Chuseok Day in Hondae with my KBF

My (Korean Best Friend) KBF and me chilling! Thank you for all the nice spots you make me discover and the yummy food we eat al the time!!!

... and the crazy amount of good pictures we get to take hahaha :)

On Chuseok Day she and I both didn't have plans so we went to Hongdae to the Trick-Eye Museum.

Loving to Feel Short

Coffee Shops are not just places for Couples and the Lonely...

... they are places for the unexpected.

Who said that hanging out in coffee shops keeps lonely people lonely?

...hm.


....


Probably me.


Well I was wrong and now I am pretty smug about it.

I met this amazing girl at a coffee shop I like to go to during weekdays. It was a day where I had been expecting to get lots of work done cuz my foot didn't allow me to go to the pool outing with my kindies. I had planned on using the time to prepare my final exams, but in the end I came to school and bumped my nose on a locked door: no one had told me that there would be no one until 2h30pm that day. Had I known I'd have planned something else to do. But there I was, already around the school, slightly annoyed and with lots of time on my hands.

I went to buy lettersets and sat at a coffee shop I like around my school. I will need to blog about that place, it's really nice and I always end up there at least once a week...

I started doing my things and the girls working there, a cute girl with a short brown hairdo, always smiling, that looked 22 years old. We exchanged a few sentences and I thought that would just be the usual as when I get to coffee shops in general.

- Long time no see! I was just wondering where you had been!

- Ah, yes, I was in a car accident so I couldn't come around...

- Oh my, are you okay now? 

- Yes, I was very lucky!

- That's a relief!

- It's really fascinating how you can speak Korean so well!

- Thank you, I worked really hard for it.

...

That is usually it. Korean curiosity usually ends with the usual gossip they will be able to tell their later customers: you know, we have this beautiful *cough* foreigner who comes to this coffee shop and she speaks Korean! Maybe next time you come you will see her.

So after the usual exchange I went back to my letter writing. 

But she didn't stop.

We ended up talking about really random things. No one else was in the coffee shop, and the boss had not yet come so she didn't mind talking as she was prepping the coffee shop. I only got two short letters done but it didn't matter: I had a new friend. On an unexpected long weekday morning. 

On the following weekend, we went to  eat at my Pancake place in Mokdong...

 I say my pancake place because apparently, even for people who have always lived in Mokdong, no one seems to know about the place I discovered while looking for a coffee shop to chill at.

... hang out in Hongdae walked around and shopped a bit, but I tried more random stuff than I ended  up buying. 

Yes.

The loser cap really completes my style. I have always known I have talent for fashion...

It is that day that I finally got to understand why Korean love to drink so much that alcoholism is only seen as a bad drinking habit. Apparently "THE LIVER IS EVIL IT MUST BE PUNISHED". So that is their very efficient way to get at it. 

Never knew Korean were so thorough in applying rules...

Me totally stealing my unni's ice cream cone for the picture. I don't like the messiness of ice cream cones, while they are much prettier to use in pictures, so I had opted for the other style (you can see my ice cream on the side). Those were ... man what's the word. It's not ice cream. It's.... damn it. I forgot the word.

OH gelato! That's it.

They were amazing. I don't like ice cream because it just tastes like an overdose of cold milk that is overly sweet. Gelato feel more like a bite of cold amazingness of the actual fruit/flavor you chose. If you get a strawberry gelato, it feels like there is only that one ingredient in it, no other taste, no overwhelming sweetness. Doesn't taste artificial. 

Now I have no clue whether gelato actually have artificial flavour or not. I'm just talking about taste here.

Regardless, we had amazing stuff at the store. I had grapefruit and yogurt gelato, she had blueberry and milk tea. I wouldn't be able to tell which combination was best, both were amazing. I just have a soft spot for grapefruit.

Just beside the Pancake place there is the impressive SBS building and a nice park, both of which I walk around during my lunch hour at work every week, or on my way to Mokdong stadium. I never dared going inside, thinking that outsiders were not allowed, but I was wrong. The first floor has a small coffee shop and anyone can go in when they want. 

The building has an impressive structure in an out. Majestic bit bright empty spaces with lots of light (and probably lots of work to keep clean...). God it would be amazing to work there.

Ending this entry with a picture of the HI I'M IN YOUR FACE building of the Hello Kitty coffee in Hongdae.

Thanks Nature Coffee - Hongdae

I went to Hongdae two weeks ago on a rainy Sunday to look for coffee shops. I asked people where I should go and as I got no answer I just got off at Hongdae station and started walking around.  That's when my friend finally answered that I should go to sangsoo station.

Darn.

It was not far on foot even without getting back in the subway but the weather was threatening to pour over my head so I just decided to stay around. I remembered that last time I went to Hongdae with Heather there were lambs walking around a certain area where they seemed to have a sheep coffee shop so I set my mind on finding it.

