SEPTEMBER 23-29
DAY 36: study days
| After a typical and eventful weekend, my tuesdays are typically devoted to catching up on school-work. This semester I am taking two graduate level courses at SNU and so the work-load is more intense than the other classes I'm taking. So far however, the most demanding course that I'm enrolled in is my Korean Language course. Every week we have to drill vocabulary and reading words for weekly quizzes :( Before coming to Korea I thought that my limited knowledge of Korean words (from Korean Dramas) really would make Korean super easy for me to learn, turns out though the language is significantly easier than Chinese, there are so many words that I still need to know and practice! |
DAY 37: Cafeteria food
Each week I post a few pictures from our cafeteria but I never really explained how it works. Unlike the 'cafeterias' at McGill, SNU is more highschool when it comes to food. You pay for little coloured tablets then line-up in the corresponding area. BEFORE you pay you have to already have chosen which meal you want. There are typically cases with samples or pictures of what the cafeteria is serving and almost every day there is something different in the cafeterias! Also, there are SO MANY cafeterias (almost one in every second building) on campus. With so many buildings and so many cafeterias around on weekdays I hardly spend over $5 the whole day! | |
DAY 38: office pub
| On Thursdays, our exchange student program organizes weekly nights at local bars around or on campus. This week we went to a bar near the SNU subway station and they held a darts competition. One of my group's members ended up winning first prize and we got some free Chicken and Coke! It seems like in Korea every chance they get the people here eat Chicken and Beer or just Fried Chicken in general :P After the bar we headed to a nearby Lamb skewers place that is actually run by a Chinese family so one of my friends used his Mando skills to score us some free food and drinks! |
DAY 39: VEGGIE DEFFICIENCY
These past few weeks it seems like everyone is starting to feel the full extent of eating out almost every day in Korea. It turns out that even though they eat more veggies in the side dishes than Japanese or Chinese diets, there still aren't enough veggies to be healthy enough to prevent getting sick (as I have been for the past couple of weeks).
So I finally caved and headed to the Naksongdae market and stocked up on veggies and fruits and made a promise to myself that all homemade foods would be meat free to balance out the immense amounts of sodium and protein that I eat in almost every other meal in Seoul!
Time for Detoxing!
So I finally caved and headed to the Naksongdae market and stocked up on veggies and fruits and made a promise to myself that all homemade foods would be meat free to balance out the immense amounts of sodium and protein that I eat in almost every other meal in Seoul!
Time for Detoxing!
DAY 40: JEONJU
| The food capital of Korea is not Seoul but actually Jeonju! And for the weekend my group organized a trip to the home-town of our leader and had some of the most amazing food here in Korea. Jeonju is the birthplace of popular Korean foods like Bibimbap and Chocopie. While here I had the opportunity to have one of the most amazing bulgogi barbecues that I have had EVER! The barbecue was so good that it had a little bit of a smoky flavour that really set it apart from any other type of barbecue that I've had here in Korea or even back home! The whole day was really filled with some amazing food and we ended up eating late into the night! |
DAY 41: JEONJU BAKERY TOURS
Since our time in Jeonju was more devoted to food we spent the majority of our day at two specific bakeries where we bought some really good breads. Something I noticed though was that the europeans that were with us always seemed to have this idea in their head that Korean bakeries don't make 'real bread'. Later on in the day we headed to Gusan where we got to see some beautiful murals that lined this quaint small town. Though really small, the town was slightly on a hill so it had a really good view. After visiting a museum of the region we headed home and prepped for the long bus ride home. | |
DAY 42: SNU FESTIVAL
| Each university in Korea around this time hosts a large festival which is equivalent to a type of 'Homecoming' for the universities and their students. McGill doesn't really have any particular events like this so this was a really nice chance for me to check out some of the school's clubs and the try out some of the food from the vendors that sold cheap Korean eats like tteokbokki and Makeoli :D Even though it was a monday we ended up drinking pretty late into the night on the campus field (which is something we can't really do back home in Canada!). Overall I feel like the drinking culture has been so much more relaxed here and as a result it is sooo much more fun for us foreigners! |