Friday, August 14, 2009

Today was my last class! Prior to class I had my wonderful cafeteria breakfast. The main course was mini hot dogs in a sweet sauce with onions. Kind of like the Flo's sauce, only not as good. Sausage is popular here, as is spam, cabbage, seaweed, tofu, bean paste (for desserts) various types of kimchi, rice, noodles and all kinds of fish and meat. For treats, frozen yogurt, ice cream, waffles, and donuts are becoming very popular. Often times they are topped with chocolate or fruit. Yummy.

Anyway, we had two guest speakers from the Yonsei Library at the end of class who talked about their experiences as librarians. It was very interesting and a good way to end class. In Korea, many librarians just have a BA (you can major in library science as an undergrad) and once you get a job out of college, you almost always work at that library your entire life. It's like that in many fields, though I suspect people in technology and biomedical fields have more opportunities to move around.

After class I took the subway to city hall station and got a waffle topped with chocolate from a vendor. The vendor made the waffles right there and then he spread a nutella-likes substance on it and some other syrup, folded it in half, and then warmed it in the waffle maker. They give you the folded waffle in a little wrapper so you can eat it easily. I ate mine on my walk to Seoul Plaza. Along the way I spotted Mr. Donut and stopped to try one. Mine looked like a regular plain donut on the outside, but the inside was bright red (strawberry flavored) and doughy. The outside was coated with dehydrated strawberry flakes. It was really good and I can't figure out how the inside was soft and red and the outside was golden colored and firmer.

Seoul Plaza has a ton of fountains and since it was nearly 90 degrees and sunny there were a ton of kids running through them. I felt liking getting wet too since it was so hot. There are also beautiful flower gardens at the plaza so I took a bunch of pictures of those. I then continued walking to one of the palaces and walked all over the palace grounds. I chose that palace because it is supposed to be the best architecturally, however there is almost no shade and it was so hot out. I stayed for an hour, but would have stayed longer if I wasn't so hot. There is a smaller palace near city hall that seems to have a lot of trees so I wished that I had stopped by that one instead.

After siteseeing at the palace I walked a block to Insadong shopping area. I had visited that area a week ago, but went back to buy a few more things. I also got kiwi smoothie that was really good. It was fresh kiwi and yogurt. They have good smoothies here - they're almost always made with fresh fruit instead of a mix. I headed back to Sichon (the area near school) after shopping and did a little more shopping there and then hung out at a coffee shop/cafe called A Twosome Place, which is a local chain. I had iced green tea and frozen yogurt with green tea syrup. They were both very refreshing and just what I needed after walking around all day. I read a book there for about an hour and then met my classmates across the street for our goodbye dinner.

We had the dinner at a restaurant near campus and ate roasted pork belly, the assorted side dishes, and two buckwheat noodle dishes. We also had the usual Cass (popular Korean beer) and soju (not sure if that's spelled right), a Korean liquor that tastes like vodka. I had drank Cass several times before, but it was my first time trying soju. It was quite strong, but people love it over here...it's really the only thing you see people drinking.

After dinner we went upstairs to the Oktoberfest restaurant/bar and everyone got a beer and talked for a few hours. We didn't order anymore food, but they brought out some bar food, which was breadsticks with a really good sweet, whipped butter, and then an assortment of dried octopus, dried squid, pistachios, and banana chips. I liked all the dried fish, but it was really chewy so my jaw hurt by the end of the night. It was sad saying goodbye to everyone because we really have all become very comfortable with each other. At least if I ever come back to Korea I'll have some people to visit!