Seoul Tour and Coffee Prince
My Busy Weekend in Seoul
-Saturday-
+Coffee Prince Shop
+Hongik Women's University Area
-Sunday-
+Seoul Postal Service Building
+Myeongdong Shopping Center and Cathedral
+The Stream
+Gyeongbok Palace
Saturday
Coffee Prince filming grounds
Our first stop Saturday was the Coffee Prince coffee shop near Hongik Women's University. If you're familiar at all with the Korean drama Coffee Prince, you'll recognize this building. This is where the drama was filmed, and after the drama ended it actually opened and became a real coffee shop.
The workers are a little picky- only letting you take pictures if you buy something. We were outside taking pictures when one of the workers actually came out and told us we couldn't take pictures. She then asked us if we were going to order something. We asked to see an English menu (as there wasn't really a menu outside as far as we could see), so she ushered us inside, where she spent the next five minutes continously coming up to us and harassing us about buying coffee. She only left us alone after we both bought souvenir booklets with the Coffee Shop characters on them. Then we were allowed to take as many photos as we want. I was a little peeved at the way she kept hounding us, though I guess they probably get a lot of people who just take pictures and leave. There were many foreigners there besides us, mostly Japanese and Westerners.
We played around in the Hongik area for a bit and ran into this:
Hello Kitty Cafe!
To be honest, I kind of expected this thing in Japan rather than Korea, but whatever. The door knobs were made out of kitties and there were even kitty shaped windows inside. It was cute.
Came home afterward and started a new drama called "You're Beautiful". "You're Beautiful" is about a nun-in-training who has to cross dress as a boy and join a boy band in place of her brother, who is currently in America getting corrective eye surgery (so they say). It's cute, though a little silly at times.
Sunday
Sunday a co-workers and I were invited out by one of our students to go to Seoul. I mistakenly thought it was Saturday and agreed. Only later did I find out it was on Sunday. X_X Anyway, I had already promised to go, so I couldn't back down! So we met the student, her sister, and her father at 10 o'clock and he drove us to Seoul.
We first journeyed to the Seoul Postal Office where her father works. It was HUGE. There were twenty-one floors total, and it was really impressive. It even had a Starbucks in it! We dropped off the car there and headed toward Myeongdong and Myeongdong Cathedral. Myeongdong is a shopping center, and Myeongdong Cathedral is the first Gothic-styled cathedral in Korea. After that we had lunch at a famous bulgogi restaurant and headed off to the stream, where they had the remnants of the lantern festival from when the G20 was in Korea. We walked through the diagrams of all of the different countries. China's was the best, but America's was kind of pitiful. >_< We had the Statue of Liberty, which is cool and all, but it's not that exciting to look at compared to what Japan and China had. Personally, I think Mt. Rushmore would have been a little neater to see...
Anyway, after that we headed to Gyeongbok Palace, where her father and she gave a tour of the palace. I have been to that palace several times before, but I've never really gone with Koreans before, so it was interesting to hear what she had to say about the palace.
After that, we headed home and I went over to my friend's and watched "Scandal Makers", a funny and touching movie about a radio show host who finds out he has an illegitimate daughter who also has an illegitimate son. The daughter up and moves in with him, much to his dismay. He spends half the movie trying to hide the fact that he has a daughter and grandson from the media, but in the end the truth is revealed and he has to learn to live with it. It was a cute movie, and it really shows just how big scandals are in Korea. In America it seems like the celebrities are getting in and out of scandals daily, but in Korea saving face is very important. The movie really emphasizes this point, which made it really interesting to watch as a foreigner.
Overall, it was a pretty good weekend, though pretty exhausting. I'm almost happy for the week to start since my weeks are now more low key than my weekends. I'm hoping to start job hunting soon, as well as start working on my paper about Korea. I've got a few requests from people back home asking me to talk about Korea when I come back, so I feel like it's now more important than ever to document my experiences in Korea. Here's hoping I can stop being lazy and actually go through with it...
