Eat all the things!

Last, but not least, FOOD! Of course this needs it's own post. We ate LOTS of delicious food in Korea and there are definitely days where I wish I could eat some of those things. Soooo good...

First, every morning, the guesthouse people put out a nice little spread for the guests. Nothing fancy, just hard boiled eggs, bread, nutella, jam, some fruit, cereal, milk and yogurt. Some mornings there was juice or some of those little yogurt milk things (not sure what to call them). It was a great way to start the mornings.

We also consumed large quantities of ice cream. Mindy go a fish shaped cone with ice cream and strawberry sauce. I was still full from who knows what so I didn't get one.

LOVED these rose shaped ice creams in Myongdong! Tasty, pretty, AND they matched my pink hair!

Got this honey comb ice cream in Hongdae. Mindy had never had honey on ice cream (baffled my brain because that's my go to).

Just one example of the many delicious ice cream bars you can get. This one has chocolate crispy crunchies on the outside with strawberry sauce in the middle. Mmmm... I want one.

We also tried lots of tasty snacks. Although these are way better when it is cold outside, Deli-mandoo are always delicious. They fill these yummy little things with custard. Yum yum yum. The ladies were also really impressed with my hair and we took a selfie with them.

 Mindy chillaxin with some of our favorite snacks: the spicy sweet tteokbokki crackers (SO GOOD!!!), choco pies, and rice cracker things.

A pile of more SNACKS!!

And gummy chicken feet!!

Mildly in love with Korean pizza... might have convinced Mindy to order it 3 times. Maybe... yes.
Go Pizza Heaven!! With K-Pop boy bands on the box (no idea who they are... Mindy probably knows).

Couldn't wait to take a picture... sorry. This one was sweet potato pizza. It had corn, onions, and sweet potatoes (not yams... sweet potatoes... they are different). And we got a free corn salad on the side. We ended up ordering multiples of that on the other orders. The guy at the front desk thought we were really weird ordering sweet potato pizza and so much corn salad...

SO GOOD.

A also love jajangmyung. It's noodles with black bean sauce. A little bitter and oh so good!

We went out for bbq one night and ordered pork belly which then came with a million sides. Poor Mindy was very patient with me. I would start out super hungry and then wimp out when there was still a ton of food left. She felt honor bound to finish all the meat. We didn't even touch the soup...

So... much... food... mmmmm...

 We tried to find this one restaurant in Hongdae and after hiking around trying to find it, we gave up and went to this yummy looking tteokbokki place. WHICH WAS AWESOME!

We got a set with tteokkbokki, cheese pizza (cheese bread with honey dip, YUM), and a GIANT BINGSOO. Tteokkbokki is chewy rice cakes in spicy sweet sauce. This also had ramen, veggies, some mandu (potstickers) and some other unidentifiable yummies. And baby quail eggs! So tiny!

Bingsoo is shaved ice with ice cream and sweet red beans.

We were really full and poor Mindy might have eaten her bingsoo a little too fast.

Brain freeze!!

 We REALLY love tteokkbokki... so we went to Tteokkbokki Town! A street lined with tteokbokki restauraunts! I really wanted to try jajangmyung tteokkbokki... but I guess she didn't understand me when I ordered and we got regular spicy tteokkbokki. Oh well. Still yummy.

And this lady was really funny. She kept trying to talk to me and I tried explaining that I couldn't understand but she kept talking and laughing and, like, hitting me on the back. And the FUNNIEST part was she just WOULDN'T TALK TO MINDY!! Mindy speaks more Korean than I do and kept trying to talk to this obviously excited grandma but the lady just blatantly ignored her!! Hahaha!! It was so funny!

Oh, and it was funny that Mindy and I wore aprons and still managed to get sauce on our clothes.

And then we went one more time to that yummy place in Hongdae.

At the recommendation of one of her friends, we also went to this one place that is supposed to be super famous. We went and Mindy ordered what we thought was just pork. Then she looked it up on her phone and looked at me with a scared look on her face. "I just ordered pigs feet."

Surprisingly very tasty (though very greasy) and paired very nicely with the soup it came with. I just couldn't do the fatty skin parts. I did for a while and then just... couldn't any more.

 And though we had just eaten a very large lunch with Mindy's friend's friend (I ate raw ground beef and didn't get a picture), when we found the Hello Kitty Cafe, I HAD to go!

An adorable brownie and lemonade.

