#she taught me how to make chicken ramen with shrimp and even though she was making it for us to share she was very clear that-

[ratgingi]

shout out to my cool irl friend i made here at this place for being based as hell

[seoulfulcity]

July 7, 2018: A Humidity and Noraebang Cocktail

안녕하세요,

This week started off really wet with 100% rain and thunderstorm and a humidity that never went below 95%.

Sunday, July 1, 2018: I had to shower multiple times in the day because I could not even walk down Anam-dong without being drenched in both rain and sweat. Although, all my pores opened up and I had good skin for a few days.

The day was pretty slow - I met up with Anthony, Bonnie, Valentino, Sophie, Matt, Jason, Joyce, and Thai and was introduced to Bonnie's roommate Deedee and her friend who showed us that you eat raw spam in China. We ate at a barbeque place next to Chicken Bus called Seorae (서래 갈매기).

Later that night, Valentino, Matt and I met up at Valentino's room to watch Train to Busan (Busanhaeng/부산행) on Netflix; but since we're in South Korea, it did not give us the option of English subtitles so we watched Taegukgi: Brotherhood of War (Taegukgi Hwinallimyeo/태극기 휘날리며) on YouTube instead.

Monday, July 2, 2018: It was a regular night that started with Minki-hyung (민기형) taking me, Matt, Florence, Wendelyn, Sophie, Thai, and Joyce to have chicken galbi in a place called Chuncheon Dakgalbi (춘천닭갈비) where the owner called me "greedy" for setting up two side dishes (banchan/반찬) for each table and claimed that it was too excessive and we wouldn't be able to finish it. Culture shock, I guess? Since, Korean barbeque places in Los Angeles give us a set of banchan (반찬) per person, rather than per table, most of the time. Hyunjic-oppa (현진오빠) joined us towards the end of our dinner.

We went to a karaoke (noraebang/노래방) place nearby ending our night at one in the morning. There were nine of us for a total of ₩14,000, so we decided to have two people not pay and have the other seven of us pitch in ₩2,000 each. Hyunjic-oppa (현직오빠) had a bright idea and asked the worker at the noraebang (노래방) to draw two of our school IDs from a hat to decide. Minki-hyung (민기형) and I did not end up paying for noraebang (노래방) that night.

Tuesday, July 3, 2018: The sun started shining and puffy white clouds filled the sky. Everybody decided to go outside to enjoy Seoul without the rain for the first time. I walked the entire Anam-dong with no idea where to go or what to do just because I only wanted to be outside. The humidity was still unbearable though. It stayed within 90% throughout the day, so I gave in to the Asian mini fan culture and bought myself one from the nearby Daiso store.

Walking back from Daiso, I saw a really attractive worker in Baskin Robbins, so I bought a Puss in Boots milkshake and stayed in to study for my Korean class enjoying my view.

I was getting over budget very fast so I did nothing special that night besides another soju night with Valentino, Matt, and Cara in a place called 88. Valentino finally got around and visited Myeongdong to buy his sim card and his Korean starter pack that included a black face mask, a hat with the South Korean flag (Taegukgi/태국기), and a white pair of Adidas shoes.

Wednesday, July 4, 2018: My actual ISC buddy never had the time to meet with us until this week, so he scheduled a lunch with each of us individually to get to know each other. His name is Hyungki-hyung (형기형) and it was his first time being a buddy for the summer program. He had a part-time job for the summer, so it was difficult for him to find the time to meet with us as a group. He asked me what I have not tried in Seoul yet and suggested bossam (보쌈), spiced belly pork in a restaurant that specializes in it called Ssago (싸고). I enjoyed it so much I later dragged Matt and Valentino to the same location later in the week.

After my lunch with my actual buddy, I decided to skip my only summer class to tour around Seoul and visited SMTown Museum in COEX mall with Sophie. Luckily, my Korean professor did not give out any paperwork or homework that day so I didn't miss much. Sophie and I walked around COEX mall before going into SMTown Museum and just missed the 3 PM EXO show in the theater. The next show was going to be at 7:30 PM with SHINee, and I was not willing to wait four hours and pay an extra ₩10,000 to watch a live concert.

The SMTown Museum ticket was only ₩18,000 and it had areas for each SM artists. At the main lounge were bookshelves of all the albums and an entire timeline for each SM group, such as EXO, Super Junior, TVXQ!, NCT, SHINee, Red Velvet, Girls' Generation, and f(x). Then they have an entire section dedicated to each SM group which includes the outfits they wore in their music videos and concerts.

