Myeongdong

I'm like super duper tired, so this is gonna be short.

I went to Yonsei University today to have a look at my potential exchange school, and gosh the place is so beautiful! The campus looks like a Hogswarts castle with English-style buildings and rich greenary, complete with a maze-like garden. The only complaint I have is that the campus is situated on slopes and the Biz school is right at the top, so by the time I reached the building, I was panting hard.

The weather was really cold today. I wore like, four layers! The worst part were my hands...I bought gloves, but it wasn't enough. Sometimes I had to take my hands out from the gloves and within that few seconds, I can feel the chill already!

Samantha had told me that the Uni was at Sincheon station. So I took a train there, but when I looked at the neighbourhood map at the station, I couldn't find the Uni. It turned out that the station was Shinchon station instead! Fortunately, it was on the same line so I just continued taking the train along the line.

After Yonsei, I went to Myeongdong. It took me two transfers (once at City Hall station and once at Seoul station). I'm glad that it was relatively easy to understand the train lines and figure out where and how to transfer. This is one thing I prefer over Tokyo. The subway lines at Tokyo are too complicated, and as there are more than 1 operator, sometimes the transfer requires you to get out of the station and walk quite a bit to the station for the other operator. Here in Seoul, you just walk inside the station itself. However, it's quite strange that for some stations where the tracks for both directions are next to each other instead of separated by the platform, passengers have to pass through the ticket gantry on the correct side or they'll be unable to get onto the train towards the correct direction. Or maybe I just didn't look carefully for a passageway across. Also, the train map at the ticketing machines was so small! There was only one, and attached to a stan by the side of the machines. So, you have to crowd around that tiny map and squint to see the transfer stations etc.

I bought quite a lot of things at Myeongdong, and went into this idol shop. There were Japanese tourists inside and I heard the shopkeeper talking to them in Japanese. XD Demo, I couldn't find anything YB-related. Not even JGS-related! Not popular enough?

I had a few interesting encounters today:

1) I was buying train tickets at Samseung station to the Uni when this man at the machine next to mine asked me how to buy tickets to this particular station. In Korean. I guess it was because I was using the Korean interface for the machine that he mistook me as local. So, I just told him I can't speak Korean (in Korean, ironically) and decided to purchase tickets using the English interface in the future.

2) I was walking around Yonsei Uni when this student asked for directions. Again, I said I couldn't speak Korean.

3) The third incident happened at Myeongdong where I was browsing in this shop and the shopkeeper was really 'friendly'. He kept recommending me clothes that he feels match my style. I understood him, but I got tongue-tied for a response. So, when I made payment, he asked if I was a Korean. I said no, and he asked where I was from. Gosh, this is like the basics in Korean class, yet I got tongue-tied and just managed a weak "Singapore". Haha, he then smoothed my ego saying that I understood Korean good enough when I told him I could only understoof a bit of Korean. XD Nice shopkeeper! And when I paid him using the old 10k won notes, he was so amazed. O.O he was like "These are old money!" Are those very rare right now?

4) This totally dampened my mood. The last shop I visited was this shop selling Korean souvenirs and idol stuff. I grabbed two copies of this Korean magazines featuring SS501, and the shopkeeper immediately came with a basket and said, "You can put them in here." In Mandarin. I haven't even spoke a word! Does my appearance betray my ethnicity? And she had to follow me really closely throughout my stay in the shop! Argh!

Overall, Myeongdong is definitely worthed the hype. It's at least 3 times as huge an area as HK's Mongkok, and the human traffic flow at least 3 times as well. As most shops are selling winter goods, I didn't buy too much. But, imagine it being summer. With that large an area, it must be shopping paradise!

Off-topic, but I just finished watching Liar Game Season 2 ep 5. Hate the cliffhanger a the end! I have a feeling that that bespectacled guy betrayed Akiyama and Kanzaki. T.T