A short little entry

Hey, everyone. Hope all of you are doing well :)

It's now APRIL and the weather is still pretty chilly. I think it's mostly because of the wind. If there were no wind, then it would be quite warm. The days are supposed to be getting warmer though, which is awesome. 

Not too much to update here. Still going to classes and such. I guess I'm just getting busier! Update soon?

The weather outside is frightful

The weather's been pretty cold lately. I had to bust out my brown Gap coat again. Today actually was quite warm and very nice. Below are just some of the spring flowers I've been noticing around campus. Enjoy and since the weather's warming up even more, hopefully the cherry blossoms will start blooming soon!!

 

Yellow flowers by my dorm. 

On the path to the main part of campus. Lots of green :)

Check out that skyyyyy. 

A pretty building with pretty flowers in front of it. 

I can't wait till the ivy greens start to pop out and make everything GREEN!

A lot of pink flowers. Yeah sorry I don't know any names. 

More pink flowers!

Fin.

Hannah sitting in her room.

Spring time!!!

Thursday was the last hangout with Jacob. He's leaving tomorrow (Tuesday, the 24th) to go back to America. Joanna and I went over to 일산, which is where he was staying. We took Bus #1000, which was a Red bus. Never ridden one of those before. Then the three of us ate, walked around and talked a lot. 

This is Jacob avoiding the camera, as usual. Below is Joanna and I being cute, as usual. 

GUESS WHAT!! SPRING IS HERE. The weather is pretty much in the 50s now and there are tons of new things growing. Spring obviously doesn't happen in Southern California, so to me this is a pretty big deal. 

The focus on this picture isn't great, but whatever. GREEN!!! 

Flowers across the street! Look for more springtime photos soon :)

Another Date with Pia

Sorry sorry that it's been a while. But don't worry, faithful readers, I'm still alive and armed with another entry. I'll slowly catch up, I promise. :)

So last Monday, the 16th of March, I met up with Pia again. We got yummy sushi @ a sushi place that had a conveyer belt. AND IT WAS SO GOOD.

Yes, that's SEARED SALMON. So good. 

And I have no idea what this was but it was heavenly as well. 

We take the best pictures, for sure :)

Then we went searching for waffles for dessert. We ended up at Beans&Berries. Above is my cute cafe latte where they made me a heart. Yummy. 

Our WAFFLE. The fruit here is amazing, by the way. The strawberries in Korea are definitely better than the strawberries in America. They're way juicier. 

Someone (my dad) asked me if I'm gaining weight because all I post are food pictures. Silly, daddy. I actually walk A LOT around here. Walking to the nearest subway station takes a good 20 minutes. And walking to my dorm from the closest bus stop takes 5 minutes up a really steep hill and walking from the subway station takes a good 10 minutes up another steep hill. So it's balancing out. I think. ... So far... Hahahah. 

More updates soon. :) It's turning into spring here so expect a lot of flower pictures soon!!!! So excited. K bye. 

Saturday Pt. 2

So then we took the subway to 시청, which is around the City Hall area of Downtown Seoul. There's a palace there. We didn't go inside, but we took pictures! Woo hoo!

And then we started walking around and saw this gorgeous mural of flowers. 

And then, being the awesomely fit people that we are, we decided to walk from 시청 to 명동, which is this shopping district in Seoul. And along the way, we saw this building that was being renovated, and the walls covering it from the main street had this crazy collage/mural. 

The mural actually depicts some of the famous sights in Seoul. In the picture above, you can see City Hall on the left and Namsan Tower in the center. The blue ribbon thing in the middle is the Han River that cuts through Seoul. 

Then we finally made it to 명동.  The picture below doesn't show it, but it was SO CROWDED because it was White Day. Oh, for those of you who don't know what White Day is, it's a holiday where the guy gets the girl chocolate (or other gifts).  In Korea, Valentine's Day girls get the guys gifts. And then a month later, on 4/14, it's Black Day, where single people eat black noodles because they're single. Hahahah. Koreans are crazy. 

Jacob, Joanna and I went to this really cute cafe called O' Sulloc. They're super famous for their green tea. Yum yum. I had floral green tea and it came in the cutest set. 

We also got green tea 빙수, which is basically shaved ice with green tea, ice cream, red beans, dduk, and this one also had macadamia nuts and chocolate. SO AMAZING. Drool. I want some. 

Eventually, Christine joined us (but Jacob left after a bit) and we walked around 명동 for HOURS. Eventually we settled in another cute cafe and had dinner/tea and talked. Woo hoo! Then we realized it was super late and we ran home. Hahaha. Good times :)

the end. will update more on other stuff soon :) Be sure to check out Facebook for all my other pictures!

Saturday Pt. 1

I'm about to go meet Pia right now, so I don't have a lot of time to update this. So I'm just going to give you PART 1 of Saturday's hangout with Jacob+Joanna+Christine.

First, Joanna and I met up with Jacob @ 신당 to get 떡볶기 (dduk-bok-gi). There's this little area that's famous for having a bunch of these places all lined up. If you don't know 떡볶기 is a spicy rice cake dish and you can put whatever you want in it — ramen noodles, meat, eggs, vegetables, etc. 

The above says Shindang-dong (name of the neighborhood) dduk-bok-gi town. YUM. So here's us getting ready to eat!!

And then the beautiful beautiful food. I'm so hungry right now. 