We returned back to Anam later in the afternoon and met up with our friend group to spend the night together again. Florence showed me a machine in Daiso that dispensed customized stickers with your name on it. So, I got one with my name (크리스) and Korea University (고여대학교) in Korean. I also introduced Florence and Valentino to my favorite restaurant in Anam-dong that specializes in chicken steaks (Dakgup Neunshin/닭굽는신), which is near the KU entrance by Anam Station (안암역) on the second floor of Namu Playstation Console Game Room. If you ever get to visit Anam-dong, make sure to visit this place. It's a regular and casual hangout for the KU students, if you want to be surrounded by local Koreans and not by foreigners and tourists.

In South Korea, you decide if the restaurant is good or not by their kimchi - so my kimchi tasting skills have been really improving.

The kimchi at the chicken steak restaurant was still my favorite one though. I ate at that place the second day I arrived in Seoul after orienting myself to the campus with Tommy, and met two girls from Venezuela and Romania who have studied in Korea University for four years, and told me the fun fact about kimchi being the deciding factor on how good the restaurants are. They both agreed that the kimchi at my favorite chicken steak restaurant was one of the better ones.

Since it was Fourth of July, the Americans in our group (Valentino, and Matt, and me) dragged the group to a coin noraebang (코인노래방) to sing American songs, especially "Party in the USA". It was ₩500 for two songs, so we did not pay by hour and worry about wasting time finding songs. We stayed in the coin noraebang (코인노래방) for five hours and only spent close to ₩9,000 the entire night.

We tried looking for fireworks or sparklers to light up by our dorm or even the Han River, but to no avail. Our friends back in America were posting fireworks snaps and celebrating Fourth of July with American and Mexican foods, and it made me feel a little homesick; I still did not want to go home though.

We ended the night at McDonald's, since what was more American than McDonald's anyway?

Thursday, July 5, 2018: Another regular day. My Korean professor still taught the class in full Korean, cafeteria food was still filling, and my wallet was still trying to take a break from all the spending.

After class, I went to the CU convenience store next to Frontier House to grab a quick snack and bumped into Simi! We haven't seen each other since orientation day, so it took us a while to catch up with each other. I invited her to the Seoul Summer School Festival in a club in Itaewon called B-One Lounge Club Friday night, which was a huge club party for all the international students from the big universities in Seoul - Yonsei, Hanyang, Ewha, Seoul National, Korea, Hankuk, Sungkyunkwan, Hogang, Chung-Ang, Ajou, and many more.

After the conversation, I met for dinner with Davy, Sophie, Thai, Matt, and Joyce for some budae-jjigae (부대찌개), which is a sausage stew with gochujang (고추장), red chili paste in a place called Biya, which was basically next to the Frontier House stairs. Thai and Sophie could not stand eating spicy food, so they both settled in for the unlimited tater tot side dish. Thai also drowned the jjigae (찌개) with water and ramen to hide the spicy taste. Thai and Davy were disappointed since they asked Minki-hyung (민기형) for a hotpot location, and Minki-hyung (민기형) suggested to eat at Biya (비야). I guess he had a different idea of what hotpot is because jjigae (찌개) did not end up satisfying Thai and Davy's hotpot cravings.

After the dinner, we went around Anam-dong and settled in a restaurant, which specializes in seafood, called Shingshing Oring Eobada (싱싱 오링어바다), just under O-Bar Whiskey and Beer, to drink some apple-flavored sojus since the previous bars we checked out did not offer it (apple-flavored soju is our favorite drink).

Matt bought a 1.5L Milkis bottle from a nearby GS25 store and brought it in the the restaurant to mix with the apple-flavored sojus, since he wanted us to taste this easy-to-make cocktail.

Matt ordered shrimp tempura in horrifyingly-embarrassing Korean that our cute Korean waiter was laughing the entire time Matt was talking. It's funnier since Matt is Korean but does not speak a word of the language, so everybody he interacts with here in Seoul expects him to be fluent with the language. They start laughing or let out a sigh of disappointment whenever he says a Korean word in a heavy American accent. He had an experience with an Uzbek worker in a 7/11 store nearby where he asked for a cigarette in terrible Korean and the Uzbek worker laughed at him and spoke to him in fluent English to stop Matt from further embarrassing himself.

After mixing our first round of apple-flavored soju and Milkis, the cute waiter came over with his translator app and told Matt to not bring in outside drinks to the restaurant "from now on" so he mixed the Milkis with our sojus under the table throughout the rest of the night.

We went to the same coin noraebang (코인노래방) right after.

Friday, June 6, 2018: I was running on a few hours of sleep since we got home very late from the noraebang (노래방) and I had to wake up at 7:30 AM for the K-Pop flash mob hosted by the school. After getting home, Sophie asked me to help a drunk student she ran into back to his room in Frontier House since only guys can enter the building. The guy was very stubborn and I was very exhausted and needed to rest. I dropped him off after a good hour of him drunkenly eating his ramen and told his roommate, who was surprisingly still awake at that time, to knock on my room if he needed any help.

