Day 40: University Tours & LED Flowers

I didn't have much of a plan for today so I slept in until noon. Kate was awake when I finally moved from bed and we had 'breakfast' (it was past lunch time at this point but oh well) together and talked in the living room for several hours. It's nice to have someone to chat with in the morning!

I had seen on Twitter a couple days ago that there would be a BTS UNICEF booth in Korea for a few days and today was the last day to see it. Here's a little background: On November 1, 2017, BTS launched a two-year anti-violence campaign in partnership with UNICEF. To celebrate the one year anniversary there was an information booth and photo station set up downtown Sinchon for 4 days. The campaign is called Love Yourself and has raised over $1.4 million USD in its first year.

After talking with Kate for awhile I took the subway to Sinchon to check out the booth. When I walked outside of the subway station there was a crowd around a guy that was blasting music and playing along with it on handmade drums. It was super cool! I have a video of it on my phone, but I can't upload videos on here. I continued along the street until I found the booth. There were lots of people around it and lined up to take pictures. I walked around and eventually ended up talking to one of the people collecting donations. He talked about their campaign and showed me some of the items that the money was going towards. It was so awesome to see what an amazing thing BTS are inspiring people to do. After he talked about the campaign he asked where I was from and that got us started on a whole new topic. He was super excited that I was from Canada since he was currently applying for citizenship or something (I can't remember what he said exactly) so he could live and go to school there. He wanted to go to a college in B.C to be a chef!

I continued to wander around the area for awhile after that. There were tons of restaurants and cool alleyways. I got a hibiscus tea that was really sugary but yummy and then tried to figure out what I wanted to do next.

Martin had recommended looking at some of the universities in the area a few days ago so I decided to try that. Sinchon is close to several universities including Yonsei and Ewha Women's University. I considered doing an exchange in Korea a few months ago rather than just travelling and both of these schools were potential placements. Unfortunately, I had missed the deadline by the time I became interested in it.

Yonsei university has an absolutely ginormous and beautiful campus. It is definitely a place I would have loved to have gone to! All the buildings looked super pretty and there were tons of cute little pathways and gardens throughout. The main area that I walked up had outdoor cafes and eating areas as well as fancy escalators to access the underground portion of the campus.

Yonsei is right beside Ewha university so I decided to check that out too. Ewha is a women's university with a very popular shopping street beside it. I passed through a cool tunnel called the Cage on the way.

I walked around the shopping street for a bit. It is mostly makeup and women's clothing stores since it is beside a women's university. All the clothing stores looked super cool and the fashion was amazing but I was able to stop myself from buying too much. I did get some lip balm and a BT21 subway card at a makeup store though as well as a small purse from a street vendor. I really love Korea's tinted lip balms and I had seen an ad for Nivea's lip balms (the ad had a k-pop group called iKon in it and I like their music) several times while playing a game on my phone. I came across the lip balms in one of the makeup stores and decided to try it out. I have worn it every day since because it smells really good and it isn't too bright!

Ewha University is much smaller, but still beautiful. There were so many people there to take pictures of a stairway area. Tons of foreigners and people with tripods were set up along the ramp to take pictures. I walked down the slope area and over to the stairs where I sat to organize my purse and open up my lip balm. I was looking at the wifi networks at one point and laughed when eduroam popped up. Eduroam must be the general wifi for schools worldwide because it is what I use at Waterloo too.

I was able to watch the sun set from the stairs while I enjoyed looking around to see what everyone else was doing there. There was one girl with a coffee who was studying, there were tons of people doing little photo shoots with friends, and there were also people just sitting and relaxing.

I decided to go to Dongdaemun Design Plaza once I was bored of sitting at the university. Kate had recommended visiting it and even sent me a link for the place. It is a huge plaza that kind of looks like a space ship that is known worldwide for its incredible architectural design.

There are loads of shops and restaurants inside of it as well as merchandise shops where artists can sell their work. I found a k-pop shop in the main building called KTown4U. It's a place that I have purchased from online before and I was surprised that they had a physical location as well. There was a huge BTS poster outside of the store!

I wandered around the plaza and then crossed the street to the mall that Kate and I had gone to the day before. There was a bingsu place in the basement that Kate had shown me yesterday that I wanted to go to . I told Kate that I really wanted to try bingsu but couldn't because it has a lot of milk in it. She was kind enough to suggest we go inside and see if they made it without milk and she even asked them for me. She found out that they do make it with milk typically but they pour it on top after so I can order it without and they just won't pour it on. I had been excited to try it so I went back to the mall and ordered the fruit bingsu.

It was way too sweet and kind of tasted like ice with flavoured syrup (which it probably was). The fruit was really yummy and the bottom part where there was less syrup was good. Fortunately, this experience made me feel like I'm not really missing out on anything by not being able to eat it at other places. I was happy that I at least tried it though! Bingsu is a dessert that is made up of shaved ice, milk, and toppings.

I walked back to the design plaza after eating to try and find the famous LED flower display. It was originally set up as a temporary exhibit a few years ago, but it was so popular that it is now permanent. The lights turn on at 7 pm every night and there are thousands of them! It took me forever to find it though. At first I thought it might be inside the design building so I checked in there. There was a cool SM merchandise shop and lots of other booths with unique looking items, but no glowing flowers.

I walked back outside and around the building and I was still unable to find them. I walked back around the same side and I was about to give up when I saw the crowd of people.

There's a small strip of the flowers that run along the side of a path. I thought this was the only garden so I took a ton of pictures and then walked to the bottom of the path because I saw a cool archway.

When I passed by the archway I found even more flowers! This field was huge though and clearly the main garden. I took some pictures there and then a couple asked me to take a picture of them. I walked back up to the top of the field and around a corner and found the first 'garden' area I had seen. Clearly I suck at just looking at what's around me because I completely missed the huge garden the first time.

I walked back under the big DDP bridge and came across an older man playing beautiful music on the piano. I stopped for a few minutes to take a video and just listen to him play. Once I got back to the main street I hopped on a bus back home. Martin, Kate, and I typically have begun a routine of drinking tea and watching TV in the evenings, which is such a relaxing and nice way to end the day

I am super far behind on my blog posts so this post is for November 4 but I'm finishing it at 1 am on November 15. I am flying to Japan tomorrow for a week, which I'm super excited about so I should probably be heading to bed now!

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(November 4, 2018)

Distance walked: 10.1 km

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Yonsei and Ewha university: