Sweet Life

Koreans love cake. You can buy cute, funny and delicious cakes in most bakeries. There are so many different kinds, it's hard to decide which one to get. I'm not really the kind of cream cake person but that's the one which is most common here. And I have to admit that they look fantastic!

Look at this cute cake sitting on my Korean textbook

Huge white chocolate cake

For my birthday I even got three cakes in one day :)

In the evening I got the best birthday cake ever! It had my name on it and lots of marshmallows and other sweet things. And the taste was incredible too.

Best Birthday Cake Ever!

Apart from cakes, waffles are very popular here. I'm also not a waffle-person but even I can't resist sometimes:

I don't really like most of the Korean traditional sweet things because they are way too sweet for me, but these rainbow-colored ricecakes are just perfect for me.

Rainbow Ricecakes

My favorite pastime: taking pictures of food...and eating it afterwards :)

Banpo Rainbow Bridge

Before Elena and Sarah left to go back to Switzerland and Germany respectively, we went to Banpo, the Rainbow Bridge. Every evening there is a big fountain and light show which is supposed to be really nice (hence the name: Rainbow Bridge).
It had been raining a lot lately because of the rainy season (think twice before you come to Korea in July), but we didn't really think that would be a problem.
The day we went was actually quite nice, no rain and pleasant temperature. We arrived at the park close to the Han river where the show is supposed to happen and we noticed that everything was really really muddy. So, it turns out the whole area was flooded. The water had already retreated a lot (hence all the mud) but it was still too high for the rainbow show which had to be cancelled that day. Actually, the bridge was even closed for traffic by the police because it was too dangerous. We still sat down and enjoyed the sunset and some sushi and beer.

Sunset

You can see on the pictures how high the water still was. Usually you can easily walk to the construction on the right side of the first picture and to the screen that you can see on the second picture.

Sushi and Korean Light Beer (tastes even more like water ;)

Yummy Muffin

The food and beer were great, we were a bit disappointed because we didn't get to see the show and we got really muddy feet.

(Disclaimer: these are not my feet)

In the Office - Continued

So, what am I doing these days? Staying in the office! It is no secret that my roommate and me are not the best friends, so I usually stay a lot at my friend's office (usually I go there first thing in the morning and leave late at night).
We work so hard, we often also eat our lunch there:

Typical Korean Office Lunch

 We even exercise in the office...because you never know when some work might pop up ;)

Table Tennis Court

I love it here :)

Joking around (and working a little bit)

Me and Haha in and around the office

Bukchon Hanok Village

Yesterday was one of the few sunny days during rainy season, so Minji and me went to Bukchon Hanok Village for some sightseeing. I was really happy to see Minji, my mentor during the semester, again.
Bukchon Hanok Village is an area of Seoul close to Gyeongbokgung Palace where many Korean traditional houses have been preserved. The streets are smaller and the atmosphere is quite different from the rest of busy Seoul.

One of the small streets

I wouldn't mind living here

People actually live in those old houses and I wish I could take a look inside. I guess they might be pretty modern from the inside and just keep the ancient appearance on the outside.

Me and Minji

There is a recommended walking course through the area which you can finish in 1-2 hours, depending on how fast you walk and whether you stop by in some of the many small museums. There are lot of very specialized museums around and we went to two of them.
The first one was the Seoul Museum of Chicken Art. I just wanted to go there because it sounded so funny but it turned out to be really interesting. The museum was really small but I still enjoyed the time there (the fact that it was air conditioned contributed as well). A man, who I guess might be the owner, was really kind and explained everything to me in English. The chickens exhibited on the second floor are mainly Kokdudaks, wooden carved and painted chickens which used to be placed on coffin carriages. They were put there to scare away ghosts. I also learned that the five virtues of the chicken are: intelligence, strength, courage, heartedness and trust.
On the first floor are many figures, statues and paintings of chicken from all over the world:

Inside the chicken art museum

The second museum we went to was the ToyKino museum, displaying, who might have guessed, movie-themed toys. This museum was actually a little bit disappointing. It is really too small for the entrance fee (4000 won), there is no additional material available at all and the display of the toys is rather loveless.

Entrance of the Toykino Museum

Since it was so hot (I of course even got sunburned), we had a refreshing stopover in one of the small teahouses along the road.

I had a cold five-tastes-tea which is supposed to taste like all five different tastes at once. I've had it before and it was really good. This one was really sour, which apparently is more authentic but also a lot more difficult to drink (believe me, Minji had a good laugh after every sip I had because I couldn't properly control my facial muscles anymore).

Sauer macht lustig :)

I think that the smaller the streets and the steeper the stairs, the more beautiful the atmosphere.

Beautiful small street

Steep stairs - traditional

Steep stairs - modern with Cheshire Cat

We had a great time in the afternoon and finished our tour with amazingly delicious stone-oven pizza at a very small special restaurant.

Best pizza in Seoul!

Waiting for the pizza

Yummy...didn't eat Rucola in ages!

Cheonggyecheon Stream

It's raining like hell today, which is no wonder since it is the rainy season at the moment.
But a few days ago the weather was very hot and sunny so I met two of my Korean friends and we went to Cheonggyecheon Stream in downtown Seoul.
The stream is very beautiful and it is a very popular destination especially when it is hot.

Cheonggyecheon

We were sitting under a bridge on some stone steps and cooled down (it was easily more than 30 degrees) by splashing our feet in the water. There are many small fish as well and it was fun to watch them.

Popular Place

Best way to cool down! Can you guess which feet are mine?

Maybe I will try to walk along the stream next time, I wanna see where it goes :) but back then it was too hot and now it's simply too rainy. I cannot really say what I prefer though...but looking at the pictures I'd rather sit at the stream with my friends when it's hot than stay in the dorm alone when it's rainy...see what I mean?

happy despite the heat :)

Me and Sunny

Heroic Rescue :)

Koreans and their Mobile Phones

Koreans love their mobile phones! They take them everywhere and use them all the time.
I wish I had a smartphone too, just so I could use this funny phone case shaped like a rabbit, including a tail and bunny ears...in pink of course :)

Debating Club - Update

So what have I been doing all the time? Well, one of the things I did, was to go to the debating club (nearly) every Wednesday.
Some of the topics we talked about were:

• Does competition in education contribute to the improvement of the society?
• Should adultery be punished by criminal law?
• Do you agree that a university student who isn't qualified as a teacher tutors a younger student with such high pay rates?
• How do lovers handle Push and Pull games?

It was always very interesting to get to know the Korean point of view and I enjoyed going there a lot. I met some really, really nice people there as well who became my friends. So, now the good news is that we will continue meeting during the semester break :)

Small group discussion in progress

and of course we also went drinking together :)