Tuesday, May 21, 2019
Day three started very early as I still wasn’t able to sleep through the night. I woke up around 3 again, and despite counting many, many sheep, wasn’t able to go back to bed. Perhaps I should have Googled what “South Koreans count when they can’t sleep” but it’s too late for that now. Around 5am I decided enough was enough and went for a run. My sleep deprived head thought it would tire me out. I would run, shower and nap. Nope, running wakes you up, there I go being silly.
Over the last few days I hadn’t seen anyone running outside, I don’t think it’s very common here. There are also many more hills than I expected. Figured it would be best to run in the gym. The run went well, most of my blisters survived the run (I didn’t really think about that pre-run and 100% will regret this) and I stayed up the whole day (yay). I would show pictures of the blisters, but I’ve been told “no one wants to see those…”
Today was a packed one. After a casual walk around campus to take in more of it, we met up to attend the final presentations of a healthcare marketing class. Ewha is an international university and has many students who aren’t from Korea, that meant the presentations would be in English! The groups did a good job, and from an academic perspective it was interesting to see how our techniques for campaigns compared and differed in the US. The presentation also included a boxed sandwich lunch – great for my wallet, bad for my check list of all the Korean food I want to eat.
After our academic portion of the day we moved into tourist mode which included our first time using the Korean subway system. I have pretty low expectations when it comes to transit. If you have ever taken the Chicago L, you know what I mean.
South Korea knows what they are doing. All of the trains are underground, but they are bright and airy, with wide walkways, beautiful brick work, cute shops, and no bathroom smells. It was also one of the smoothest trains I have ever been on. No excessive josteling. I wish I could take this train line home with me.
Our afternoon started off at Namde-moon market in downtown Seoul. It is a spider web of alleys and streets filled with all kinds of shops. Do you need knock off designer handbags, you can find it here. How about the answers to all your skin care needs? Yep. Shoes of every style, post cards, tacky souvineers, snacks, clothes, just about everything. We wondered our way through for an hour and the market was primarily filled with locals doing their shopping. My goal was to find a purse but everything I found either felt to cheap or didn’t feel like me. If it happens it happens, if it doesn’t, oh well.
After a quick dumpling snack (yum) we walked a bit to the Myeong-dong market. Where Namde-moon felt more like a flee market at times, Myeong-dong has all brand name stores and is considered a higher end market. On our way, we took a quick peak into the Shinsegye Department Store, owned by Samsung. It felt like a typical western department store and so did the prices. Quite the sticker shock coming from Namde-moon where purses were going for $15 and everything was negotiable.
Myeong-dong was very much in the middle of the spectrum. And boy was it popping. As part of our class (the reason we are here) we each have a research paper and some of my class are focusing theirs on the health and beauty industry in Seoul. We must have walked into 15 skincare/makeup/beauty shops. After three they all looked the same to me. They really focus on their faces here. Skin masks are all the rage, the sales reps were very encouraging and tried to get us to try some in the stores. I’m sure that’s how American beauty stores are too, I just don’t visit them too frequently.
Before going to the market we were warned that many of the sales associates we would interact with would speak very limited English. We had a fun game of charades+Google translate to try and get across “exfoliating”. It’s called peeling here, in case you ever run into the same problem. After everyone had had their fill of beauty we moved onto my favorite part. Food.
When we first got to the market there were many wide open streets but as the evening came around they became filled with endless lines of street cart food. I was in heaven. Between the 7 of us, we must have stopped at 15 carts trying one snack after the next.
I tried out a seafood pancake and an egg bun. The pancake was so good. It wasn’t an American style pancake and had more of a gummy texture, kind of like a dumpling’s exterior. The egg bun was so cute and the bread surrounding it was so sweet. That seems to be how it goes around here. Many things are either sweet or spicy. I’m okay with that.
The group caught my new favorite subway home, I found bandaids (yay) and did a little local shopping on my own before relaxing with a face mask and TV. You can pretty much say I’m a local now. First step is accepting face mask culture 😉
