Peace Buddies and Insadong!

Every international student is paired with a student from Ewha that is there to hangout with and help us during our stay in Korea. These Ewha students are known as PEACE (Professional. Ewhaians. At. Cultural. Exchange.) Buddies, and have been such good help to us during our transition towards living in Korea. They've helped set up bank accounts, get cellphones, and other business that may be difficult for a foreigner. But they've also planned a lot of fun events for us like our welcoming party, lunches, and other get-togethers. It's really nice to be able to reach out to someone that's from Korea, and can help us with any issues or share with us the cool places to go to in Korea!

On Friday, me and my buddy planned a small get-together with some of the other students from Hawaii and their buddies. We all met at the front gate, and I was expecting us to just go to dinner around the area, but they decided to take us out to Insadong! My buddy told me that Insadong is known for expressing Korea's traditional culture with traditional houses, antiques, and food! We ate a restaurant in a traditional house, and the food was so good! I was so focused on eating, I didn't even bother to take pictures! Tells you how good it was because I love taking pictures of food...

After dinner, we walked down the street and went to Ssamziegil, which is this cute, little shopping center. The buddies told us that this place is a common place for couples to come to, and there definitely were a lot of couples there. I loved the style of the shopping area, and you basically just walk along the stores in a spiral. I managed to get a few pictures of the shopping center and the walkways!

We eventually made our way up to a photo booth like purikura! We decided to dress up and wear some traditional clothes!

After all that fun, we went to this traditional tea cafe. It was such a peaceful and calm atmosphere, it was the perfect place to just relax and chat with friends. The tea was so good. I got the yuzu tea, which was sweet and citrusy! They also ordered these Korean rice cookies or crackers for us to snack on.

I absolutely love Korea! It seems like there's always something to do here, and you'll definitely never be bored here. I'll be honest, it was a quite a transition and culture shock at first, but by going out and experiencing the culture, I think I was able to overcome my struggles and I'm having an amazing time now! 

Look out for a future post that's more in depth about my culture shock and transitioning to a new country.