White Day in Korea: Cafe Slobbie + Snow Queen, Hongdae, Seoul, 14 March 2013

I've always heard about White Day that's celebrated in Japan and Korea. Basically, Valentine's Day (14 Feb) is where the girls give boys sweet stuff and on White Day, the boys give girls sweet stuff in return. Javin and I managed to catch White Day in Seoul in our first few weeks there and it really is quite a big deal here. You see couples EVERYWHERE and girls are all holding flowers/candy/chocolate/others (please state). Koreans are really into these couple things and the idea of love. Like the really romantic and sweet fairytale type of love. You can tell from their dramas.

We went to Hongdae and had dinner at Slobbie, a restaurant that promotes healthy local slow food. Please google "slow food" because I'm not an expert on it. They serve vegan/vegetarian options in meat-is-everywhere Seoul, so it was great for us. The deco is nice and the food was not bad. Not spectacular or outstanding, but simple and homely, if you get what I mean.

After dinner we took a walk around Hongdae. Hongdae slowly became my favourite place to hang out with Javin after school or on weekends during our short stint in Seoul. In the pictures you'll see my favourite street snack (don't know how many times I've said this already) literally called 'egg bread', overpriced egg tarts (kaya toast is seriously overpriced here too), the famous playground from the drama 'Mary Stayed Out All Night' which was a bad drama that I never finished after a few episodes and this classy restaurant/bar that had pretty lights on bald trees (it was winter).

Dessert at Snow Queen to end the day.

Exchange Student Life in Seoul: Korea University Welcoming Party, March 2013

I've just started my internship at an advertising and marketing firm and it has been lovely so far. I have no time to update this space during the weekdays because I'm working and after work I meet my friends or spend time with my family or Javin (who is so not used to not having me text him random things during the day while he is working). I use the weekends to relax and I decided to take some time every week to fill up this little place of mine. On a day-to-day basis I post short spouts of my thoughts on Dayre, but I still think this space is better for collecting my own reflections and photos.

I am so terrible at uploading things onto this space, but I insist on posting everything up even though photos and experiences are backdated. At least I have locked in some details (those that still remain that is) of one of the best periods of my life; it is pretty therapeutic to revisit these memories as I write and wish that I could do it all over again / made better use of my time / visit more places and try more things - but that is the beauty of missing a place or someone; the longing to experience again. I hope such a feeling means that at that point in time, one was truly immersed in the moment and that's what life should be about, isn't it?

I kind of regret not posting in "real-time" during my exchange, but I would choose getting caught up in the moments there over trying to capture them all the time. I guess this is related to the whole phenomenon of not being able to truly immerse in life's moments as a result of trying to capture these very moments in pictures or on our social media platforms.

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Today I want to write about the start of one of the best things that happened to me as an exchange student in Seoul, and that is none other than my school's exchange students community. KUBA, short for Korea University Buddy Assistants, was one of the main reasons that made my experience so enjoyable. It's basically a group of local Korean students who are in charge of taking care of the exchange students (like me). This group of students are further split into smaller groups and each group is in charge of 70 to 80 exchange students. It's kind of like during orientation in Singapore. They organise things like orientation, sometimes outings if your group is enthusiatic like mine (but I didn't attend all the time because sometimes I had my own plans with Javin) and the annual KU Welcoming Party, which I am going to talk about. I think I'll summarise my whole experience with KUBA in a separate post.

So last year, KUBA organised a welcoming party for the exchange students to mingle and have a taste of KU's culture. I was really impressed by how much effort they put into the event. The venue was actually the school cafeteria and it was in the day, but they covered the entire place's walls with some black material and revamped it into a club/bar, which was really cool. I think the universities in Seoul are really so full of life compared to the typical university life here in Singapore.

It was a black-and-white themed party (obviously the Koreans were much faster at going into the monochrome trend). I went with my heeled lace-up boots and the balls of my feet hurt after the entire event. I can never find heels that stay comfy after hours. I wore grey coloured contacts to stay in the theme (black + white = grey hahaha) for the first and unfortunately last time because they look weird on me. I think coloured contacts are pretty but so far them and I just don't go...

There were games, performances, drinks, food and good music. Oh and one funny thing that I suddenly recall. Javin and I had a minor argument because some Korean guy put his arm around my shoulders, started telling me that he likes me (I suspect alcohol + lack of vocabulary) and asked for my Kakao (it's the Koreans' Whatsapp) ID - most of which I just responded by smiling. Not that I was happy about it, but I was still quite new to Korea, so I wasn't sure if he was just being friendly and if the way he acted was showing friendliness towards a foreigner/exchange student.

Other than that, Javin really enjoyed himself. He is a secret K-pop fanatic. I think this was the point when he started wishing that he was in my school too haha