Day 89: Rough Morning & Trinity Exhibit

Today started out pretty rough for both Ella and myself. The main thing I needed to do today was go to Gimpo airport and pick up a new SIM card for my last 10 days here. The subway there takes a little over an hour. While I was on the subway I got a message from Ella saying she had accidentally slept through her lunch date with a guy. She had misread his text and thought he wanted to meet at 2 instead of 12. She woke up at 12 to a text from him saying that he was waiting for her and she freaked out (understandably). I got a bunch of hilarious texts from her while she was trying to get ready and sprint out the door. As I'm thinking about how rough her morning started I arrived at the airport and went to pick up my SIM card only to realize that I had forgotten my passport in my room. There was no other form of ID that the lady at the KT booth would accept so I had to go all the way back home to get my passport. Rough morning for both of us. At least I got to see the Taehyung birthday ad in the airport subway entrance.

Rather than going straight home I decided to stop by a birthday cafe that was near the airport. The birthday cafes that are out of the main areas of Seoul typically have awesome photo cards and decorations. This one did not disappoint. There were so many photos and decorations throughout the cafe and the photo card was a cool sparkly one. They even had a projector in a back area of the cafe that was playing clips of Taehyung from concerts.

I was meeting Ella in Hongdae after her date so we could go and see a fansite exhibit. I still had time and I needed to go back to Gangnam for my passport so I decided to stop by Yangjaecheon Stream along the way. I totally underestimated the time it would take to walk from the stream to my place so I only had time to briefly look out over the stream before I had to speed walk back to get my passport. I messaged Ella halfway through my walk saying that I would be a little late and she messaged back saying she was just about to tell me that she also needed more time (perfect)! Both of us are pretty bad at arriving on time to things. I always underestimate how long the subway will take and I get distracted easily by places that I want to take photos of. We set times to meet and at least one of us always ends up arriving 15 minutes after our specified time.

We finally met up in Hongdae after I had picked up my passport and we walked to Fifty Fifty Cafe to find the exhibit. One of my friends had been there the day before and I was super excited to see it myself. When we got there we paid 8000 won to enter the exhibit area and we got a pretty sparkly pass as well as several other fun gifts. All the photos were great and it was exciting to wander around and look at them. It's crazy how many events these fansites have been to. How do they even have the money to go to all of these!? I enjoyed looking at the photos, but I was also reminded of how frustrating the fansites are at concerts and award shows. They bring huge cameras and completely block the view of everyone else that is trying to watch the performances. I tried to just focus on looking at the photos rather than thinking about that though. I really wanted to buy one of the pictures but I didn't think I would have enough room in my suitcase for it.

Near the end of the exhibit there was a table with merchandise that people could buy. There were photo books, photo cards, pins, and even more items. Ella and I both stopped to look at the stuff and say hello to the fansites. They were super nice and I started looking through one of the photo card stacks. I was casually flipping through it when a really awesome photo of Namjoon came up and I accidentally said 'hot damn' super loudly. The three girls running the booth burst out laughing and started to nod their heads and give me a thumbs up. I went bright red and I'm pretty sure Ella was ready to disown me. Each time I flipped to a Namjoon picture after that incident the three girls would go 'hot damn?' and I would get even more red haha. I almost bought the huge photo book, but Ella was fortunately there to remind me that I really did not need it. I did buy some fun stickers that they had designed though. We waved bye to the girls and went out to the cafe to grab a drink. There were special cup sleeves for the event and Ella got some stickers because she ordered one of the special drinks (she was super nice and gave me the stickers to take home).

We sat at the cafe for awhile and then found a small ramen place to eat dinner at.

Someone airdropped this lovely photo while we were sitting in the cafe and it made me laugh.

After dinner I took the subway back to the airport and successfully picked up my new SIM card (yay!). I then took the subway to Gangnam and stopped by Daiso to get a notebook and envelope. One of my friends showed me some letters she wrote to BTS before going back to her country and the idea seemed fun. I want to write a letter to Namjoon whose Twitter posts have helped me to discover some amazing places around Seoul. I went back to my room and got a message from Sooyeon (someone you will meet tomorrow). She had found the BTS subway that was running this month and sent me pictures of it. The subway is a fan project for Taehyung and Jin's birthdays. They decorated a subway car on line 2 with tons of BTS pictures and bright pink flooring. It is super hard to find so it was kind of Sooyeon to send me pictures of it. She saw the Namjoon picture in the subway and said that she thought of me, which made me smile. I am meeting her for the first time tomorrow and we are going out for breakfast.

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(December 23, 2018)