Fun places I’ve been in Korea

Everland

Everland is Korea’s largest theme park, located in Yongin. I bought my ticket at a discounted 33,000 won in Hotel President at City Hall station the day before I went. It is a special offer just for foreigners. The park is a little over two hours away from Anyang. I took the subway to Beomgye station and then bus 8839 to Everland. The park is owned by Samsung, and there’s also a water park called Caribbean Bay (you have to buy a separate ticket for that). I didn’t go since the outdoor park of Caribbean Bay wasn’t open until the next week. However, I really enjoyed Everland! Since I specifically planned to go in the middle of midterm week, there was no waiting in line! Koreans almost always cancel class during midterm week 😀

There is really only one big rollercoaster, the T-Express. It is wooden, and a lot of fun. I rode it twice. The best thing about the park is the variety. There are many live animals, gorgeous flowers, kid friendly rides, carnival type rides, food, fountains, and some live shows and parades at special times. I highly recommend going to Everland!

They had about 14 white tigers if I remember correctly. And plenty of lions. There are two different animal tours; Safari World is a bus and Amazon Express is an amphibious bus (made by Samsung of course!). There are also several walk-through animal exhibits, a petting zoo, and you can pay a few thousand won to ride a pony or camel.

LIGER ALERT!

This bear is walking to the front of the bus so the driver will throw him snacks. The next bear stood on a rock and caught snacks. A third bear sat on the side of the road and “begged” for snack which he caught in his paws and ate. There were also plenty of bears just lying around.

Bumper cars!

Huge rose garden with Roman style statues and some pretty fountains. I am sure it will be breathtaking when the roses bloom.

Lotte World

Lotte World is the world’s largest indoor theme park. It also has an outdoor park called Magic Island. I came on a Monday after applying for my alien registration card in Seoul’s immigration office and spent several hours here. There are so many cute things! Lotte World is really popular for couples and families with small kids.

The pirate ship that swings back and forth.

There’s a wall that takes a picture of your face and puts it on a manatee. The manatees swim all over the screen and eat bubbles. Hilarious!

You’re never too old for the carousel!

Water ride!

The outdoor park, Magic Island. Unfortunately the weather was a bit rainy that day so I didn’t spend much time outdoors.

View from the hot air balloon ride. You can see he other hot air balloons on the other side of the room. It circles all the way around the room.

 

Hangang River bicycle trail

There are many stations around the river where you can rent bikes. Some are free and some cost by the hour. I went to Oksu station for bikes with a small group of friends. It was a bit windy, but overall the weather was good. I want to go back now that the weather is warming up!

Took this selfie while riding a bicycle and playing Kpop on my phone. Korean style!

 

Namsan Tower (Seoul Tower)

A Korean friend brought us here my first weekend in Korea. It seems so long ago now! The theme of this tower is love in case you can’t tell 😛

Seoul at night

A fence covered in locks that couples leave here to symbolize their love.

Noryangjin Fish Market

I went with the intent of eating a live baby octopus, but I just couldn’t do it. Here are some pictures though!

View of the market from above where all the sashimi restaurants are.

The legs still crawl around and stick to things, even after the octopus is dead and cut up. Freakyyyyy.

Sashimi- you take the fresh seafood upstairs to one of the restaurants and they chop it up and put sesame oil and seeds on it for you. Eat the eyes first!

Eating a live octopus.

No idea what this thing is, but it looks disgusting and Quentin ate a piece.

Climbing Suri Mountain in Anyang

I recently climbed Suri Mountain the second time as part of a class project. There are multiple starting points for climbing the mountain. One is on campus, next to the library. The other is just down the street behind the international student house. Here are pictures from both trips.

Cherry blossoms at the bottom of the path. Cherry blossoms are so beautiful! I wish they lasted longer!

 

At the top!

Selfie at the top!

There are several paths to the peak, but this one begins with some sort of war monument and a small courtyard.

My first day in Korea: octopus, the subway, and the worst hill ever

I arrived in Korea Tuesday afternoon. It has been very cool so far! This is a summary with several photos of my first day.

