Day 32: Everland

I had a super adorable wake up from both Alysha and her mom today. Our plan was to leave at 9. At around 8:15 Alysha knocked on my door and peeked her head in to say she was starting to get ready. I went back to bed haha. Then at 8:45 Alysha's mom knocked on the door to say good morning and I figured I should probably start moving.

Her mom had prepared sandwiches and sliced apples for breakfast as well as juice, which was really sweet of her. We met Alysha's boyfriend outside and then we all got in Alysha's car to go to Everland. Everland is a big amusement park, kind of like Canada's Wonderland, but bigger.

We stopped to get kimbap on the way since they both said it would be much more expensive to buy food at the park. Her boyfriend was super nice but his music taste was quite unfortunate (he knew absolutely no k-pop or recent music). After our music video binge, Alysha had downloaded a bunch of BTS songs on her phone and we spent the majority of the ride listening to them (thank you! :) ).

We arrived after approximately an hour of driving and the parking lot was packed! We had to park in a parking lot farther away and take a shuttle bus (that's what we get for going on a weekend though). I had purchased my ticket online a couple days before on a site called Klook since they had a nice deal for foreigners. I waited in line with Alysha and her boyfriend while they got tickets and then we entered the park.

It was really sunny and nice out in the morning so I was wearing a t-shirt. Alysha seemed to find this hilarious since everybody else was wearing big coats. She challenged me to try and find another person wearing a t-shirt (I failed but I did find someone wearing shorts). I bought super yummy popcorn and we took a couple pictures near the entrance.

Alysha has this cool app on her phone where she can scan our tickets and every 30-60 minutes we can choose a ride to get a fast pass for. The line ups were super long (some of them were up to 2 hours) so the fast pass was very useful. Unfortunately, the weather was really windy so the ride that Alysha wanted to go on the most was closed, but we still were able to go on several other ones! We started with a shooting game ride, which Alysha crushed both of us in. Then we walked to the Blood City.

Since Halloween is coming up the park had created a horror/zombie area. We wandered around and looked at the decorations but none of the stuff opened until 7 pm so we left. By this point we had one of the fast passes so we used it to go on a spinning car ride. After the ride we took a ski lift looking thing down to the lower part of the park to try and find somewhere to eat.

The park is surrounded by mountains and trees which makes it a really beautiful area to walk around.

It took us a long time to find somewhere. We didn't want to sit outside because it was too cold (at this point I was hiding in my sweater because it was so cold and windy) and none of the restaurants let people sit inside if they were bringing their own food (understandably). We finally found an area that was sheltered so there was no wind and we ate our kimbap.

After eating we went on a few more rides and watched two bird shows. The first was indoor with lots of exotic looking birds and the second one was outdoor with birds of prey. I ate more food (cotton candy and a hotdog) and then we went to try the zombie maze. The maze was open after noon and it was starting to get darker out so we thought it would be a good time to go. Unfortunately, all the tickets were sold out by the time we got there. We wandered around for a bit while we tried to pass the time until the zombie park opened. We saw lots of animals and even fed some birds but we were so cold and tired from walking around that we decided it would be better to go home than to keep waiting in the cold.

Alysha dropped me off at the station and I took the subway back home. I was so thankful that the subway was warm! Even though the day was cold and we didn't get to go on the big ride, we still had fun. It was really nice to spend the day exploring with other people and Alysha and her boyfriend are the cutest humans ever. Alysha spent a lot of the day quizzing me on my Korean and trying to teach me new words and both of them were really wonderful to be around.

They met each other while they were both in Canada and got matching Roots sweaters there

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(October 27, 2018)

Distance walked: 11.1 km