First Day in Seoul

I got laser hair removal on my underarms this morning with my cousin. $250 for 6 rounds and I have to go once a month. Even with the numbing cream it hurt! Okay it wasn't unbearable, and it wasn't anything near the pain of acne skin care torture I endured during "puberty" but it was much more than called for considering I had numbing cream on.

Anyway so I took the bus from Chungju to Seoul, which was about 1.5 hours. After arriving, I had to get on a subway for about a 45 min. ride to the part of Seoul where my hotel is at (Seoul is huge and has a bunch of districts). I couldn't find the subway after I got out of the bus terminal though so I was wandering around lugging my suitcase and sweating into my backpack when a lady stopped me and asked me how to get on the subway. Talk about a lucky coincidence! She happened to be going to a stop that was right after mine too! So I followed her around as she asked people how to buy a ticket, where to go, how to transfer lines, etc. Haha! I'm so lucky.

So I get to my hotel to check in and they tell me they won't let me in until I pay the remaining balance of $640. I didn't know that!!! Obviously I didn't have that kind of money on me, so I had to run to a nearby Woori Bank where I have an account, but it was 5:30 so they were closed! I don't have an ATM card yet (it comes next week) so I can only withdraw from a teller so I was panicking. I was trying to get a peek through all the windows when the security guard came up to me to find out what I was doing. Fortunately, he turned out to be a nice guy and helped me bang on the windows and doors ^0^ Finally someone opened the door and after listening to my story he let me in and they gave me my money. I was so lucky with meeting kind strangers today <3

My hotel is BOMBBBB!!!! So for the summer session, Yonsei gets a huge influx of exchange students and can't fit them all in the I-House (plus they have even less room right now due to remodeling) so part of the students get alternate housing in Ramada Hotel, about 15 minutes drive from campus, but they send a complimentary shuttle for us. Anyway I'm so glad I chose this because it's seriously beautiful. It's like an apartment style. There is one master bedroom and two smaller rooms, a spacious living room, and a luxurious kitchen with brand new furnishings and appliances. Two girls to a room, and the rooms were pre-assigned so no awkwardness. Luck was with me again and I got the huge master bedroom with a giant closet, tv, and ginormous bathroom with a sauna in the shower. I felt bad because the other girls have dinky rooms that are so small they have to move the bed in order to open the closet. In fact, I can safely say that my bedroom alone is twice the size of theirs. Aslo, my roomie is the only one that didn't come tonight so I got first dibs on the beds and everything. Well, everything is equal so it doesn't matter, except the beds- a twin and a queen. Early bird gets the worm! >:D

My suitemates seem nice. Grace and Dianne are Korean juniors from UCI and Kathy is a Filipino senior from UCSB. Her boyfriend (same stats) is also on the program and lives a couple floors down, but it seems like they're an attached couple. I had dinner with them tonight. We had some 닭갈비 with 고구마떡 (marinated chicken that you grill with rice cake stuff, sliced sweet potatos, and various veggies) YUM! So good. After, some of the girls were still hungry so we went to Paris Baguette, a bakery franchise that is EVERYWHERE (same with Tous Les Jours, another popular bakery - both of these can be found in SoCal btw) and I got some green tea castella for breakfast tomorrow. Can't wait! Everyone's sleeping but I'm not tired yet. I think they're tired from jet lag because I'm the only one who came a month early. The others have all come within the week.

The part of town that we are is downtown alright, but it seems to be like the business district or something. There aren't that many places to eat, and we saw more bars and drinking places than eateries and restaurants. Also the tall business buildings and men in suits everywhere. It was kind of cool, because our hotel is right across from this huge police headquarters building thing and tonight was supposed to be the biggest demonstration for the protest against the import of American beef, so we saw busloads of young policemen being deployed. Anyway it seems like we'll have to do most of our playing elsewhere.

Yesterday I had 삼계탕 with my uncle and aunt. It was cool and delicious! They serve an entire chicken (ok it's one of those mini ones) in a stew in your bowl. They stuff the chicken with rice and other stuff so you eat the chicken meat and break open the chicken with your spoon and voila! The place was supposedly 100 years old and they don't really serve anything else so it was damn good. Afterwards my uncle showed me his workplace. He's a subcontractor for Nestle and does the packaging part so I got a tour of his little assembly line of people packaging things. It was a little awkward because I felt like I was at a zoo and the workers were the animals... After, I went to my last day at work and then watched 공공의적 3, a Korean movie about an investigator tracking down a high class thug, with the same uncle and aunt plus Saerom unni. You know how American movies will have 15-20 minutes of previews and commercials in the beginning so you can be a little bit late? Well we walked in at 9:05 for our 9:00 movie and missed the first 5 minutes. Apparently if you really want to see the previews and ads, YOU have to show up 15-20 min early cuz they play them before. So much for Korean time (10-20 min. later than the appointment). Americans know how to do their marketing right ;]

The hotel is fabulous and everything but the remote control for the AC doesn't have batteries for some reason. It was heaven walking into the chilled place but I am freezing my buns off right now and we can't figure out how to turn this crap off. This is ridiculous!

Hm my roomie's still not here and it's 1:15 am! Maybe she won't ever come and I'll have a single! Muhaha!