One of our last meals was samgyetang: a whole chicken in a bown that has been tuffed with rice, ginseng, jujube, and garlic. Then boiled to delicious perfection and topped with green onions. I am salivating just thinking about it.

And our final meal in Korea: Taco Bell! At the airport, we were looking for food before our flight and when we headed up to the food court, Mindy looked at me all sad and said, "I REALLY want American food... can we have Taco Bell?" And I was MORE than happy to accommodate. And it was AMAZING!! Why do we not have a burrito with beef, nacho cheese, and FRIES?! OMG. Soooo good! Perfect food to eat right before a 10 hour flight, right? Right? Nothing could go wrong... and nothing did.

P.S. look at that adorable shirt Mindy is wearing! Apples! That are ORANGE! I got the same one with pink apples.

Buy all the things!

So, I LOVE shopping in Seoul! There are so many cute things and there is so much cheap, cute, good quality makeup and face car stuff. So I came home with A LOT of junk!

I put all the things I bought on my bed when I got home. The pile in front is presents and the pile in back (the big one) is MINE!

So much cute makeup! I LOVE the little cupcake lip and cheek tint!

And here are my face washes, creams, lotions, and masks! The little pink bunny is a mister for when it's really dry and you are out and about, the orange one is a perfume stick.

These are all face masks (only a few of which I actually purchased, most came free).

And THIS is all the free stuff I got!

I LOVE stationary stores! So many cute cards, stickers, and notebooks! So many...

3 adorable bags.

And then here's some of the other random junk I bought. Lots of it. 

Last, but DEFINITELY not least, Eat all the things!!!

See all the things! Part 3: Jeju-do

Woof! A lot has happened since I last posted and I STILL haven't finished updating you on my trip to Korea! Woops!

Anyways, on to Jeju-do!

Mindy proposed that we go to Jeju-do, an island off the southern tip of South Korea. So I put her in charge of figuring out how to get there and how to get around once we did. It ended up being super cheap: less than $60 for round-trip tickets to fly down and then we spent maybe $20 on the city bus. What an awesome day trip!

So we got up super early and headed to the airport to hop a short plane ride to Jeju and then it was a trick to find the right bus to get to the first stop for the City Bus Tour. We hopped on the bus and headed out on our adventure.

Aaaand I was really grumpy for, like, most of the day, and trying really hard not to be.

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to eat any breakfast before getting on the plane and we could not find any convenience stores or anything at the airport (which we figured out how to find when we returned, but that doesn't matter). We decided that since we were going to really touristy places, there were BOUND to be some convenience stores or vending machines (SOMETHING). There weren't. So I was a little hangry. Luckily there were plenty of places to buy drinks so I drank a lot of water. But we didn't get any food until after noon and it was REALLY hot and we were REALLY hungry.

BUT we did see some awesome things! We went to a great market, the Jeju stone park (which features a park with some of the famous volcanic stone sculptures and natural formations of volcanic rock), the Jeju Peace Park, and Dragon Head Rock.

Unfortunately, I was really horrible about taking pictures. I'm so sorry!

I did get some great photos of the Jeju Peace Park. When we first pulled up, we were a little worried it was closed because there was literally NO ONE THERE. And it was a little eerie with all this huge black crows flying around a big empty space. We didn't know much about it before going in, but we had heard it was a somber place. The museum pays tribute to the Jeju Island Incident and the war crimes that occurred during an uprising on the island. You can read a little bit more about it here on Wikipedia.

The museum had a neat interactive art installation where people could write on slips of paper and hang them up on this wall. Many notes were in Korea (of course), but some were in English and said things about never knowing this had happened or about hearing stories from their grandparents about the incident and feeling more connected with them after going through the museum.

Outside was a big fountain. Around the fountain were stones with hundreds of names carved on them of the men, women, and children who had died (most having not received a proper funeral).

After the Peace Park, we went to the Stone Park which would have been more fun if I hadn't been hangry and it hadn't been so very hot and humid. There were statues much like these guys (which the island is famous for).

We meant to go to two markets (the first of which was fun), but the second one was either closed for the day or we just went the wrong way. But we had about an hour until the next bus came. We ended up finding this tiny hole in the wall coffee shop and ordered the only thing on the menu that we could figure out which turned out delicious. Then there was a whole awkward bathroom incident which... we don't necessarily need to go into.

We got to the airport several hours early and then our flight was late. Poor Mindy wasn't feeling well at this point and we were both hot and tired. Long day *whew*

Next up: BUY ALL THE THINGS!!!!