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Published: February 23rd 2013
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At the airport I arrived in Seoul from Canada at 4pm last Thursday. (quick note: Air Canada was 50 minutes early upon arrival... a miracle!)
The plane ride didn't seem that long, I watched Looper and Wreck it Ralph, as well as a Top Gear episode I had downloaded on my laptop. It also helped that the guy who sat next to me was a fairly decent looking Korean guy. We ended up chatting for a good length on the plane. Turns out he had just finished a semester of exchange in Mexico city, and he has travelled to both Vancouver and Toronto in Canada which was pretty cool.
Once we arrived, he offered to help me figure things out, which was really nice of him. He guided me around the airport which was much appreciated since we had to take a train (subway/lite rail type thing) to the baggage area.
Everything went very smoothly, and I ended up meeting my friend Eva for the first time ever. Eva and I met through a blogging website called Tumblr, and we have skyped and stuff, but never met in person as she is from Spain. Regardless, when I saw her we were
both super excited and hugged for a while. She's just so cute and squishy, and I was very glad to have her around.
She insisted that taxis were too expensive and that we should take the subway, so we did. Man was that a mistake. While it was pretty easy to figure out (I'll write more about the transport system later), we had to take 3 trains to get to Korea University. The only difficult part was that one station didn't have a down esclator, so we had to pick up the bags and carry them down stairs. Not fun when you have 2 large luggage bags and 2 carry ons. Regarless, we made it to Korea University where I was supposed to meet my buddy.
When we got there, she hadn't sent me a message with her phone number on it, and my messaging system needed wifi to contact her. So Eva and I dragged our stuff to the surface and luckily managed to find wifi. While her phone connected with no problem, mine just wouldn't connect. Of course, in the middle of this... my phone died == our only option was to go back down to
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First glances of Seoul as Eva and I explored the subway. the subway and try find an outlet to charge my phone, and this is what we did. After 10-15mins, my phone was charged enough that we could try to contact my buddy again. Luckily this time it worked and I could sent my buddy Eva's number so we could get in contact. It didn't take long after that for my KU buddy, Jiwon, to find us. At this point Eva and I were both exhausted, so we just took a taxi the remaining while to the hostel.
By the time we sorted out the room and stuff, it was already 10:30pm. Feeling quite exhausted after all the lack of sleep, the next day (Friday), I woke up and posted on Facebook, but after that I could tell I wasn't feeling quite right. I'm not sure if it was the temperature of the room, or jet lag, but I just didn't feel good yesterday at all. I ended up spending all day in bed sleeping == the only time I got up was to get a cup of water and try take some advil cold + flu.
Good thing is, I felt quite a bit better today, and explored
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This is what I expected all of Seoul to look like... I was very wrong, ahahaha the neighbourhood a bit. There are lots of small shops and street vendors, and eventually I found a convience store where I bought some food (instant noodles of course, potato chips, minute maid orange juice and "kimbap triangle" [which is basically rice with some beef and sauce surrounded by seaweed). All this cost less than $10, so I was quite happy.
Even better, I managed to find my way back! (took a little while and a little of retracing, but I did it! Thankfully I have some sense of direction). Once I got back and got some food in me, I chatted with my friends and found out my other friend from UBC in Canada (Sydney) was free to hang out. So we met at the Korea University subway stop (basically the only place I know how to get to right now), and he showed me a bit of the Korea University campus before we walked to Anam area behind it.
In this area there's a lot more restuarants, convience stores, etc. Saw some familiar things; Domino Pizza, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robins, 7-11, etc. Even saw Nutella in one of the convience marts!!!
Sydney and myself
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This is from a nearby river/bridge from the road I travel to/from Korea University. ended up in some random restuant, and we both had dolseotbibimbap (for those who don't know, it's basically rice with veggies, beef, an egg and hot sauce. Very tasty). It was quite good and cost around $6, so we were quite happy! (and I was very thankful for my limited Korean. I ordered in Korean and even asked for more water! Haha).
After that I got to see where he was living, which was basically an apartment he's sharing with a bunch of people. I'm actually quite jealous, because his roommates help him out with a lot of things, and he can practice Korean a lot easier! It's okay though, once things start I'm sure there will be very few reasons for me to stay in the hostel room.
That's basically a summary of my time since I arrived in Korea! Not too exciting so far, but I'll make another post on my first impressions on Korea and more general things I've thought or noticed since I arrived. ^u^
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