The bookstore here is heaven for nerds who love school supplies like me. There were soo many notebooks and pens to choose from! Luckily I was with another fellow nerd who didn’t mind spending lots of time trying to pick out just the right one. The most important buy was an alarm clock. Usually I just use my cellphone, but I don’t want to keep charging it just for that. I found a dandy one that lights up like the Water Cube for less than $4. It is obnoxious sounding as all get out, but I guess that’s the point.
On the way back we looped around the outside of the campus to try to find a place for lunch and a grocery store and the bakery I had been wanting to try. I bought breakfast for the next two days for about $2.50. One of them turned out to have the red bean paste on the inside of a sugary-ish doughnut thing, sort of the best thing ever. We saw a sign for a 6,000W lunch that included dessert right near the East entrance so decided there for lunch.
The thing I’ve noticed so far is that the sign may say one price, but you get inside and it is definitely a higher one being charged. And not really having the language skills to ask about it yet, I kind of just go with it. The place was really nice though, the chairs were these very comfortable couches and it had a nice view. We were all enjoying the music and laughing at how they only brought our Asian looking friend chopsticks when they turned on some English pop. Cute that they wanted to make us feel more at home and all, but we were def enjoying things as they were. Oh well, the place did have a killer kimchi fried rice.
I had to leave lunch early because there was a Mentor’s Club meeting where I was supposed to meet my Yonsei student. Naturally there would be a torrential downpour as I was trying to run across campus. Thank god I stopped off at my dorm and grabbed a rain jacket though, otherwise I would have spent the rest of the day see through and all around rather unhappy. Finally make it to the meeting, and as it turns out we are going out to dinner. Good news is that the place was a really good, inexpensive Chinese place nearby (which I have been dying to find). It was a lot of fun though because this was the first time that a large number of students had the opportunity to get together.
After dinner we went to the Heidelburg House and took over the top floor with all of the groups. Pretty soon thereafter out came these HUGE insulated pitchers of beer. Now I’m no conneseuir, but I will say that Korean beer leaves much to be desired. On draft Cass tastes like PBR in a can. It is weak enough to taste practically like water, so even I could bare to drink it.
Drinking here is a rather big part of the student culture. There are many games that involve a lot of shouting and high levels of consumption. It was kind of funny to look around the room and see the different toasts and games being played from all over the world. Our group ended up playing Titanic, where you put a shot glass in a mostly full glass of beer and pour soju in. The person who sinks the glass gets the joy of drinking it. Just my luck I sunk the 3rd round, and had to drink a rather terrible mix of two of my favorite things! Somehow though, the mixture made both taste better.
After stopping at the I-House to change really quick a bunch of us headed back out to Sinchon for the night. We ended up running into our Mentors again and meeting more people. Fun fact: A bottle of Jack Daniel’s costs $80 at a bar here (where we were didn’t sell by the drink). I did find out that there are duty free shops foreigners can shop at and buy it for $25, much more in line with what I would pay at home.
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