Week 6 in Korea - Seoul Fireworks Festival
South Korea ·Hello! I am writing this blog in another class right now, one week late again, but I promise to write the next one today after finishing this one and publish it as fast as possible so these are actually on schedule (actual real 🙃). This week was more relaxing than some of my previous weeks, which I really liked, and quite frankly needed. For example, this last Tuesday, I didn’t do anything and just relaxed at home. And I think that is something that is just such a positive about studying abroad, which is harder to get in a normal vacation, especially if it’s your first time to a country. When I go on vacation normally, it would be maybe for one week, and during that week there would be many things to make me feel rushed. I would be running around all over the place trying to visit all the attractions and sites and eat all the popular foods, and not a single day can be wasted. However, with studying abroad, since I am staying here for an extended period of time, I feel like there is no hurry to go anywhere. If I want to relax one day, I have that option, and I don’t feel guilty about it, knowing I have a lot more time in Korea. The same applies for when I want to visit tourist sites but then suddenly decide not to go. A good example is what happened this Thursday, which is also what inspired me to write this. On Thursday, I went to Gyeongbokgung Palace intending to check it out for the first time, but there was a huge crowd since it was a national holiday. So I made a quick decision not to go to Gyeongbokgung that day but instead to go somewhere else less crowded, knowing I can always stop by Gyeongbokgung Palace anytime later. But if I were a tourist and I had my schedule for the whole day or week planned out, I don’t think it is that easy to skip a major tourist attraction or to quickly shift plans, so I am very happy that I am not a tourist in Korea right now 😊. Something else I found out during this week was that it turned out that the graffiti tunnel I walk through often was a filming location for the Kdrama Twinkling Watermelon, so that was really cool.
So on Thursday, instead of visiting the crowded Gyeongbokgung palace, I started walking to Changgyeonggung palace, a lesser visited palace but still one of the five royal palaces in Seoul. On the way there, I stopped by a pretty open park with a flower field and walked around for a while. Then, I continued until I reached Changgyeonggung, where there were much fewer visitors and no line for tickets.
After checking out all the buildings and petting all the cats, I went to Dongdaemun Market and then Dongdaemun Design Plaza. Dongdaemun Market is a big shopping zone where you can buy so many things. I have never seen so much fabric in my life in one place before, and there is a lot of unbranded clothing and designs. It is also at Dongdaemun Market where I found a restaurant that sells a certain food which I cannot say, but I do want to try sometime :0🤔. One interesting thing at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, a cultural space and iconic landmark in Seoul known for its design, was some sort of skincare exam where you take closeup photos of your skin in multiple places and it gives you a report. I don’t know if it is actually accuruate since I only took 5 photos of my face and the whole process took less than 3 minutes, but the result it gave me was that my skin was dry, sensitive, and lacked elasticity, so maybe I will try to find some products that can help with that :D. To end off the day, I went to Myeongdong again to walk around the streets, eat street foods, and look at shops. I also got my hair cut at Juno Hair. I was thinking about getting a perm again, but in the end decided not to. Maybe I’ll get it next time I go though :00?
On Friday, I signed up for the archery experience from the archery museum I accidentally stumbled across last week. I learned how to shoot arrows the traditional Korean way, and it was a really fun experience. Then, during the night, I went to see my first drone show (this one had 1000 drones), which was super pretty and had good vibes. Now I want to see the 10,000 drone shows that China does :).
Saturday was the annual Seoul Fireworks Festival, one of the biggest events in Seoul, which draws huge crowds. I don’t think this year’s stats have been released yet, but last year, 2.5 million people, or 25 percent of people living in Seoul, went to watch the fireworks in person. I got to the Yeouido River Park, where the fireworks were being held from 3pm, but it was already totally packed. There were so many people, and many of them were camping out from the way before. I ended up finding a small spot on the grass that was blocked by some trees, where I sat for four hours until the fireworks started at 7:30. It was a good fireworks show; if you want, you can find the replay on Youtube. I was particularly excited for this one since I love fireworks, and I haven’t seen them since the Fourth of July in 2023, because Cupertino canceled their fireworks show this year 😠😠. The fireworks literally lit up the entire sky, and some of the parts were just so spectacular, with some cool patterns and designs that I have never seen before (a cat!).
Sunday was an interesting day. I woke up early to watch Cal play Miami and lose, which was really sad. Other than that, I did sign up for a sports day with an international club on campus called Mentors Club. In short, Mentors Club is a club where you and 15 other international students are paired with a Korean student, and they organize fun events that happen throughout the semester. The Han River picnic I think I wrote about previously was a part of this, and I also had dinner with them previously. Anyways, the sports day was with almost 100 people, and we played different sports such as dodgeball, soccer, catch the tail, etc. It was particularly fun for me because I hadn’t done any running sports since I came to Korea. I was just running around mindlessly not knowing what I was doing, and my team carried me to first place.