OMG my Diptyque candle makes me dizzy/giddy/nauseous.
Maybe I just can’t take rose scents.
I think I’m gonna puke >.<

[Part 1] 219. When a man loves

My buddy’s still busy with her exams and my teacher probably had another meeting today so I had the afternoon off. Which I spent watching another drama “When A Man Loves” while studying for my upcoming test on Friday. I meant to watch only 1 episode but I ended up watching 3 episodes. Oops. At least I went to the gym too (because I felt guilty about eating kimbab and 2 packets of chips)!

Dinner

[Part 1] 218. Hooked

되지국밥 for lunch. I’m banned from eating mayo 덮밥

Dinner

I spent the most part of my free time after school today watching the 2 dramas I mentioned in my entry yesterday.

And at 10pm just now, I couldn’t decide which to watch: Gu Family Book on MBC or Jang Ok Jung on SBS. For about 15 minutes, I watched the latter before switching to the former and then switching back to JOJ again when GFB got too exciting for my heart to bear. And after JOJ ended, I hurriedly switched back to GFB again and both ended on very exciting notes. Argh. Can’t wait till next Monday!

[Part 1] 217. I need to do something about my skin

My skin is. SO BAD.
It wasn’t that good to start with and it got worse after I went to Singapore during winter vacation. Talk about climate change. For my skin. And then it worsened after I started wearing makeup when exercising, because of my bad skin. I used to remove my BB cream before I head to the gym but for the past few months, I didn’t and now, I have soooo many clogged pores.
My Clarisonic isn’t working its magic and maybe it’s also because I haven’t changed my brush at all since I got it last year and I don’t wash the brush head often enough. Maybe it’s because I’ve been slapping too many layers of products on my face twice everyday. Maybe it’s because of my diet because I rarely eat veg and fruits (thanks to the 711 and dorm cafeteria’s offerings) and I’ve been eating too much mayo 덮밥 which I’ve just realised, is very fattening. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been drinking enough water.
Words can’t express how sad I feel every time I look at myself in the mirror and think about the time when I had rather good skin where my problematic areas were confined to my t-zone only.

I can’t decide whether I should now spend my $ on more skincare products or go for a facial. The only place I trust for a facial is the clinic I went to in Bucheon back in 2010. Unfortunately, that beauty chain only has outlets in Seoul and Gyeongido.

Argh. For now, I shall watch my diet, exercise more and drink more water.
Can’t wait till I get a two-room in Seoul when I can finally have a fridge in my room and stock up on veg and fruits.

Goodbye, mayo 덮밥.

I’m not gonna eat this anymore. 

I’m hooked onto 2 new dramas! Gu Family Book and Jang Ok Jung, Living in Love :)

[Part 1] 216. Back in Busan

I was back in Busan by 1pm today and I spent the afternoon reorganising my wardrobe.
I’ve wanted to reorganise my wardrobe for the longest time and replace my fall/winter wear with spring/summer wear but I wasn’t able to find the pants hanger from the Daiso at Sasang and going to Nampodong’s bigger Daiso outlet is a waste of time and money. So last Monday, I decided to shop from Daiso Korea online and ordered 2 of the hangers which arrived on Friday :)
Now, my wardrobe’s so much neater! 1 hanger for my skorts/cullotes/shorts and another for my skirts and I freed up one shelf :)

I just spent 3 hours preparing (yet) another presentation on Singapore which I’ll be working on with 슬기오빠 and I actually started missing Singapore food for the first time. I rarely/barely/ever miss Singapore food but after searching for photos on Google, I got hungry and started thinking more and more about chicken rice. Oh dear...

[Part 1] 215. Ulsan for another day

I’ve lost the habit of taking pictures these days and I only have 1 photo for today.

EH’s parents pamper me too much. This morning, his dad asked his mum to buy me delicious food (oh dear, I think I just did a direct translation from Korean argh). So his mum bought a platter of sushi, a roasted chicken and a huge box of pizza from Costco for lunch.

In the late afternoon, we headed to 성남동’s Starbucks because I have a free drink voucher that’s expiring in a week’s time. These days, I’m quite suspicious of him and it doesn’t help that we no longer spend every day today. In essence, 반신반의 sums up my current state of mind and he tried to prove himself by singing a nice song for me at the 노래방 in an arcade.

Anyway, the plan was to leave for Busan today but I ended up staying another night because by the time we decided to go for dinner, it was 7pm and his mum wanted me to eat at their place instead. And since it was so late already, they asked me to stay for another night.

Our fav- java chip frap

[Part 1] 214. Ulsan for the weekend!