We actually didn't do a good job of finishing it. We should've mixed it earlier so the noodles wouldn't stick, but oh well. It was absolutely amazing. They had these super crunchy and delicious dumplings in there too. Yum yum. 

Part 2 coming soon!!

Another wonderful saturday :)

Saturdays are awesome. I spent it with Jacob, Christine and Joanna again. Here's a little teaser for now. I'm going to be super busy the next few days so expect a big post later! 

Update. Finally.

Hi, everyone! Sorry it's been a while, but oh well. I haven't been taking much pictures lately which is usually what I use to frame my entries. So Tuesday night I went out to our weekly Emmaus meeting and we went out to eat afterwards. 

Jacky loves her 우동!

My 돈까스. Delicious fried pork cutlet. So cheap here too. Yum. Hopefully I'll have more to update soon. Bye :)

My long awaited post about Saturday

So Saturday was an awesome day. I got to hang out with Christine, Jacob, and Joanna. Who would have thought that four USC KCMers would be able to hang out in Korea in March. But it happened and it was amazing. 

We met around 1:45 p.m. @ 인사동 or Insadong. It's this very traditional, artsy area in Seoul. Even the Starbucks is spelled with Korean letters, the only Starbucks in the country that has that requirement. 

We browed around a bit and walked around SsamJiGil, which is a five-story outdoor "mall" where they sell antiques, jewelry, Korean clothing, instruments, etc. It's very cool because it's built like a spiral, thus there are no stairs to climb to visit each floor. You just get there naturally (of course there are stairs too if you want to get to a specific floor, just on the sides).

This is me, nearing the roof. And below is the mall. 

Then we decided to visit 경복궁, or Gyeongbok Palace, which is the main palace of the Choson Dynasty, the last Dynasty of Korea. It was built in 1394, but I know it was destroyed at least twice since, so a lot of it has been rebuilt.  

That's us, pointing at the Blue House, the place the president of Korea lives, which isn't too far away. The house is not actually blue, but it has blue tiles on its roof. Below is the main gate of the palace. 

Above is the throne room of the King. Below is Joanna being silly. 

Above is the girls being pretty in front of this little pagoda. The palace grounds are HUGE. Ridiculously huge. But it was super nice being out of the hustle&bustle of Seoul and just walking around and talking. I think this place would be awesome in the spring when everything turns green. 

Afterwards we went back to 인사동 to visit a teahouse. I had persimmon leaf tea, which was sort of like green tea but a little earthier. Mmm. Then we went back to Cheonggyecheon and took more pictures. Yay. We cute :)

I'll post up more pictures that we took on Facebook, so be on the lookout for those. :) Hope you guys all have great weeks!!!

Hannah got a haircut!

So I still haven't posted about my fabulous Saturday with the USC KCMers, but that's OK. I'll do it tomorrow or something. But today I went to Onnuri Church, to the EM service @ 11:30 a.m. It was really good, and I hung out with Christine Yi. 

Afterwards, I went to Juno Hair Salon near Ewha Woman's University to get my haircut. And this is the result:

I had a lot of damaged hair from two perms, so they cut off a few inches. And I got some bangs. 

Yay for being fobby!!! ^^

Another week of school starts tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. I'll update again soon!

I had a really wonderful day today hanging out with people, but I have too many pictures and stories to tell, so I'll save it for later. Rather I'll talk about what I did on Friday, which was to hang out with Jacob!

Jacob and I both went to USC KCM, but we met two summers ago (2007) @ Korea University where we both studied at the summer school. It was really random how we met. I was at Orientation and I looked around and I saw a guy who looked really, really familiar. I thought I knew him from USC KCM, but another side of me thought that the chances of another person from USC KCM coming to Korea to the exact same summer program as me was really remote. But then I saw that he was wearing a KCM University Retreat shirt so I finally got the courage to talk to him and VOILA! It was Jacob. :) We eventually got lunch that day and we ate 닭갈비 (dahk-galbi), which is boneless chicken smothered in spicy sauce with  vegetables, noodles, rice cakes, etc. It was delicious. 

Jacob is visiting Korea again for most of the month and we met up on Friday. And to commemorate the first time we ever met, we got 닭갈비. So. Good. 

Yum Yum! They give you aprons so you won't get sauce all over your shirt. 

Fobby me. 

So today I had a grand adventure with Jacob, Christine Yi and Joanna Lee. But we did a lot of stuff and saw a lot of things, so I'll post that when I have more time and it's not late. Night!

Food + Music

Wednesday night I went out with some Emmaus people to get 삼겹살, AKA delicious Korean bacon which is better than American bacon because it's got way more fat and is more delicious. Circular logic? Maybe so, but still delicious. 

All-you-can-eat meat here is 7,900 W, which comes to be roughly $6. SIX DOLLARS. Yeah yeah the quality isn't as good, but it filled me up and mmm. So good. Next time I'll go for quality :)

Heaven... for meateaters. Nom nom. 

The girls in our cute aprons. This is so your clothes don't smell. They also gave us bags so that we could put our jackets/scarves/purses in them so they won't smell either. So considerate. :)

The dinnertime group. Hello everyone!

Afterwards we went 노래방 (noraebang, NRB) or karaoke for like 2, 3 hours. It was ridiculous the amount of songs we sang, but it was freaking fun. I think one of the guys took this of all the girls when we weren't paying attention. Candids are the best, yeah? NRBs here are plentiful and pretty cheap if you go with a lot of people. 

More updates coming soon :)