My Travel Adventures: Graduation Day

Today's quite crazy..... because it's graduation day! We came to school at 9am today, as usual. We got our written final back..... I did pretty well, and that's only because the teacher gave up grading the portion on our final where we had to make up a conversation. She was going to take off points for each wrong sentence, but we had SOOOO many mistakes that she decided to just give us the points as long as our conversation made sense. Sigh. That would have been 8 points total that we missed. BUT, one person in our class got perfect score with no mistake. He says it's the Asian in him..... (he's Chinese), that he was born to take tests. Ok, probably not in those exact words, but that's what he meant. But I did pretty well, despite that last conversation not being spelled all entirely correct.

I'm really glad to see this score because I worked really hard in this program to do as well as possible. I still remember the first day of class where I wasn't sure if this level is going to be too hard for me... and also the times where I felt that the vocab I know was too little and I had to try harder to catch up. I'm really glad to see this score :)

After reviewing our finals, we went to take some pictures outside. So our textbook often has these characters that we use to create conversations. There is Hans ssi, Andy ssi, Mina ssi... etc. We all thought these are fake people... but the teacher said they are real people who went to Sogang! And the picture at the beginning of the book that introduces them was mapped after the real Sogang landscape!

So we tried to replicate the picture...

More or less tried.

And then we took some pictures with poses I suggested around campus.

Here are some class pictures we took in class.

And then.... graduation! And some pictures with the teachers and classmates...

This is my speech and writing teacher...... I learned a lot from her!

And this is my listening and reading teacher. She's so pretty and cute! I feel like I'm older than her...

And this is our culture class teacher. She's so cute and nice! She's a mom of two and is always talking to us like a mom... haha.

And then these are our TA's who have been helping us throughout the entire program. They're really really awesome :) We said that we'll stay connected through Kakao Talk. We'll miss them!

This is Nawon ssi :)

And this is Ki Beom ssi :)

The school took us to this buffet called Ashley's for lunch. The name sounds really American, but it's really very fusion. For example, their pasta is not made of penne pasta - it's tteok. I really never thought that you can put tteok in pasta... And then there's a bunch other fusion stuff... very interesting. Good food :)

And then this is my first plate.

I think the best food from the place is fried kim-mari, fried rice (I think they used pork oil), and this sushi rice ball thing that has masago and wasabi. Mmmm.... and the best drink is this fresh watermelon juice. So refreshing!

And then we took some more pictures together....

After our lunch, we first went to this batting cage to try hitting baseball. Not as easy as I thought it would be! I chose the 100 km/h speed and I could only hit 2 out of 18 balls! I think you only pay 1,000 won for 18 hits.... it's quite a steal! It was really just super hot today... so we went to noraebang right after that.

But......... Kakao map says the fastest way to get to this noraebang is to climb over these stairs, walk down the hills, and then you're there. Kakao map, c'mon!! You know there is a flatter way around this! But we did it anyways...

And then we realized that it was not open...... so we took a subway to Hongdae and went to this one that's open for like 24 hours a day or something. It was fancy! Wow! Every group gets a nice room full of stuff..... I was really surprised!

This is the waiting room. They have like 3 floors full of noraebang.

This is our room. It was 15,000 won for an hour.... which since we have 5 people, it's only 3,000 won per person. Not bad, right?

We went pretty crazy with the singing... ok, maybe not super crazy. It was super fun! We sang everything from Shinhwa, Got7, Big Bang, Justin Bieber (I don't know what it is..), Call Me Maybe, Bruno Mars...... all that stuff. And here is the final score at the end of the session.

What?? Let it go got 100 points?! Got7's song got 99 points... not bad! I think I contributed to the rap portion and everyone else got the "oo ooo ooooo" portion. Haha.

It was seriously too hot today.... it was super humid, which makes it super unbearable. I'm not sure how girls go through an entire day with makeup because I think all my makeup sweat off by lunch time...... So we decided to go to a cafe to chill for a bit before going to Yeoido to do some bike riding.

This cafe is pretty interesting... it's made up of a lot of tiny rooms where customers take off their shoes and sit in the room like you're in an old style tea room.

Cute place, but their drinks are expensive and doesn't taste good. My strawberry banana smoothie tasted kind of fake and cost 7,000 won. Eek.

And then we went to Yeoido to do some bike riding :) I love bike riding in enclosed area like a park or beach. I still suck at riding bikes... but I like the feeling of speed and wind in my face (and watching scenery as I ride by)..

And then we decided to just bike over to Han River, which is just one street over.

Han River has to be one of my most favorite places in Korea. I just love being there whether it's day or night. The scenery is always nice no matter where you are, and it's just soooo awesome to be able to chill there (chill as in the verb form, not adjective. It was not chill in temperature at all today). I just really love that place. It's really spacious, not like the beaches in LA... so everyone can enjoy themselves without someone else encroaching on your space. AND, it's super accessible. You just need to take a subway to get there... no need to drive and park and fight other people for your parking spaces at all (but that's really just good Korean transportation system). Anyways, I really love the Han River. Second to that is gonna be Namsan Tower. Ah.... those places make me quite happy. Or really, I think just pretty places without a lot of tourists make me happy. Haha.

We got some food from the food trucks and sat there trying to see if the temperature lowers by 10pm, but no luck. One thing I don't understand about some of these food trucks is..... why don't they take orders of EACH PERSON IN LINE, instead of only take the order when you get to the window?! I really don't get it. Like... they don't even start making it until you order it, and then the person taking the order, the person making the food, and the customer, ALL just stand there waiting for the food to be ready. While there are other people... I mean, a lot of other people, standing in line, doing nothing. What a waste of time. Why don't they just take other orders so then they can start staggering the prep time and shorten the line?! Every time I walk by a long time, I just see three people at the ordering window twiddling their thumbs waiting for the food to be ready. What the heck? Where is efficiency?! Just call their order number when their food is ready! That made me quite frustrated because the line was so long... but the people at the counter weren't doing anything at all. Bleh.

Anyways, so it took a while for me to get this hotdog and drink. Not bad, but I would say that food trucks by Han River are not the things you want to buy if you want great food for cheap price. Think "food truck" in America. Basically same idea. My hotdog cost 5,500 won and drink was 4,000 won. Not cheap at all.