Romance City.

Yesterday, I experienced such beauty! I spent the day in the wonderful Sam Chung Dong. It is the kind of town that would definitely be featured in one of those cheesy Korean dramas. Proof of this were the multiple couples you would see everywhere; holding hands, gazing longingly into each other's eyes, wearing matching couple shirts, using selfie sticks... It was like a fairytale.

Some of the beautiful buildings in Sam Chung Dong.

The ambiance of the place was just......... Happiness. Happiness everywhere. I do not think it would be possible to be sad at the place. There were cute cafes everywhere, shops with socks for 70c (I spent more time than I care to admit cooing over these cute socks), international restaurants, markets, people staring at me because I'm Caucasian, romantic music EVERYWHERE, Korean traditional-style buildings and beautiful views from mountain tops.

A cute little cafe on the corner of a street in Sam Chung Dong.

Right next to the town of Sam Chung Dong, there is also In Sa Dong, which is a lovely little area for shopping. There are markets, cafes and very similar features to Sam Chung Dong just without as many couples (still SO MANY couples though).

I recommend this town for anyone who is:

1. In a relationship.
2. Loves Korean culture.
3. Loves cafes (there are not only many but also each cafe is very different from the next).
4. Wants to buy souvenirs for family/friends back home.
5. Wants to live vicariously through the love of other couples.

Thanks for reading! 

Signed in Seoul,

Kristin

Kristin is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia-Korea Foundation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

My K-Pop Adventure in Gangnam

A few days ago, it was my roommate's birthday. So, given that we are both hardcore K-Pop fans, we decided to spend the day tracking down the headquarters of some of the biggest labels in K-Pop!

Now, given the size of Seoul, we deemed it impossible to visit all the K-Pop buildings in one day (and thank God we came to that conclusion early), but thankfully there are 4 main K-Pop buildings in Gangnam which seem to have been designed for a fangirl's convenience. Take a look at my video below to get your head around the size and scale of Cube Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, FNC Entertainment and SM Entertainment.

It was amazing standing right in front of these buildings and it was kind of silly how star-struck I was by them. As you can tell from the video, the streets were quite deserted thanks to the national holiday 'Chuseok' (추석), so it was very fortunate that we decided to go on that day. Yes, there were fangirls, but I cannot imagine that there would be any less fangirls on a regular day.

In fact, we met a lady in front of the SM Building who told us that on a regular day, there is usually a line of fangirls outside the building and that they will stay there all day in the hope that they might catch a glimpse of their 'oppas'. We asked her if it was common to see the stars arriving or leaving and she said that there will be large black vans coming and going without fail every day. Unfortunately, the tinted windows mean that it is unlikely the wait will be worth it (although we probably cannot speak for the teenage fangirls, whom I imagine would crave a window-tinted oppa).

We hope to return soon to the buildings, in order to conduct a comparison between the K-Pop streets of Gangnam on a national holiday VS. a working day. We also will soon be visiting some of the other big labels in K-Pop so, stay tuned!

Signed in Seoul,

Kristin

Kristin is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia-Korea Foundation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

So here I am in Seoul

... And life is far too amazing. I feel as if I am in an awesome, super-prolonged dream and am expecting to wake up any moment now.

When you prepare for something like this, you begin to imagine that all the worst things will happen: like maybe you will fail your subjects, or your plane will crash, or you won't have access to your money, or you will be super lonely and won't make any friends (the list goes on). Well, rest assured that my subjects are far too interesting for me to fail, my plane made it safely across the Pacific, my money is well taken care of and I have made more friends than I can keep track of.

So, I have been here for ten days and so far I have gone to maybe 12 cafes, 6 restaurants, 5 bars and 1 shopping centre (try and guess where my priorities lie here). I have also scored 20 KakaoTalk IDs and have come home after 4am on three separate occasions. I have also been to the campus convenience store more times than I could ever possibly count (putting a convenience store right below my dorms was probably one of the best decisions Sogang has made financially).

Overall, I am so amazed at the city of Seoul. There is just... so much to do... at any hour of the day...anywhere. I do not like the fact that I could stay here for a whole year and still not get to see/do all the amazing things I want to see/do. For the first few days, I made so many mental notes saying, "right, have to come back here later" whenever I passed something awesome, but by the fourth day I realised that there was just too much and that if I tried to keep track, I was going to have a bad time.

I also have to keep telling myself that I am here to study and that it's okay, therefore, to stay in at night time or to waste a day reading books or hanging with my roommate (not that hanging with my roommate is ever a waste of a day). But then, I also use the Y.O.K.O (You Only Korea Once) excuse all the time to justify crazy and random things that I might normally never do (not like, drugs or anything, just stuff like spontaneously going out at random hours or multiple times in one day or surviving on 2 hours sleep in 48 hours).

I could talk forever about the city that never sleeps, so I will pause here and let you discover Seoul for yourself over the next four months. I plan to document everything of interest here so watch this space!

This weekend is the Korean holiday "추석" (Chuseok), which means that there are no classes until Thursday, and a lot of places are closed until then (I have heard that Seoul becomes a ghost town during this period, which i absolutely cannot imagine nor believe). We exchange students must band together during this time because we are the only ones without family here and all of our Korean buddies will be gone so we will be relying on our own loose senses of direction and mostly instant ramen for food.

It is also my roommates birthday! So we've got a big day ahead!

Signed in Seoul,

Kristin

Kristin is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia-Korea Foundation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.