PurpleHello98

Today was a nice day with my friends! Blue, Green and I had dinner, but beforehand Blue and I had a bit of a day out---Green had to work, but Blue and I went into town and went to the mall, where I got a K-pop album, a DVD of Ponyo and a couple random DS games (MySims Racing, Sudoku Mania and Phineas and Ferb Ride Again), and to some other shops. We then went to this fancy little Italian place and I had some really nice pizza! It hit me and Blue while we were out that it was our last day out on the town together as teenagers! Well, in England, we'll have days out on the town, and we'll have days out on the town here once we get back, but it was our last day out on this town as teenagers, since we'll both be turning twenty during our semester abroad. Anyway, it was a great day! ^-^

Does anyone else find it ironic how the biggest consumer event of the year is right after a day about being grateful for what you have? Perhaps it's widely acknowledged, but I've only just realized it this year. Anyhow, even though I'm trying to be less materialistic, that isn't stopping me! I've got Christmas shopping to do! So my lovely boyfriend Grey is coming over and we're going to go into town and go to the mall, and try and see what we can find. I have a wee little list and a few other places to check out as well! So I'm going to try and suspend my disbelief or whatever. 364 days of the year, I'll try not to be materialistic, but this is Black Friday, baby! And at the end of the day I'm doing it largely for the people I love and for the love of the game, not because I'm actually all that obsessed with most of the stuff on sale. But at the CD store? Well, I won't start a Black Friday brawl...

Currently sitting in Blue's university's library and WOW, is this place cool! The part I'm in is all old, with wood paneling and a stone arch over the main entryway, and this really high vaulted ceiling. This is freaking INSANE!!

This morning I got the grand campus tour, and this place is so stunning! All the trees are so big and beautiful, and the leaves are starting to turn here. It's so beautiful! Blue also showed me this little garden near his campus and it was also very beautiful.

This afternoon we took some good ol' public transit to go downtown. Not as nice and fancy as the public transit in Korea, but then again, that's hard to achieve. Anyways, we went to this place that had pork katsu sandwiches, and mine was really quite good! Although I don't think it's the one I'd order were I to go back there. Anyways, afterwards we went to this INSANELY cool bookstore (have I used the word insane too much in this post?) and... I may or may not have spent $90 on books! I got an Elizabeth Gaskell book, this really interesting book that's a novel framed as a memoir of Queen Victoria, a book to learn Korean that includes clips from some K-drama actor, and a few others! Afterwards we trekked to this cute little shaved ice place where we had a really good mango shaved ice.

We came back afterwards, and since then---except for a dinner break where i met one of Blue's college friends and had some very good ravioli---I've been sitting in the library! I've listened to my iPod, surfed Wikipedia a little bit, e-mailed some and now blogged here. :) Now I'm going to go workshop a little idea I had on the plane ride for a short story for my creative writing class! Toodles!

(Because I'm sure there'll be a part two.)

Well, I've been doing a crap tonne of shopping the past few days! My aunt and uncle's flat is a couple blocks away from this insane mall. Coming from a town without a mall, where the nearest mall is only one story, to one which (including underground floors and a rooftop lounge-type thing) is ten, I believe, is insane. And so we've been doing a lot of shopping.

One favourite destination is Daiso, this kind of Korean/I think it might actually be Japanese version of Five Below, with all sorts of useful, cheap stuff--but it's not so focused on being "trendy" as Five Below, and since the won is pretty weak everything is extra cheap for foreigners. We bought so many things there, including these UV-blocking parasols that apparently Korean grandmas (a.k.a. ahjummas, in Korean) love. Step one of my becoming one of them. I'm basically an American grandma already, as I joke about with Blue, so what's going to stop me from being a Korean grandma? (Aside from obviously being white as a saltine.)

Also on our first day, we checked out a nearby library that's, again, insanely big compared to our little library at home. We then ended up going to this historical palace place, where I was the only one who made it up this massive hill without being tired--another point in my ahjummafication, since according to my aunt even if you think you're making good time up the hill, there'll be an older lady walking faster than you as if it were nothing. Point two of my ahjummafication.

We also found an entire unmanned store of gacha machines playing what was basically carnival music, and also this cute little street market! I found what apparently are "ahjumma clothes", according to my aunt, and of course they're my fashion style so I bought three. I actually managed to stumble my way through the transaction (most of which was the man telling me he only accepted cash, not the card I proferred) with my very rudimentary knowledge of Korean and no translator app!

Ditto today, when we went to Seoul (my first metro experience!!) and went to Namdaemun Street Market. I found a couple of places that sold K-pop merchandise and got some TWS, Zerobaseone and a little bit of Girls' Generation, Super Junior and GFRIEND--and surprisingly, some X1, even though they released one mini album and then immediately disbanded amidst scandal. Actually, there was a lot of X1! Anyways, I managed to use my very rudimentary Korean to ask if there was any Verivery merch at either shop--sadly, no--and check out, and I only had to use a translator app twice--one to ask the guy at one shop again because I wasn't sure if we were understanding each other, and one to ask how much a Girls' Generation Season's Greetings was at the other store. I came home with a lot of photocard-type things as well as that season's greetings and some bootleg Stray Kids merch for a friend back home. It was really cool!