It was one of those weekends I felt that weird need to be with someone but not actively be with someone. You know,  when you are too lazy to make conversation but you don't want to be alone. 

That feeling can be taken care of two ways:

1) Boyfriend

Obviously.  When you are with a boyfriend and things are going well, taking each your to-to stuff out in a park or a coffee shop, you just enjoy being with each other, don't feel alone and don't need to talk. The supreme package.

That was what I needed that day. But since there's no boyfriend in the cast of my lazy days, there was the second option.

2) Best friend

I think everyone has that one friend. Or maybe they are lucky and they have two or three. Thay friend that you love dearly, that would totally come and hang out with you and just do nothing.  Sometime laugh for no reason. Making you feel like you at least have one person who understands you. That good friend.  Like family. Like a boyfriend. But none of those. Much better than those on many accounts. No pressure and peace of mind.

But I don't have those friends in Korea right now. So I just took a long afternoon at the lamb coffee shop and wrote a few blogs.

The coffee shop is in the basement but has a big open space with roof thingy over the staircase going out. There are two big parts to the coffee shop, the inside part that has lots of wooden stuff: tables bottom of walls, benches... and cute nature stuff with pictures of their lambs all over the place.

The second part is still on the same floor but outside, smelling slightly of farm, where their two lambs chill in their fenced house, in a fenced terrace.  I think they let the lambs loose in the bigger fenced area sometimes but that day was notbone of them.

They have decent tasting coffee, not the best, but great waffles. I was alone to eat the monster so I felt like I was about to explode, but it was great.

From The Airport - Hongdae

Last weekend was really busy for me. I cleaned up my new apartment all afternoon up to the very last minute I could, then left for Hongdae. A senior (weird how we don't really use that naming in English, but as Korea has rubbed on me, and he is older than me, I feel weird saying "friend") from McGill I met through Minho (met in China: isn't it amazing to have Korean acquaintances that you have met in China? I love how my stories are always more complicated than they need to be...) was having a concert in Hongdae at 8PM. I have mentioned him before, when I wrote about in a previous blog entry, and said I did narration on one of his songs, BLACK SKIES.

So I obviously went to see his show. I don't know what I was expecting, but I couldn't have been happier. I am a big pop music fan, for "music" lovers, what I like usually is crap, but while I love pop, I like all kinds of music as long as it's not too death-metal-sounding (mind you, I admire the artist's research when it comes to death metal's instrumental, I just don't like the yelling part) French rap or western (unless I am in a western bar with people who know those in-line dances and do them together, in this one particular scenario I love western music).

Anyways, straying again...

The show was just the prefect length for a standing concert and the room, while being full, was not packed to the extent of having to look for place to put your feet at. I was really happy with everything in general. They had lockers for jackets (I love Korea) and the room was pretty clean, giving an almost high classy feeling. If you want to get there, here are the direction Min sent me to get there, and even me, who gets lost in a phone box, got there with no problem. I love GPS in phones, makes it so easy to get around. I don't remember the name of the concert avenue though ha ha.. Might edit this entry later and add...

**.... omg U_U I had to stop writing. "Let it Go" started playing in the coffe shop I'm stationed at. This song has taken over Korea... how many months have passed since the movie is out? **

...the name of the place.

I was like SUPER underdressed. I had helped out at a school's market day in the morning and dressed up warmly to stand the cold outside for the few hours I'd have to stand outside, then got to cleaning my apartment and went there directly, so I was wearing short boots black pants and a long red woollen sweater with my hair down. I was thinking, hm, it's hongdae, people are more "grungy" than the pretty dressed up style people wear in say, Gangnam. Well appears Hongdae has more than one type of people hanging out there and I still have a lot to learn. 

People at the concert avenue were all dressed-up, heels, dresses and clean-cut jackets, suits, formal/semi-formal ... and there was me. Even Min, who came with his date, was all dressed-up. Man I felt soooo sexy

The only good point was that, for once, I was not overly tall, as all the people sort of had heels. I actually felt short over my 173cm, trying to see the front stage, with tall koreans all around. It felt quite disorientated for a while. 

Then music took over everything else. I was not expecting much "liveliness" from a band with only two people doing everything on their own, but they were great. There was something on stage, that I have rarely seen. It was everything but boring and I suggest anyone who gets a chance, to go see them play. 

If it can be proof enough, I did not take any pictures or film anything as I was watching, because I didn't want to miss the show (now, I regret not having done so, because I only have words to describe the concert, and well. You need to believe me don't you?

After the show I went out with Min and a couple of his friends for a drink and as most of the places we wanted to go to were full so we ended up going to this Japanese place that had amazing food. We also drank Sake-lemon-soda, A mix I had never had before and really liked. To be honest, I don't like the flowery taste of sake, so I was dreading it, but mixed like this it tastes amazing!

Sake lemon soda heaven mix

We had a lot of different yummy foods, but my personal favourite was the tuna tataki.