We spent 4 hours of class time going through the mock TOPIK paper and at the end of the day, my teacher gave us our result slip and needless to say, I FAILED it. Oh wells, that’s what happens when you don’t study for TOPIK anymore after passing it 3 months ago *complacency* If not for my 쓰기 and 읽기, I would have passed it. But it’s not important, it’s just a mock paper :P
It’s a wakeup call for me though, if I still intend to have a go at Level 6 in July.
Right now, I’m just enjoying life as the weather starts to get warmer.

Right after class, I headed to Ulsan to meet EH who’s having his mid-terms.
I thought that we would just go to a cafe to study together before having dinner and then I’d return to Busan. But his mum wanted me to stay for dinner and for the night too so we ended up studying at his place.

1-for-1 Big Mac promotion with my favourite fries

Beef and pork for dinner; curry and rice (not pictured)

Really delicious!!! 

[Part 1] 213. Mock TOPIK

OMG I woke up so late today! Luckily, Jenna woke me up!
My alarm was set at 8am but since we were only going to take the Mock TOPIK exam at 10am today, I ignored my alarm and went back to sleep, waking up only at 9.28am.
I managed to get ready in just 15 minutes and ran to the International Building, just in time to take the mock exam, which I don’t know why everyone has to take. Most of us have already forgotten many Advanced level grammar forms because we don’t really use them in daily life and I think I might actually fail the mock test :’( Furthermore, I made the mistake of eating my medicine before the start of the mock exam because I got really sleepy. I suspect that the medication given to me causes drowsiness :(

Blur pic because I was embarrassed about taking a photo of my food so I did it hastily

We spent the afternoon class going through the TOPIK paper and a few of us sitting in front almost went deaf. We don’t know how to tell our teacher that she doesn’t have to talk/teach so loudly because our classroom is pretty small and after awhile, it just seems as though she is shouting at us and we can’t really absorb what she’s teaching us -.-

Spent the evening working out at the gym before having my dinner of cereal and muesli in my room. It’s Friday tomorrow!!!!!!

[Part 1] 212. Wednesday

I was supposed to have my language exchange session with 이 선생님 today but she had a meeting in the afternoon so, I spent the afternoon blogging before going to the gym.
My body seems weaker than it was last week, even though I think I’m getting better already :(
I’ve just started on another drama- Jang Ok Jung! I love 사극 period dramas.

Lunch with Hung

Dinner + 2 ice creams. Oops. 

[Part 1] 211. Trip to the doctor's

Last night, the right side of my chest started hurting, like there was something pressing against me and I had slight difficulty in breathing. I got pretty worried because this was the first time that I felt like this. It’s been about 3 weeks and I’m still sick. And according to Jenna, I made a lot of noises when I slept last night, apart from coughing incessantly. Apparently, I sounded like I was in pain. So this morning, I decided to skip class to go to the doctor’s since the clinic’s operating time is till 5pm and I have my afternoon class till 4pm today.

Under our Hanwha insurance policy, there are 2 hospitals in Busan that we can visit, of which 1 is just in Sasang. So I went to the one in Sasang (West Busan Centum Hospital), near Exit #1 of Sasang Station.
The hospital is not exactly foreigner-friendly though. Sure, the signs are written in English too but other than that, I didn’t know where to go first. If you have a cold and you are visiting the hospital, go up to the 2nd floor to the Register desk and give your insurance card, Alien Registration Card and student card to the staff before proceeding to the nurse station and giving one of the nurses a slip of paper that you’d receive from the Register desk. Wait till the nurse calls your name and have your blood pressure and body temperature measured. After awhile, I was called into the consultation room. I wrote down a list of my symptoms on a Post-it in English yesterday night and just simply handed it to the doctor lol.  I didn’t know the Korean terms for them and all doctors here can read English, I think. My KU buddy’s now in medical school and his textbooks are mostly written in English. The doctor asked me what I wanted to do. Well, I thought he should know what I should do or need but he asked me whether I wanted to have an x-ray taken or just get an injection and medication. To be on the safe side, I asked for an x-ray so I had to go down to the x-ray room on the 1st floor.
I had 2 x-rays taken: one from the front and the other from the side. Well, I didn’t know that I had to hold my hands up in the air to take the latter and when the guy instructed me, I couldn’t understand him. I only heard “손 something something” so I asked him if he could speak in English instead and he said, “Put your hands up.”. And the way he said it was so funny that we both burst out laughing. 2PM’s Put Your Hands up…
Went back to the consultation room and the doctor said everything’s fine for me and that I just have to get the injection and eat the medication that he’d prescribe me. The injection 주사실 is on the 1st floor and you’ll get a butt injection. I was really surprised though because I’ve never had an injection for a cold before AND on the butt. The last time I had a butt injection was when I was a baby.
After getting the injection done, I went to the pharmacy that’s outside the main building, and beside the entrance to the carpark, to collect my medication. All in all, I paid 15,000원 for my consultation and 7,760원 for the medication. The medication was repacked into packets for morning, afternoon and night. It’s quite cool that the medicine was repacked for easy consumption but I have no idea which medicine is for what and which causes drowsiness :(

I made it back to school in time for the last period of our morning session before going for lunch with my classmates and having 2 hours of 시사 class.