Also at Namdaemun Street Market, the fourth point of my ahjummafication happened when I bought some colourful scarves, which are really popular with the older ladies here--one of the exceptions to the monochrome rule which I mentioned a few days ago. We also got folding fans that each come with their own colour-matching holder, and I tried Korean doughnuts--pretty good, but I'm not a red bean girl.

Also, I tried kimbap for the first time yesterday--pork donkatsu or something to that effect--and ADORED IT!! It's one of my favourite foods now. I also had some bulgogi kimbap for my first lunch today--that's a story for another post--and loved it, too!

We went to N Seoul Tower today, too. There's a bunch of stores and some historical things, and then a massive tower with an observation deck you can see all of Seoul from. And go figure, it's perfectly fine, although filly cloudy (not "partly cloudy" like the forecast said) when we left, and when we got to the tower the fog was so thick you couldn't see anything. I did have my first karaoke experience, though! There were these little noraebang (the Korean word for karaoke) booths in this arcade place, and my aunt gave me a few coins to go and play. I sang Into The New World by Girls' Generation and Why Why by Shannon Williams (the binder of songs was A) 500 or so pages long and B) alphabetized, but all in Korean, and I don't know the order of the Korean alphabet, so sadly I couldn't find any Verivery), and it was really fun! Although a little "21" popped up at the end both times, which i think was my score--but then, since it was 21 both times, maybe I didn't do so badly after all? It was still fun either way!

We also stopped at a couple of other shops and the historical monuments--including some beacons they used for smoke signals back in the day, like in Lord of the Rings--and were going to stop at this K-pop shop on the bottom floor, only to find out when we climbed down a bunch of stairs to the alcove it was in that it was temporarily closed, and looking inside, totally empty. What the heck?!?

My cousin did show me a k-pop section in the bookstore of the mall next to our flat, though, and I got TWS's first mini album (although I accidentally got a platform version instead of a CD version, even though the employee said it included a CD) and NCT Wish's most recent mini album! I put them on my iPod and listened to them on the subway today, and they're both really good!

Anyways, that's all I can think of for now, and anywho I have to get up early tomorrow, so I'll leave off here. Good night!

So yesterday, my mother and I were at a strip mall to get me some new school clothes (ugh, less than three weeks), and whilst we were there, we stopped at a dollar store. And me being me, what should've been a $5 trip turned into a $20 trip. I got two tubes of lip gloss (I LOVE LIP GLOSS), one a bright pink and one a subtler lip colour. I also got a little blending sponge thingamajig, some gum, some cookies n creme chapstick that I could not resist, and an apple cinnamon candle.

I've also been on the hunt for some nice concealer recently and at said dollar store shopping stree, I thought I had found the perfect product. Or at least the best one that I had seen in any dollar store. It was the lightest shade they had available (or should I say lighter? They only had two shades.) and in the bad dollar store lighting, I thought it was a pretty great match for my skin tone. But let's see what happens when we contrast my pale, could-probably-pass-for-a-vampire-because-I-rarely-go-outside skin and this tan, pretty-much-the-colour-of-khaki-dress-pants concealer. So yeah, that's two tubes of concealer I probably won't use. But on the upside, maybe if I scuff my wooden desk I can use it to cover it up.

Also, for some reason I've been obsessed with Gordon Ramsay clips on YouTube recently. Like I've spent maybe 1/3 of my YouTube-watching time over the past few days watching Hell's Kitchen, Hotel Hell, and like all of his shows. I've also watched some more Murder, She Wrote, and I think I love that programme more and more with each episode!

Also, I woke up this morning to rain. Thank God! And I can see the forecast through Thursday, and none of the days have a high above twenty-nine degrees! YES! The heat index recently was above forty degrees, so this is a WELCOME change.

Also, in quickfire news, the other day I was making some Kraft Dinner for lunch, and I meant to cook half a box of pasta. I put in the corresponding amount of water to half of a box of Kraft Dinner, but only after I accidentally added a whole box of pasta. I'm just glad my "not thinking whilst cooking" incident was when I was making Kraft Dinner, not something that can explode or something. (I'd hope Kraft Dinner isn't explosive).

But the weirdest thing about all of that is that somehow I managed to eat an ENTIRE BOX of Kraft Dinner. It was just a box's worth of microwaved macaroni and cheese, but by the way I acted, you'd think I'd just singlehandedly devoured an entire Christmas dinner meant for a family of ten.

But yeah, anyways, that's all that I have to talk about tonight, so I'll talk to you all later. Bye!