First Korean Class, My Birthday, Exploring Edae (Video+Long Post)

First Day of Class

So before our first day of Korean Class, I went to the Hyundai Department Store with a few friends. It was tons of fun to look at everything from the basement to the top floor! Then for lunch we had 치킨! We could not find seats, so we sat on a big ottoman next to the elevators and enjoyed our delicious meal! Then we made our way to Sogang. In the video, you can see Alex on one of the turtle statues. You will see turtle statues really often since turtles signify longevity. We got to Sogang, but we were not exactly sure how to get to our building. Along the way, we saw those machines that make coffee for you. The pictures made it seem really cool... In reality, it looked like murky water! We came across other nsliyians that actually kind of knew where the building was. Our test results were out, and we began our first Korean class. My class started off with lots of worksheets to review the material we are supposed to know. It was a bit overwhelming at first, but very helpful. After class, I did a little bit of shopping and went to a cafe, Paris Baguette, to enjoy some sandwiches. (I was kind of brain scattered that day, as you can tell by the blooper in the video!) Before heading home, we listened to these cool street performers in 신촌 (Sinchon).

 Birthday 

The next day was my Birthday! I went to 이대 in the morning. 이대 is short for 이화여자대학교 (Ewha Women's University)! The area around this university is a great place to shop. I had lunch with some nsliyian friends at a Japanese styled restaurant, and it was delicious! My host family was very sweet,and they bought me a birthday cake and sang to me! On the pretty cake were some... TOMATOES?! I definitely am not used to having tomatoes on top of a cake. Apparently, having cherry tomatoes on top of cakes in Korea  is quite common. Later, I saw it several other times in other cafes that sell cakes. I like tomatoes. I just wasn't used to this. From my observations, Koreans really enjoy cherry tomatoes. My host family had them all the time, and according to my fellow NSLI-Y6, their host families had then really often, too. Eventually, I even came across yogurt bingsu with cherry tomatoes in it!

The next day

The next day I went back to 이대! We had some awesome liquid nitrogen ice-cream! It was a really cool place with an awesome theme! We had some strawberry daifuku mochi (a Japanese treat). Then explored the streets of Edae some more. There were so many fun shirts with random, nonsensical English on them!