Day 33 & 34: Hongdae & BBQ

Day 33

I slept in pretty late after the early morning yesterday. I was supposed to go for dinner at the Han River with Betty and Fiona today (the girls I met when we saw BTS) but the weather was rainy and cold so we decided to reschedule for tomorrow. I lay back down in bed and decided I didn't want to move for the rest of the day.

I spent the majority of the day eating convenience store cheesecake, playing games on my phone, and listening to the rain outside. By around 7 pm I was bored of lying around and thought it would be cool to go to Hongdae for a few hours. Lots of people start busking on the street after 7 pm and I really enjoyed going there a few weeks ago. I took the subway there and walked up and down the street for a couple hours just watching people perform. There was a cool group of three guys doing dance covers as well as a few singers that had brought guitars and keyboards to perform. I also went to a cafe that I had found online and wanted to check out. It's a cute cafe called Arriate that doubles as a flower shop. I ordered a cocoa tea (which I found out is just hot chocolate) and sat down to look at all the decorations.

After my hot chocolate I went back outside and face-timed my sister so I could show her the performers. I didn't know that people aren't allowed to perform outside after 10 though and almost everyone was finishing up by the time I called her. There were even police patrolling the street to make sure people were leaving. It was getting chilly and the performances were all done so I decided to go back home.

When I got back to my room I made the mistake of opening Netflix. I felt like watching a movie and I hadn’t been on Netflix in a while (so long that I actually had to ask my dad for the password). When I logged on I was excited to find a new season of Gotham available! I should not have re-entered the world of Netflix... this would be the start of many ridiculously late nights binge-watching the entire season.

(October 28, 2018)

Day 34

After a busy night of Netflix watching I slept in super late. My only plan for today was to meet Betty and Fiona for dinner at 5. The place we were meeting was an area of the Han River that I hadn't explored yet (near Ttukseom Resort station). It was only a 15 minute subway ride away though so it was super convenient!

I met them at the subway and we went outside to find a place to sit. There are always people outside more popular subway stops near the Han River who are handing out flyers for chicken or other food. We grabbed one of the flyers, planning to use it to order our chicken once we found a spot to sit. We did not realize it would be so cold. For some reason all the convenience stores in the area were closed and there was barely anyone around (maybe because of the cold weather?). We wandered to an area near the water where there were large benches to sit on. We pulled out our blankets, sat down, and then decided we would much rather find a BBQ place so we could eat inside. It was way too cold and windy to sit by the water.

We walked back up along a main street until we came across a BBQ restaurant playing BTS music. Both Fiona and Betty speak Korean much better than I do so they ordered the meat for us (beef and samgyeopsal). It was so much nicer to sit inside and when they put the rocks for cooking the meat on our table we all gravitated towards the heat.

We ordered seconds and continued to eat and chat for a bit. After the food we walked along the street a little further until we got to an area near Konkuk University. There are always really cool shops and food streets across from universities so we walked around for a couple minutes looking at those places. It was too cold out to walk outside for much longer though so we decided to head home early. It was nothing like what we had planned to do but it was still nice to have dinner with friends and just relax.

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(October 29, 2018)