Dinner

[Part 1] 210. Errands day

Farewell gift from Kawita

After school today, I went to Emart with Ikbol. We still have some leftover money from our EOY performance prize money to spend so we got snacks for our class. After lunch at the food court, Ikbol helped me to bring back some of my grocery shopping while I went to Kookmin to remove the transport feature of my int. check card and to apply for internet banking too.

Emart will be closed on the 28th too! 

Dinner. I really love eating rice wrapped in 개잎! The instant soup’s quite good too. 

[Part 1] 209. Sunday in Ulsan/Busan

Eating EH’s version of cereal for breakfast

After breakfast this morning, EH dropped me off at the bus stop before going to church. Before I left his house, his mum passed me some money from his dad and 2 Sunkist oranges. OMG! I didn’t want to accept either of the two but his mum insisted, saying that it’s his dad’s heart/wishes. 

Back in Seomyeon, I did some window shopping before going back to Sasang. I was at Daiso, looking for a pants hanger but the Daiso in Sasang’s too small and didn’t have much of a variety for hangers :( And when I was there, I noticed that it was raining outside and because I didn’t have any umbrella with me and I still had to walk to Emart to do my grocery shopping, I had no choice but to buy an umbrella for 5,000원. 

Then, I walked alllllll the way to Emart only to find that it was closed for the day -.- Walked back to the shuttle bus stop and after 15 minutes, it stopped raining ㅠㅜ 

First, I wasted 5,000원 on an umbrella when I already have 2 in my room. Then, I made a wasted trip to Emart :’( 진짜 재수가 없다. 

Back in my room, I cleaned my side of the room and washed the bathroom before heading down to the cafeteria for dinner with my classmates. 

[Part 1] 208. Ulsan 울산

It was a stay-in day today because he had to study for his upcoming mid-terms while I surfed the net and studied a bit. 

He cooked lunch for me!

What I gave to his parents

In the evening, he drove his mum and his mum’s friend to Costco to get us dinner. I decided to accompany him since I didn’t want to stay indoors all day long. While waiting for his mum and her friend in the carpark, EH got bored and did some crazy driving -.- 

Sushi from Costco

After dinner, I spent almost 2 hours talking to EH’s dad about many things: cost of manufacturing in China vs Korea, EH’s elder brother, cultural differences, etc. I couldn’t understand 100% of what he said but I think I could understand at least 50% though EH thinks I didn’t understand a single thing at all :’(

[Part 1] 207. 외국인유학생 체육대회 Sports Meet

There were no classes today because it’s our 2nd cultural experience 문화체험 for this semester- sports meet!
This time round, the meet was held at the basketball court in front of the sports stadium from 10am till 3.30pm.
I took part in the relay, like last semester, and my girls team won! I was chosen to be the first runner but I really wanted to be the last because I have a bad habit of slowing down when passing over the baton and I wasn’t confident of myself at all. I jog/run/exercise more than most of the other girls in my program but I’m a gym rat. I only run on the treadmill, not outdoors, and I run at a constant (slow) speed. Thankfully, I ran fast enough to give the rest of my teammates (all Chinese students) a lead of half a lap. The boys team lost though and we almost won the teachers’ race until one of our teachers forgot to pass the baton to the next runner and another teacher fell -.- So overall, 백팀 white team won and their winning prizes- umbrellas. I’m glad that we received water bottles instead because I don’t need another umbrella. I already have 2!

Food pack given 

Getting ready for 닭싸움

lunch

Walked back to my room to eat my medicine and get my shades

Beautiful weather! 

I made 2 false starts -.- 

At 4.30pm, I met up with my class again and 3 of us took 안 선생님’s car to Ashley in Jeonpo where we went to a few Fridays ago. The rest of my class girls took the subway while 2 of my teachers came to join us later on. Pan came down from Daegu to join us for Kawita’s farewell dinner too. 