We learned the choreography to Red Velvet's "Red Flavor" in the Tiger Dome (Hwajung Cheyukgwan/화정체육관) from 9:30 to noon to perform the flashmob three times on camera at the main plaza in Korea University. The school gave away BT21 goods, signed CDs from Blackpink, SHINee, BTOB, and ONF, and four tickets to see KBS “Music Bank” live that afternoon to those who participated in the flash mob.

After the flash mob, I napped until it was time for us to go to Seoul Summer School Festival. I met with Matt and Valentino for a quick dinner at the bossam (보쌈) place I had lunch in with Hyungki-hyung (형기형) earlier in the week.

Valentino had both his phone and wallet stolen from the night before when he went out with his fraternity friends in Made bar in Itaewon. He fell asleep and woke up early in the morning with only his phone case left. So, both Matt and I have been helping him out paying for things and offering our phones so he kept up with our group Kakao Talk conversations, etc.

We met with Minki-hyung (민기형), Thai, and Sophie at Anam Station (안암역) after the dinner and headed to Itaewon just in time for the event to start at 11 PM. Bonnie, Joyce, Florence, Wendelyn, Lina, Simi and her roommate Edan, Salli, and Carolina were going to catch up with us later in the night. Hyunjic-oppa (현직오빠) and Hyungki-hyung (형기형) couldn't join us because they needed to study and do homework.

Valentino was initially denied entrance to the club because he was wearing his Adidas jogging pants, so he had to take the subway back with Sophie to change to a more acceptable pants. We left the club to drink some soju by the GS25 store next to the bar and met up with Bonnie, Wendelyn, Florence, and Joyce who were in line. Just behind them were Lina, Bruno, and Davonte, who I was meeting for the first time.

Lina actually messaged the group chat saying she wanted to get to know and hang out with us more, so that was why I was familiar with her - although, we didn’t see each other for the rest of the night after that. Not long after that at midnight, Simi and Edan came, while Salli and Carolina arrived around 2 AM.

Every time I went outside, I always took the chance to get some chicken skewer (dakkochi/닭꼬치) from the ahjumma just next to the entrance of the club - so much that she knew which sauce I wanted spread on my skewer. Hint: it’s teriyaki sauce.

I introduced the non-Americans to the cocktail called Adios Motherfucker (AMF), which is known in the US to black people out. Minki-hyung (민기형) finished the drink in one sip and Florence had to take him home at midnight - an hour after entering the club.

We left B-One a little past 5:30 AM in broad daylight. We had more skewered teriyaki chicken outside the club and headed back to our dorms.

It's currently 6:32 PM and I woke up just four hours ago, basically sleeping through breakfast and lunch; so I'm writing this blog waiting for the cafeteria to open for my first meal of the day at 7:30 PM. Luckily, I did not wake up with a headache, although my legs and feet are currently sore from seven hours of standing up and dancing.

Recently, I've been wanting to take a break from Korean foods, especially chicken and every form of soup. Every single restaurant around here serve mainly those two and I just wanted to eat something different - perhaps Japanese or Mexican food? I aimlessly walked around Anam-dong to look for a non-Korean restaurant to eat at and came across a tonkatsu place where they served a Japanese-Hawaiian fusion plate in Eunhwasu Sikdang (은화수 식당). After the filling meal, I bought a pack of banana milk and sweet bread from a convenience store and sat down to eat at the Central Plaza overlooking the Main Hall of Korea University that was beautifully lit up at night.

Michael (Inseok/인석) messaged me to meet Valentino at the Frontier House stairs since Valentino lost his phone and had no way to contact any of us since Kakao Talk wanted verification from his phone number attached to his account. Jordan and Matt joined us a while after and had banana milk and bread together.

It is Nay's birthday and they're all planning on going out to a bar in Hongdae tonight. Jordan was headed to Itaewon in a bit to visit some gay clubs also.

I think I might sit these down to take some time to recuperate. The night life here in Seoul doesn't stop, apparently. Until then!

고마워요, Chris 「크리스」

Update: I just met up with Thai, Davy, Hyunjic-oppa (현직오빠), Hyungki-hyung (형기형), Wendelyn, Matt, Valentino, and Florence for chicken and soju in Chicken Bus (치킨버스) and to watch the World Cup match between Sweden and England. I left earlier in the night to sleep, while Thai, Davy, Hyunjic-oppa (현직오빠), and Hyungki-hyung (형기형) stayed in the place to finish the game. Wendelyn, Matt, Valentino, and Florence headed to Hongdae for to continue drinking for Nay's birthday.