map the soul, map the seoul

Happy Synthesizer (14-19 september)

(Update after finishing: this post looks incredibly long because of the pictures!!)
My titles never make any sense, but hey there! It's been almost two weeks since my last post and I'm totally avoiding my studies. It's 0:12 AM at this moment (I start writing this post) and let's see how far I get! I'll try to keep it short. Try. That does not mean I will succeed.

Now where did I left off... The school days after the Incheon Kpop Concert weren't that interesting so let's move on to Friday and Saturday! I went to 연고전 (Yonkojeon) or 고연전 (Koyonjon), actually depends who the host of that year is but Yonkojon flows better if I have to be honest. Anyways, these are two days where two universities: Yonsei University and Korea University match against each other in various sports like baseball and rugby. :) I went there to cheer for Yonsei (Natasja told me too, I had no objections seeing as SKKU doesn't have these things) and my god, do I love Korean cheerleaders. I barely saw anything of the game! (Yonsei lost in baseball :(. I actually went to that game and couldn't go the others!) The cheerleaders really cheer and make sure the entire audience is dancing and singing along with them to cheer on the team. It was an amazing experience! Really had a lot of fun!

I don't have my videos uploaded on YouTube (and internet is too slow now to upload it here on blogger) but I'll show you some pictures. You can look for lots of videos on YT by yourself though. But then again, it's really something you need to experience yourself. You're just throwing your arm around a stranger just so you can participate in the dances well. Some dances are really violent though. But yeah, LOTS OF FUN.

Next up, Gyeongbokgung Palace! I went here with Xia and .. I have her name in Chinese characters but I don't know how to write in romanized, I can't even pronounce ;~~; .. I'll just call her YY okay? :D I'm so sorry YY for not being able to write your name. Ah, she won't read this anyways. She doesn't really know English. But anyways! This palace is nice! We got there just in time when they were switching the guards and this is like an entire ritual with music and all. It was really nice to see.

Also, gotta love the statues and the doors in this palace. The statues are hilarious, at least the ones in the beginning and we posed with some of them trying to mimic the facial expressions. Also, the doors are really small so I felt tall. Yes, I feel tall! Only in Asia I can feel like this!!

The palace also has a museum and in front of the museum there was a traditional drum performance. The microphones and speakers were unneccessary because the drums were already loud enough but ah well. And it's not just drumming, they even add dance. One of my favourites was the one with the hats with a white ribbon and if they spin their hats, the ribbon spins too. It reminds me a bit of those gymnastic performances with ribbons. Know what I mean?

I want a hat like that. I would spin my head all day. Ah, spin actually doesn't sound like proper English. Roll? I don't know. Ever since I've been here, I feel my English got worse. My Social Movements professor actually says POlice instead of poLICE and now I say POlice too. Ah.. 어떻게..

On the 19th, I went with Sam, Xia, Yang, Yun, Clarisse, Chiara, Javier and Evee to Kyobo Book Centre. Now, the main reason we went here was because of the music store, haha. And all the girls bought some music. I got myself G-Dragon's new album "One of a Kind" bronze edition and bought the gold version for Natasja. But! The most awesome thing was the Gangnam Style shirt I found! I remember my brother saying (probably as a joke, but I take everything seriously): "Hey, get me a shirt with Gangnam Style on it there!" Well.. voila!

Afterwards, we actually went to look at the books and I've seen some interesting books like "The Psychology Book" and I'm actually considering to buying it. It explains a lot of theories and what not in a simple way and it's always pretty handy to have something like that if your major is psychology. :') But the actual find of the day is the "How to poo at work" book. This really beats the "Making Out in Korean/Japanese/Indonesian/Chinese/Spanish/Italian/whatever/etc" books I found in Indonesia! I didn't buy this book though, I just grabbed it, took a picture and put it back. But it's interesting. Maybe it really does have some useful tips because going #2 in public is always awkward. (Ho ho ho TMI?)

Kyobo Book Centre is actually really close to Gyeongbokgung palace. Actually, it's pretty much across the street! We went to Gwanghwamun square which has a really big statue of Sejong Daewang. He's pretty much the inventor of the Korean alphabet: hangul. And this picture below might say we were normal tourists and just posed normally but we actually took some pictures .. posing the same way as the statue. Hilarity ensued. We got stared at but it was really HILARIOUS. We have laughed the entire time and on most pictures I actually smile like "XD" for real. Feeling like a South Park character, oh yeah.

After posing and laughing so much, we got hungry and searched for a nice place to eat. Oh it was nice, indeed. And with nice I mean spicy. I am so glad I didn't order noodles and just ordered kimbap. Yang gave me a few of her noodles and my lips were already burning. Pretty much everyone was suffering. Don't get me wrong, I love spicy food but this was actually getting painful! It was even hotter dan Dyllan's dokbokki!! Also, the restaurant had lots of post-it's on the wall with messages from customers and I could read one of them: "please make it more spicier!" ... Well, I guess that person is crazy.

I have no idea who the dude statue is in this picture but we continued with our weird posing after eating and the fountains are super cool too of course. I'm happy to act like a 5 y.o. sometimes because if I didn't go "but I wanna see the fountains :(((" we wouldn't see this beautiful sight! Plus, we wouldn't get any more awesome pictures.

I will make another post for last weekend because I actually went to another concert! Oh yeah! Anyways, I tried to keep it short so I actually don't really like the way I've written this post.. I like details, but.. yeah. Screw you guys and your "tl;dr" :(

Adieu!