I’m not sure if we took a class picture during the dinner though because I left halfway to use the washroom and when I got back, Pan and 2 of my teachers were leaving so I hurriedly gathered my stuff and left too. Pan was going to Nopodong to take a bus to Daegu while I was going to take a bus to Ulsan from there too and my teacher could give us a lift to the subway station. Wish I had taken a photo with Kawita before leaving! I won’t be able to send her off at the airport on Sunday morning because I’ll be in Ulsan :( Anyway, in my haste to leave, I grabbed the wrong leather jacket and only realised my mistake when I was in my teacher’s car. I had Baby’s jacket with me :( 

Anyway, the bus ride to Ulsan was really fast! I reached 학성공원 in record time…about an hour! Normally, the bus journey takes at least 1.5 hours but traffic was light at that hour so I made it to Ulsan early. EH picked me up from the bus stop and we finally went to 땅땅치킨 for supper but the place was way too crowded with (drunk) young adults who talked so loudly. 

[Part 1] 206. Thursday in school

Today, I learnt something new. Alright, I learn new things everyday but this is something that I want to share.
There’s a difference between 어디 가요? and 어디 가요?
When someone emphasises 가요? in his/her question to you, you don’t have to say where you’re really going to. You can just reply with “좀 어디에 가야 돼요”.
But if the emphasis is on 어디, then you should say where you’re going to.

I went for lunch at 인문관 with Ikbol, my buddy and a Japanese guy who’s a friend of my buddy and on exchange here.

Mayo 덮밥- my favourite food for now

After my afternoon writing class, I went to the gym for a much needed workout in preparation for tomorrow’s sports meet, in which I will be participating in the relay event again.

Dinner. 1+1 offer for the yoghurt drink! 

After dinner, I met up with Seulgi to talk about Singapore for almost 2 hours. Alright, halfway through, we digressed and started talking about each other. He’s going to be making a presentation on Singapore soon and since I have to present about my country again to my new teacher, we will be working on the powerpoint slides together :) 

[Part 1] 205. Meet-the-buddy & language exchange with my teacher

This afternoon, I met up with my buddy and we had our buddy session for the week over lunch in 인문관. Ikbol joined us and we had an interesting conversation about the importance of English in Korea and how some Americans think that just because they are Americans, they speak good/better English than others. It was a continuation of our discussion/debate during our 3rd and 4th periods. As usual, we were supposed to go through the textbook but we digressed and ended up debating on certain issues. Initially (like right at the start of my language program), I dreaded going to class because I was the weakest in my class in terms of speaking skill but after 1 semester and 4 weeks, I’m beginning to love debating in Korean^^

Tuna mayo rice for 3,000원

At 3pm, I met up with 이 선생님 for our language exchange session. Today’s session was really interesting and as usual, we digressed a little too but on both ends, we learnt interesting expressions (in Korean for me and English for her). I really love 이 선생님 and she’s the 1st Korean prof that I’m so close to! And as I’ve probably mentioned in one of my previous entries, we are both so alike in character :) Also, I feel comforted by the fact that she likes the way I speak in English. In the past, I used to hate fake accents but now, I realise the need for it. I’ve had people telling me that they don’t understand me because I speak in my Singaporean accent and I feel the need to adopt an American or British accent just to be understood. But I can’t acquire the American/British accent. Especially not when I’m living in Korea, for goodness sake. Still, I’m speaking English differently now and making the effort to speak slower and enunciate my words so that I can be understood. Once, I said “mischievous” and a friend asked if I was speaking in Russian -.-

Despite being sick, I decided that I can’t hold off another gym session so I went for a 1.5hr workout. Feel more refreshed now!

Dinner for today and I’m never gonna buy the Lotte Full bar again. It costs 2,000원 and it certainly didn’t make me full because I’m hungry now. 

[Part 1] 204. Sick :(

I came back to my room after lunch with my classmates today, instead of attending my afternoon class because my head was swirling and I had a fever ㅠㅜ Again, another day of no-workout. When will I ever get better??????????

this was really delicious! 

Had dinner with the guys again and then ice cream with Fouad and we ended up having a nice long talk about love and our scholarship program. I’ve just Skyped with my parents and my dad said that my grandma asked him to give me money to buy an air ticket home because of the North Korean tensions. And my mum asked me why I had to come to a war-torn country to do my MBA, of all places. 

I really don’t know how this current crisis will turn out. Nobody knows, and I guess the people around me, especially us foreigners, are getting more scared by the minute. 

[Part 1] 203. Finally, time for myself

 Ikbol went to Jeju over the weekend and bought back VERY DELICIOUS chocolates for us!

Finally, I had time off after school for myself, without having to run errands or go anywhere else. 

