Day 3: 27 July 2009 Monday

A great start to the day: running on the treadmill in the hotel's gym before breakfast :)

I miss the good old treadmill! I can't believe I actually survived nearly 6 weeks with only 1 run around the university and a one-time usage of the treadmill :( And I haven't played golf for nearly 2 months! Good grief :(

Breakfast comprised of a bread and chocolate muffin from Breadtalk which is just less than a minute away from the hotel. I had my favourite sunflower seed bread but it is pricey at 2,000원 (approx. S$2.29) when I could have got it for S$1.50 back home.  After breakfast, we split up: Garima and Chun En went shopping around our hotel area while Melissa accompanied me in my hunt for a spectacles shop to have a pair of spectacles made for my cousin. In the end, I went to the same one that Phyllis went to when we came to Korea 5 weeks ago (gosh, it's been so fast!). My cousin's spectacles cost 50,000원 and only took 20 minutes to make!

After meeting back in the hotel room, we set off for Insadong 인사동.

The banana milk they love but I didn't quite like. I just can't drink any milk on its own...I can only drink it with cereal.

Lunch at a Korean eatery

We followed the Korean girls' eating style and shared our food. Chun En's and mine:

Melissa's and Garima's:

Post-lunch, we headed to Bizeun for dessert: rice cake (for me) and green tea red bean patbingsu 팥빙수 for the 4 of us.

I finally tried the potato stick and it's quite delicious though it made me feel really guilty because it was oily :(

In the Very Gorgeous Cafe with Melissa in 이대 where she had a peach tea and I finally had my citron tea 유자차 which I badly needed for my throat. Initially, Garima and Chun En joined us at the cafe too but because the cafe's policy was that each person has to order something, the 2 left to shop while Melissa accompanied me and we had a nice chat there. While the tea were quite pricey, the serving portions were big so I guess that made up for the high prices.

After teaching the girls how to get back to the hotel from 이대, I went back to the hotel on my own for a while before heading down to Sinsa 신사 to meet my NUS buddy from semester 2, Kihong 기홍오빠 and Donghyun 동현오빠.

신사 has many nice cafes and it's such a pity that I only discovered this place in the last week of my stay here in Korea. Well, there's always next year!

We had drinks at this cafe and 동현오빠 paid for my ice tea. 고마워!

Dinner at this restaurant where I had Jeonju bibimbap 비빔밥 which was really delicious! I love it :)

동현오빠 mixed the 비빔밥 for me because I did a bad job at that.

Thank you 기홍오빠 for the dinner...고마워! I had a really enjoyable evening out with both of them and it was nice talking to them.  They're really good in English so we were able to communicate quite well. I think I've been really lucky to be able to meet so many Korean friends in NUS last semester and when I came to Korea, they brought me around. I'm definitely most thankful to my buddy 기홍오빠 who has done so much for me. When I'm back in Korea for a much longer period next year, I hope to meet up with them more often though I think they'll most probably be busy with work!