Meeting Korean teacher! :)

We've been continuing on the trend of sleeping really late (at least I do) and waking up really late (like 11am). Sigh. So we basically ate some watermelon and discounted onigiri from the supermarket. After much procrastination to leave the hostel, we finally made our way to the bus so we can go to Kyobo bookstore (we really have no agenda anymore....).

So after walking around Kyobo for a while.... we found this really cool model thing that you can build yourself from this DIY kit!

We were so tempted to buy them because they are really inexpensive (like 32,000 won - think no tax, no shipping, conversion rate is good, tax refund).... maybe we will do that after thinking about it for a few more days.....

Joyce wanted to learn some Hangeul so we looked at the Korean learning section, and I saw this book.

Totally just capitalizing on BTS' popularity for no good reason. I think learning Korean from lyrics is a very hard thing to do because 1) not all the grammar in song lyrics is correct, 2) lyrics are sometimes written in more poetic form than conversational form, so it would be strange to actually use the same grammar, 3) not for beginners! They basically just put some random BTS pictures throughout the book. Sigh.

Coming to Korea, one thing I started liking a lot is.... Pororo!! I love that cartoon! I can understand everything they say! Anyways, they're so cute! We see a lot of videos of them on the subway and KTX about how NOT to cross a train track and how to use exit doors properly on the subway. So now Joyce and I really like Pororo!

We also saw this book that has each Kakao Friends' biography. It is quite traumatizing. Despite their cute exterior, they all have some kind of insecurity and secret life that nobody knows........

Oh yeah, here's an artsy picture of Joyce reading in the bookstore.

After walking aimlessly for a while, we decided to eat something! We found this place that had a big octopus shown in front of its store and decided to give it a try.... got the stir fried octopus (낙지볶음), which is suppose to be super hot.

We didn't really know how to eat it so we asked the waitress there... and she said just mix everything together. Well... that's what we did!

I think I'll have to say.... this was probably one of the best meals I've had this time in Korea! It was really spicy (so spicy that I was sweating), but so good! The best way to fight the spiciness is just to eat more of it... haha. Drinking water just makes it spread everywhere to the point where you have to drink another gallon of water. Might as well just endure it, let it sweat, and eat more. I think the amount we got was supposed to be for one person, but we got an extra rice instead. The total meal was just 12,000 for two people! That was such a good price!

After the meal, we sat around this coffee shop and read our books until it was about 4:30pm, when it's not as hot (but it was still hot) to check out the World Cup Stadium.

I feel like my favorite thing to do these days is to try different ade from different vendors to see how they taste. I think I like the ones that have a prominent carbonated drink the best.

Alright, World Cup Stadium. So this was built in 2002 for the Japan/Korea World Cup. We paid to tour the place, but we actually only knew about the place because Joyce met this person from the language cafe we volunteered the previous week.

The stadium is very big... and to think that this was where World Cup happened was just really amazing!

It would have been nice to watch a soccer game here... but that was yesterday, and we missed it :(

We then toured some of the player's resting area and changing room..... 

Does the Korean team need a 12th player?

After some more walking around the area, we kind of just waited at Home Plus (a supermarket/Walmart-like place) for meeting the Korean teacher I met yesterday at the Korean language cafe.

She treated us to a chicken place that is so famous that a lot of celebrities go there (in Hongdae).

We had the 닭도리탕, which she says is chicken (in Korean) bird (in Japanese) soup. 

She was super nice! Throughout the whole dinner, she was basically teaching Joyce Korean... hahaha..... She couldn't really speak English, so sometimes she would just speak in Korean and I would translate to Joyce and vice versa. The whole dinner turned out to be very funny. 

After the soup was consumed.... I was super super full.... she asked the auntie to mix some rice in the soup to make fried rice. She told the lady to mix 3 cups of rice, and the lady's like "no, just two, you can't finish". In Korea, it's not what you order - it's what they think you can or cannot eat that they let you order.

By this time, I really cannot eat anymore..... but the teacher said this is the "highlight", so I tried to eat some more. I LOVE the seaweed... it really makes it feel like we're eating seafood.... it was really good, but I was really stuffed. 

After dinner, we went to a random cafe in Hongdae and just chatted for nearly another hour. I think the teacher really really liked both of us that she felt sad that we didn't get to meet earlier to spend more time together. Pretty much all the Koreans we've made friends with on this trip had been super awesome! Thanks to Joyce, we actually made many Korean friends!

Tomorrow is 불금, which means "fire Friday" in Korean... meaning that many Koreans will go out and party that day (end of the week!). Not sure what we're gonna do tomorrow yet.... but karaoke sounds pretty good :)