I did my laundry, packed my room and now, I just need to find the time to get my winter clothes dry cleaned and to re-organise my wardrobe for the coming spring/summer season. It’s still quite chilly these days so I wear my winter jacket over my summer clothes. 

Had dinner with Jenna, her buddy and his friends and 슬기오빠 gave me my favourite jelly drink^^. 

Thanks Jenna for the ice cream!

[Part 1] 202. Nonsan Strawberry Festival 논산딸기축제

I was up the earliest this morning because the cows in the shed beside our room woke me up -.-

Breakfast

Where we spent the night

The main building

At 11am, we finally left Jenna’s place and her dad drove us all the way to Nonsan! We were supposed to take a bus from Cheongyang or Daejeon to get to Nonsan, which is in between both places, but we weren’t sure how to get there. Her father was quite worried and hence, he decided to drive us all the way there and the journey took about an hour.

Traffic was quite bad because of the large crowd of visitors and since it rained all day long yesterday, the ground was VERY MUDDY. Actually, Jenna’s dad works in the agriculture business and knows quite a lot about food festivals and all. So he called up some of his friends to find out more about the Nonsan Strawberry Festival. According to him, a good time to go to a festival is between the 2nd day and the 2nd last day, and the best time is on the 2nd day. Today was the last day of the festival so certain items were already sold out e.g. strawberry makkori :( 

The mud :( 

At the Nonsan Strawberry Festival’s main event area, what you have are rows and rows of stalls selling strawberries, food items made of strawberry e.g. strawberry rice cake, strawberry 호떡, strawberry juice, strawberry everything, etc. Non-strawberry-related food and products are also sold too. And then you have the handicraft stalls too and the longest queue for a stall was for the temporary tattoos/face art for the kids. The 3 of us got excited about making our own soaps :) Jenna and I made our own soaps at a stall for 3,000원 each and after walking down the stretch, we chanced upon another soap-making stall and that stall had even nicer designs so we made more soaps. You have to wait for 20 minutes for the soap to set before collecting it from the stall.

The 1st soap-making store that we came across

The kind ajumma who later guided us in our soap-making

The mold for my soap

The bottom of my soap was perfect UNTIL I decided to add one drop more -.- 

Selecting fillings for our ice cream soap. I should have thought about colour coordination but I didn’t and just thought of choosing one of every colour -.-  My soap turned out really bad :’(

Strawberry 호떡 for lunch. The ajumma gave me 2 pieces instead of 1! Maybe she can tell that I eat a lot. 

Valentina so cute! 

Performance by the Mr. Pizza crew

After spending about 2 hours at the festival, we decided to head back to Daejeon. It was almost impossible to get a cab near the event area because of the road blocks, so we walked to the bus terminal. We didn’t have a map of Nonsan and basically just followed the crowd and relied on Google map to find our way there. The bus terminal isn’t that far from the event area though, say 15-20 minutes away? The bus ticket back to Daejeon cost 4,600원 and the journey took about an hour. Jenna bought wet wipes from a convenience store and we spent the 1st half our bus journey cleaning our muddy shoes :’(

Upon arrival at the bus terminal in Daejeon, we took a cab to Jungangno to shop at Wonderplace where I ended up buying a dress and 2 blouses before going to The Kitchen, above Sung Sim Dang bakery for dinner. I really love the shopping area in Jungangno! And the underground shopping area is bigger than Seomyeon’s, making it less claustrophobic to shop.

After dinner, we went to The Oven Story cafe, which is above The Flying Pan restaurant, also owned by Sung Sim Dang. The cafe’s Jenna’s favourite one in Daejeon and I can understand why. Had a jasmine tea there for 5,000원. 

Ring the bell to get the waiter/waitress’ attention

Jenna’s friend who joined us for dinner too

My soap…the girl assisting us stuffed another yellow rose into my soap, ruining the design because I now have 2 yellow roses on the same side while the leaf went to the back :( 

Jenna and Valentina’s pretty colour-coordinated soaps

Love Jenna’s soap!

The first soap that I made. Smells really good too! 

Underground shopping centre

From Jungangno, we took the subway to Daejeon Station because we were running out of time and had to rush to catch our train. We were supposed to take an earlier train but we wanted to spend more time at the cafe so we cancelled the tickets and bought another 3 more at a later time.

Daejeon subway

Daejeon Station

Here’s a picture of my OOTD since it was so cold today that I had my coat on almost all the time.

I had a great weekend in Daejeon, Cheongyang and Nonsan. I definitely have to go back to Daejeon again to shop and buy more biscuits from Sung Sim Dang!