Wednesday, I was one of the first people awake and didn’t have any food in the house, so my R.A. took me grocery shopping. He is a Korean student who lives in the international house with us. I had problems using my cards at the ATM, but I figured it out by Thursday. When I got back to the dorm, I met more of the other students. I took the subway to Seoul with four of them that afternoon. It was my first time on the subway! It is very clean and efficient. You buy a T-money card from one of the convenience stores at the subway station, load money onto it with a self-service machine, and run your card across the top of the turnstile to get into the subway. The people I was with are familiar with subways and were really fast at reading the maps and signs so I just followed them hahaha. All the subway signs and announcements were in Korean and English though, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for most foreigners to use the subway. Almost everyone on the subway is on his/her smart phone using Kakao Talk or watching Korean dramas, or sleeping.

On the subway, some guy walked up to me and asked me where I was from. When I said America, he started telling me all the English phrases he knew without pausing “helloexcusemesorryhowareyoubyebyeseeyoulater”blah blah blah. He was drinking a beer and told me “I love beer” and “You are English teacher and I am English student.” Luckily he got off the subway a couple of stops later because he was starting to get annoying.

Once we got to Seoul, three of us needed to get new SIM cards for our phones. Long story short, only one us got a SIM card. Hopefully I can get mine set up tomorrow in Anyang (that’s where my school is at). There is free wifi in many places, not like the US. However, I want to be able to use 3G so I can use google maps if I get lost and so I can use my phone to call in Korea easily.

Afterwards, we mostly just walked around the city. It was very cool! There are so many stores, and everyone is SO stylish, and people sell stuff on the street. We went to a Korean restaurant in Hongdae for a late lunch. In Korean, people usually eat together and don’t split the ticket. We ordered three dishes: a pancake with vegetables and octopus in it, another octopus dish with some noodles and vegetables, and those really fat noodles with the spicy sauce (my mom made them for me before, but I can’t remember the name). Octopus is really chewy, not much flavor. People eat raw octopus here as well (it’s legs still squirm while you swallow), and I think I would like to try that sometime! We also had soju, and it was good. It was everyone’s first time trying it.

Afterwards, we walked around some more. We saw this odd little place with a tiny door labeled “man cave.” We went up a bunch of stairs, and the only thing we found was the door to an office complex and the door to the roof.

There was also some cool displays in the staircase, including this one made out of books.

We thought about going to Gangnam, but it was about 50 minutes away by subway. Here are a couple of other pictures from Seoul.

FIve points if you can figure out how these pipes are hanging in midair!

Rainbow umbrella display hanging from upper level of a shopping complex

There were a group of exercise machines outside of the shopping complex. These two were the funniest. Whenever you move, you are lifting your own body weight. The arm machine was the hardest for me lol!

Another exercise machine in the kids play area. The faster you pedal, the more lights turn on. There were two Korean kids staring at us the whole time haha.

This is the Dondaemun area.

Also in Dongdaemun. There were moving images across this building.

We tried some street food in Dondaemun. I have no idea what this is, but it was very tasty!

After coming back to Anyang, we walked back to the school. Anyang University is on top of THE MOST TERRIBLE HILL EVER. So steep! After you walk up the hill, there are also TWO escalators. They automatically turn off sometime at night, so we ended up walking up those as well. I forgot to stretch when we got back to the house, and my legs were really stiff today. I will take a picture of the hill sometime during the day so you can see what I mean.

We played cards that night as well. Two girls from Kazakhstan taught us “durok,” which is a Russian game. A guy from France taught us “president and asshole.”

Anyway, that was my first day in Korea. It is very cool to learn about where everyone is from! Everyone in the house is nice, and I look forward to classes starting so I can learn more Korean. My next post will probably be about some of the differences between Korea and Kentucky, and about my classes. I haven’t done any shopping yet, but I am definitely getting some shoes while I’m here! So many cute things!

If you have requests for future posts or are a student interested in study abroad, leave me a comment!