Week 13: May 16-23
As the end of the semester is approaching, I decided that this week I would go out and try new activities on my own. On Wednesday, I decided to go watch a movie in Hongdae. I was more excited to try the different flavor popcorn they had though! I've heard from friends the caramel popcorn is the best and so I tried that and also their snack pack which included popcorn chicken and french fries. As for the movie, I thought it would be in Japanese with Korean subtitles but, it turned out it was in full Korean which I wasn't too mad about because I found it entertaining enough to improve my reading skills throughout the entire two hours with barely understanding anything they were saying. Overall, I still enjoyed watching the movie and it was a nice relaxing day to myself!
Over the weekend, I spent the day with my KU buddy group and we took about a two hour trip outside of Seoul to the Korean Folk Village. At the village, we split into about four small groups of six people and then walked around. They had a mini amusement park inside and we decided to go on a ride to start off the day. The village was bigger than I expected and there were a bunch of small activities to do. We ended up making small beaded bracelets for our souvenir. Other activities there included, candle making, making a Hanok keychain, paper flower, and more. We also watched a Korean play outdoors and a parade which I found entertaining. After we walked around and ate some snacks in between, we then headed back to Anam and ended it off with eating at this famous pork belly place! That day we probably walked over 12,000 steps! It was such a nice day and I was happy I got to go with my group.
Korean Folk Village in Suwon!
Week 14: May 24-31
This week was our University's festival week! In my previous blog post, I mentioned I had gone to a few other school's festivals to watch some of my favorite artists perform but, this week, I was glad I didn't have to travel away from home to go watch these performers. Each day during the week there were 1-3 artists who came. I only went to watch on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday since those were the artists I really wanted to go see. It was also pretty exhausting staying at school all day and standing there for hours waiting for them to come on stage which is why I didn't go everyday. These performances were held in our school's courtyard and it was also filled with food vendors which were nice. I tried sriracha french fries and spicy Korean fried chicken and both were delicious! The artists I went to watch on Tuesday and Thursday were BIBI, Bewhy, Aespa, and AKMU. On Thursday, were the most popular performances and our school was packed! Students got in queue and waited since 10 AM to get into the barricade which opened at 5 PM and non-students went just as early to line up and save a spot outside of barricade. I was shocked to see how prepared everyone came with umbrellas, mats, and lots of snacks. (Keep in mind the performances didn't start until 8:30 PM!) However, after my last class ended, I decided to go save a spot for my friend and I outside the barricade at about 1 PM. It started to get really crowded at about 4:30 PM and after people came to line up behind me, there is no way you could leave to use the bathroom. It was kind of worth it though because we had a really close spot to the front and could at least see them but the next day I was absolutely drained from standing and waiting for over 7+ hours.
On Friday, it was even more crowded because it was our big cheering festival. For this event you needed to be a KU student and a ticket to get in or there were very limited tickets available for non-KU students. I was looking forward to this day all week long because there were rumors about how good the artists line-up was going to be. No one knew who was coming to perform which made it even better and a day full of surprises! But first, we had our cheering segments and it was nothing like I was expecting. All the students are very enthusiastic about it and cheer incredibly loud. They also form circles of 10 people and jump and cheer all day. It was really hot that day too, but I ended up being there from 12-10 PM. I thought the cheering was fun though and meeting new people along the way made the experience more enjoyable. After the cheering segment, at around 5:00 PM is when the artists started to come out. Our line-up progressively got better and better throughout the night that time flew by so fast! The artists that came were PH-1, Holybang, Heize, Jay Park, Psy, G-Idle, and Red Velvet. Everyone was in complete shock and excitement that we were all jumping up and down for hours enjoying the artists throughout the night. Our school even had water cannons which made the experience better too. I was really fortunate I was close and in the front of the stage because I could see them perfectly! My favorite performer was Red Velvet and I was in shock that they even came honestly because of how popular they are and that no other university got to see them perform. This festival is probably going to be the highlight of my whole study abroad experience because of how fun it was and something that I'm never going to experience again back in Hawaii.
Over the weekend, I decided to relax a little bit because I was still recovering from the festival. I went to a few pop-up stores which included NCT Dream's Glitch Mode, Harry Style's House, and a few other free ones at the Hyundai Mall. I was really happy I got to finally go to the Glitch Mode pop-up during their final week because the past six weeks I wasn't able to get a reservation due to how popular it was. As for Harry's House, it was only there for three days so I decided to go on the first day which might have been a bad idea because I found myself waiting in lines for six hours. I didn't realize how popular he was in Korea but nonetheless, I was happy I got to even go especially since he doesn't have any pop-ups in Hawaii. The next day, I went to more free pop-ups with my friend at the mall and we got so much free stuff! I won a pair of socks from shake shack, free chicken nuggets, postcards, and stickers. At the others, they also gave away free donuts, stickers, and more and of course there were plenty of photo-ops we enjoyed!
It has been an extremely busy, yet fun and enjoyable past two weeks but now it's time to transition back into studying for finals soon!
KU's Ipselenti Festival & Many Pop-up's
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