-Saturday-
+Coffee Prince Shop
+Hongik Women's University Area
-Sunday-
+Seoul Postal Service Building
+Myeongdong Shopping Center and Cathedral
+The Stream
+Gyeongbok Palace
Saturday
Coffee Prince filming grounds
Our first stop Saturday was the Coffee Prince coffee shop near Hongik Women's University. If you're familiar at all with the Korean drama Coffee Prince, you'll recognize this building. This is where the drama was filmed, and after the drama ended it actually opened and became a real coffee shop.
The workers are a little picky- only letting you take pictures if you buy something. We were outside taking pictures when one of the workers actually came out and told us we couldn't take pictures. She then asked us if we were going to order something. We asked to see an English menu (as there wasn't really a menu outside as far as we could see), so she ushered us inside, where she spent the next five minutes continously coming up to us and harassing us about buying coffee. She only left us alone after we both bought souvenir booklets with the Coffee Shop characters on them. Then we were allowed to take as many photos as we want. I was a little peeved at the way she kept hounding us, though I guess they probably get a lot of people who just take pictures and leave. There were many foreigners there besides us, mostly Japanese and Westerners.
We played around in the Hongik area for a bit and ran into this:
Hello Kitty Cafe!
To be honest, I kind of expected this thing in Japan rather than Korea, but whatever. The door knobs were made out of kitties and there were even kitty shaped windows inside. It was cute.
Came home afterward and started a new drama called "You're Beautiful". "You're Beautiful" is about a nun-in-training who has to cross dress as a boy and join a boy band in place of her brother, who is currently in America getting corrective eye surgery (so they say). It's cute, though a little silly at times.
Sunday
Sunday a co-workers and I were invited out by one of our students to go to Seoul. I mistakenly thought it was Saturday and agreed. Only later did I find out it was on Sunday. X_X Anyway, I had already promised to go, so I couldn't back down! So we met the student, her sister, and her father at 10 o'clock and he drove us to Seoul.
We first journeyed to the Seoul Postal Office where her father works. It was HUGE. There were twenty-one floors total, and it was really impressive. It even had a Starbucks in it! We dropped off the car there and headed toward Myeongdong and Myeongdong Cathedral. Myeongdong is a shopping center, and Myeongdong Cathedral is the first Gothic-styled cathedral in Korea. After that we had lunch at a famous bulgogi restaurant and headed off to the stream, where they had the remnants of the lantern festival from when the G20 was in Korea. We walked through the diagrams of all of the different countries. China's was the best, but America's was kind of pitiful. >_< We had the Statue of Liberty, which is cool and all, but it's not that exciting to look at compared to what Japan and China had. Personally, I think Mt. Rushmore would have been a little neater to see...
Anyway, after that we headed to Gyeongbok Palace, where her father and she gave a tour of the palace. I have been to that palace several times before, but I've never really gone with Koreans before, so it was interesting to hear what she had to say about the palace.
After that, we headed home and I went over to my friend's and watched "Scandal Makers", a funny and touching movie about a radio show host who finds out he has an illegitimate daughter who also has an illegitimate son. The daughter up and moves in with him, much to his dismay. He spends half the movie trying to hide the fact that he has a daughter and grandson from the media, but in the end the truth is revealed and he has to learn to live with it. It was a cute movie, and it really shows just how big scandals are in Korea. In America it seems like the celebrities are getting in and out of scandals daily, but in Korea saving face is very important. The movie really emphasizes this point, which made it really interesting to watch as a foreigner.
Overall, it was a pretty good weekend, though pretty exhausting. I'm almost happy for the week to start since my weeks are now more low key than my weekends. I'm hoping to start job hunting soon, as well as start working on my paper about Korea. I've got a few requests from people back home asking me to talk about Korea when I come back, so I feel like it's now more important than ever to document my experiences in Korea. Here's hoping I can stop being lazy and actually go through with it...