended a wine party in Apgujeong a couple months ago.
The place had a minimalist-modern lux feel to it~ It's right next to another upscale hair salon called Red Carpet. I didn't find out until I was trying to find the address of the salon online, but quite a large majority of celebrities go to these two salons. It is apparently the place you go to if you want to run into them. I asked my hair dresser whose hair he had cut and he said Hyori Lee and MC Mong's gf to name a couple. When I was getting my hair done, I was sitting a metre away from a popular Korean talk show comedian and one of the members of an older Korean hiphop/dance group called NRG.
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M and I went to a piano recital a few days ago at the Seoul Arts Center.
They have a Miffy Museum/Gallery in one of the buildings!
(By the way, I bought this "ajumma" (old married lady) dress and wore it because Tiffany said that if I did, she would buy me dinner kkkkkk I don't think it looks that ajumma though!)

They had a fountain show that swayed to 15 songs outside which was nice and romantic haha
Almost as magical as fireworks to me -- especially at night when it starts to light up.

As for the recital itself, it certainly wasn't close to the most impressive piano playing we've heard unfortunately. Perhaps the standards back at home are much higher than that in Korea. I did really enjoy one of the movements, though, and was even inspired to learn it. I think people attended more because she is prettier than most piano players ('cause I mean, who else would have such large pictures of themselves on their program?) than her talent/skill. Her name is Kim Hye-Sun.
Her nose is strangely "perfect" according to Korean standards........I'm going back to bed.

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...

Winding

I've been out and about nonstop for the past week, but it's going to come to an end once Bern leaves on Monday -- also because I have a bunch of projects, presentations, and quizzes to prepare for.

What's new with me

Tiffany and I are going to Japan for a weekend (leaving Friday, coming back Monday night) in a couple weeks. I just booked our flight. She got a hold of a couple concert tickets for DBSK's Japanese (Tohoshinki) concert in Fukuoka! I'm estatic to finally see a full DBSK (THSK) concert =)

Misarang ------ Restaurant in Ilsan
A few of us DBSK fans went to Ilsan, a young and happening city outside of Seoul (around 1.25 hours away from where I live), to eat at this Korean pizza and pasta restaurant owned by the father of one of the members (who happens to be my favourite) -- Xiah Junsu.
Apparently most of the customers are fans of DBSK and Junsu... and they definitely showed their love on the walls leading up to the 2nd floor restaurant.
It was really nice! The food was great and his dad was very friendly. He came around to talk to us and then suggested that we take a picture in front of the cardboard cutout of Junsu lol...
I told him that I'm going to Fukuoka and he said he would also be there =) Then, at the end, just as we were leaving, he gave us pamphlets and business cards for their skincare line called Crebeau-belle owned by Junsu's mother. The office was nearby but by the time we got there, it was closed for the night. We will come again since there's quite a bit of shopping to do around there, too.

Subzero ------ Ice bar in Hongdae
I went there to "chill out" (kkkk get it?) with a bunch of international students. Beforehand, the girls I went with to Jeju treated the guy who helped us plan our trip for dinner and drinks.
Subzero was really neat. It was a bit difficult to find 'cause it's a small room in the basement of some building on a semi-inconspicuous street. All the furniture, art, and sculptures inside are carved from ice blocks!
It's 15,000won to enter and you are able to pick a drink. You're given a hooded silver tent (poncho/parka) to wear, black fleece gloves, and even Ugg-type booties with pom poms if you're underdressed. I suggest that you wear socks! The clothes have a funky smell to them, but you quickly forget once you walk inside the refridgerator. The ice bar is kept at a constant -15 degrees celcius. I felt as though I was in a giant ice box!

haha cute looking eskimo hoods...
If you get your tongue stuck on an ice block, they have equipment to help get it unstuck real fast.
Next to the sculpture of the thinking man haha
They have mini benches made out of ice (of course) and they are covered with fur.
All the drinks come in these ice blocks! My drink was excellent - the guy forgot (I think) to put alcohol in mine lolWe didn't stay in there too long -- only around half an hour, but it was a really interesting experience + fun ^^

Everland -
A lot of people say that Everland is better than Lotte World because it's bigger and the rides are bigger. Unfortunately, we didn't stay at Everland for long because a couple of us only had 4 hours of sleep and it was sprinkling and the line ups were 1.5 hours long!
We did highly enjoy this roller coaster, though. It's called T Express and that drop you see was amazing.
Long roller coaster, too!Everland is similar to Lotte World in that they have parades and theatre shows, but Everland has more - zoos, botanical garden, animal rides, fireworks...
Don't have to go to Egypt to ride a camel!
@ the gift shop
This is the biggest pirate ship I've been on, but we all got sort of sick afterward (even though it wasn't heart dropping at all and actually moved slower than most pirate ships) that we couldn't ride anymore rides!
So I think I'll have to come to Everland another time!

Yesterday, B and I went on a tour to the DMZ and I took a few steps into North Korea! I've got to do some homework before I leave so I'll tell you my experience tomorrow!

Lights, Camera, Action

After school today, I ventured to Dongdaemun (yea yea... 3rd day in a row lol) but this time by myself because I needed a bathing suit for this weekend. Talk about last minute! I did get one and bargained hard. I got a set for 35,000 which, I think, is pretty good from 50,000! It's a bit hard to find swimsuits in Korea, but I found mine on the basement floor of Goodmorning City. Anyway, my cell phone died while I was on the phone so I went to a convenience store to charge it - he said it would take han shi (1 hour) so I went outside and saw a bunch of people standing in front of a stage that had "2009 Dongdaemun Live Seoul Power Music Concert" or something like that flashing across. It was in front of Cerestar Department Store which is near Migliore. I stood on the side of a pole base along with a bunch of girls and asked them what was happening and they said "2PM!" really excitedly. 2PM is a pretty new boy group with their catchy song, Again & Again. I decided to hang around while I waited for my cell phone to charge.. 10 minutes later, it turned out to be a full fledged fashion show which was exciting ^^

Then there was the concert! This whole thing lasted 2.5 hours. I was really surprised at who performed -- they were the same artists I see every week on the hit music channels on TV!

There were probably 12 different artists/bands -- I recognized around 80% of the songs but only knew about a quarter of the artists' names. Out of the ones I knew, there was Younha, Bae Seul Gi (performed Tiresome), Evan, U Kiss (I really enjoyed their performance - they hosted, too), and 2PM.
U Kiss! Great energy and cute! Some of them can speak English fluently, too.
Younha - wow she can belt it! She sounds even better than her recorded songs. She's a really talented girl - she can play multiple instruments and she writes her own songs. For her first song (I think it's called 1,2,3), she played the piano.
This girl... I don't know her name (can you tell me?) but she was very pretty and could definitely dance sexy haha... and she has a great voice too - she did a balladrap with Evan.
The last (but blurry) picture I took as I squeezed the life out of my battery (it died 99% around halfway through the concert)... 2PM!! Really good performance - got the audience all hyped up and fangirly haha. Jaebeom! Junsu!! I can see how they're so popular..... ^^
Vids to come in a few days -- I'm going to Jeju Island for the weekend!! A vacation within a vacation #1 babyyy!!!!