Day 2

So breakfast was very interesting today!  I met up with Amy and went down to the cafeteria to check out the menu for breakfast.  It did not go well.  I'll have to take pictures next time.  For the eastern choice, it was rice, some kind of meat, kimchi, and a soup.  For the western choice it was rice, some odd pasta, and mushroom soup.  Neither of these looked very good and sounded too heavy, so we went back over to Paris Baguette which is very conveniently close to the dorm.  I decided to get a pack of 2 blueberry muffins (which were delicious...they had huge whole blueberries on the bottom) and a honey based peach mango drink.  While we were eating, a guy from Sweden starting talking to us.  He apparently teaching technology at Sogang, but as soon as he got up to get more food, we left.  He was just very negative about people in general.  After that, we walked back to the dorm (it looks like it will rain today) and I came in to hang out until around 9:00AM.

A statue outside of my dorm.

My dorm--Gonzaga Hall.

For my husband!  This is the ROTC building!

My breakfast!

The TV inside our elevator that tells us what's going on in the dorm.

The view out my window--this is where the popeye's is!

Main plaza with popeyes.

View of the city from my dorm.

At around 9:00AM, I met up with Nicola and we went in search of Grand Mart, which is a huge 8 floor building that had clothes, food, convenience items, etc.  We went the wrong way, which was okay because we found a bubble tea stand.  It was amazing!  I had the best chocolate bubble tea!

The girl at the bubble tea stand also gave me a card so after I buy 10, I get one free.  I'm sure I'll be using that haha.  Then, we turned around and went the other way and we finally ran into it!

Grand Mart was very interesting, but I was able to purchase my pillow there as well as a loaf of bread for toast in the morning.  This bread is probably the best bread I've ever tasted!  It's so soft and delicious.  After Grand Mart, we hiked the huge mountain in front of the school again haha (and I forgot to take a picture!!) to get back to the dorm.  I'll hopefully add onto this blog update later after dinner.  We're going to brave the cafeteria...and go look for prepackaged ramen to eat for lunch the next several weeks lol.  For now, I'll leave you with more pictures.

This is the building with the McDonalds and Burger King!!  Haha.

Just a few shops on the corner--one just happens to be named Isaac (my teacher friends may find this pretty funny lol). 

The Coke machine I found near our dorm!

If you are curious about my money, this is what it looks like.

I was VERY worried about my pillow...BUT they assure me that it is "high safety to human body" hahahaha.

4:30PM -  So, Nicola and I just got back from the Hyundai Department store and the stores around that area.  We started off by first getting lost.  Haha.  We had no idea where we were going and saw some interesting little side food carts.  Once we figured out where we were, she was hungry so we stopped to eat at..............McDonalds!  ^_^  I wasn't too hungry, but I bought a small fry (which is only 1,000 Won by the way...yay!) and they were DELICIOUS!  Besides it being good, an older woman sat next to me and started talking to me in English!  She proceeded to invite us to a Korean Class that is held on Saturdays near Hongik University.  I think we will be going if we can figure out how to get there.  ^_^

On our walk from McDonalds to the department store, we found Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and KFC haha!  The department store was 8 floors and for the most part too expensive.  We did find a really cool underground area that hooked up with the subway.  In that area, there was a Lush store which I will be going back to if I run out of shampoo.  

Nothing much really happened, but the exciting part is next--eating in the cafeteria!

Haha...this is for my sister!  ^_^

Ugh...you can't tell, but Lee Min Ho (my favorite actor) is on this restaurant's front!

8:00PM - We just got back to the dorms and I feel the need to update on the food.  I went with Nicola, Amy, my roommate Katie, and her friend Carrie to go and eat in the cafeteria.  In the Gonzaga cafeteria, there are two meals a day--one for breakfast and one for dinner.  Now each meal also offers an eastern meal and a western meal (and so far my experience is that the western meal is still eastern haha).  Today for dinner they offered an eastern meal with some odd boiled chicken, bean sprout soup, kimchi, and these odd bean strips.  The western meal consisted of rice, kimchi, some kind of weird toast, and a bowl of noodles (with a small amount of kimchi on top).  I'll post a picture of it after my update!  I decided to go with the western meal since I could at least eat all of the rice.

Each meal is also buffet style, so if you don't want something, you just don't take it.  I only chose a heaping portion of rice and the noodles.  After I sat down and got my chopsticks situated (they were odd because they were very flat--I'm used to round or square chopsticks) I ate some rice, which was WAY better than rice in America.  I ended up eating the whole huge portion of it.  Then I decided to bear down and try the noodles.  Let's just say that the noodles themselves were really good, BUT the broth/kimchi sauce was REALLY awful.  After only eating about 1/2 of my noodles, I did try some of Amy's eastern meal and decided if they offer a choice with meat, I should go with that.  The chicken was AMAZING and tasted like pulled pork.  There were also tasty glass noodles with the meat.  I then tried the strips of bean, which were gross.  Finally, I tried the bean sprouts.  Surprisingly, I liked those, but after I ate the strip, I noticed my mouth was on fire.  The broth it was in was SO hot--like my lip was falling off haha!  So after several cups of water, we made our way out of the cafeteria.

We wandered around the main street a bit and we all bought drinks.  I chose a caramel macchiato which was DELICIOUS.  I'm going to leave you with pictures now because I need to go out and study and prepare for my placement test tomorrow!  ^_^

My meal.  The rice is in the white bowl and my noodles are in the black container.  There was also a boiled egg inside...but I hate boiled eggs lol.

I found this really neat today!  All of the staircases have little tiny ramps for bikes to go down!

And a picture for my sister!  This was on Amy's map book.  ^_^

Remember to click on old posts to make sure you haven't missed anything.  ^_^