On My Way To Korea

After making a quick and dirty video of my apartment (see last post) I decided to go to SNU to see the campus.  I decided to go the long route so I walked east to a big road after which I followed it up to the main road which leads to the SNU gate.  I also wanted to see how long it would take to get to SNU, which didn’t turn out to be that long.  I stopped at 김밥마을 to have lunch.  김밥 was only 1,500원 and came with 김치 and a miso-like soup. It was a pretty darn good meal for ~$1.50.

On my way to SNU I remembered that I needed to get some adapters for my US electronics.  I stopped by one little but they didn’t have them.  One of the workers told me to go over to 리빙& 홈 to get the plugs.  I went there and low and behold they had the little buggers for only 300원 each, not too shabby.

It took me about 30 minutes to walk from my place to campus, which isn’t too bad.  I tried going to the 농협은행 but they were closed (I knew they would be, but I wanted to find it anyway).  I also got a map of the SNU campus which should prove useful in the future.  There seems like there’s some nice little cafes on campus, so you should be able to find something to suit your fancy wherever you are.

One of the interesting places I went to was the library.  Before walking in, you can swipe your SNU card and reserve a place to study.  I’m sure that’s a useful feature, the library seems like it’s used a LOT.  Well, I walked in the first floor and convinced the worker to let me in (you have to swipe your SNU card, which I didn’t have).  I was expecting to see books, but I walked around all three floors and all that was there were places to study and lockers.  I asked a student passing by where I could find the books and he explained I had to exit the third floor and go up to the fourth floor which I did.

After looking around the library I also walked around the Student Center.  There’s a bunch of stores and floors where school club rooms are located.  That’s pretty cool how each club gets it’s own room.  Anyways, there’s a bookstore, stationary store, SNU souvenir shop, etc.  Most of the regular school places where closed since it’s a Saturday.

After going further down south to see the engineering building I’ll be having most of my classes in, I noticed a bunch of people walking by with hiking poles and shoes.  Curious to see where they came from I started to walk to the most southern part of campus.  I found out that there was a trail which went back to 불성사 (a Buddhist temple) and a marvelous view.  I asked a passerby how to use the machine to get coffee since I never used a coffee-dispensing machine before (and felt so stupid afterwards.  Yes, all vending machines are the same.  Put in the money, choose product, enjoy).  He was a really nice guy and invited me to join him and his friend to hike to the other side of the mountain.  I accepted and we were on our way.  We stopped a little bit further to eat some 떡 (rice cake) and home-made 호박죽 (pumpkin porridge, which was really good).  While we were sitting there I decided to take this set of pics and merge them into a panorama.

The city you see down there is located in 동안구.  We arrived at the bottom at 5 PM, them having left at 10AM and me having left at 12PM.  I walked all the way from my apartment to SNU and up and down the mountain to 동안구 which is pretty stinking far.  At the bottom we stopped by a little restaurant and ordered some food (해물파전 and 김치찌개, both excellent):

That was the first time I ever tried 막걸리 (Korean rice wine) and I’ve got to say, it might be my favorite alcohol beverage so far.  I generally hate most drinks, but there’s something about this one that just let me drink at least a whole bottle.  I was SO lucky to run into these people, they totally made my day memorable and fun.  I was definitely tipsy afterwards, but we all managed to get home safe.  We took line 4 and I transferred to line 2 and got off at 서울대학교입구역.  I could have taken a bus back to 신림9동, but I decided it would be cool to just walk and look at all the stores and things on the way.  Plus I was curious how long it would take to travel between my house and the station.  Walking at a slow pace it took about an hour.

Well, that was my awesome day!