Adrenaline..

Seoul Day-14

May 26, 2013

Couldn't really believe it, but today was the last day of our activities together before going on separate ways tomorrow.  We were going to an amusement park for today and have fun to out heart contents. Since the park was really far, we were supposedly to leave the temple by 7:30a.m. but we were pretty much behind the schedule. We missed a subway and to make things worse, we also missed a bus that only come once in about 40 minutes. And although all of us managed to squeezed into the next bus, all the seats were taken and there were many people who were standing including us. It felt like all of the standing passengers were touching each other and that made me extremely uncomfortable and to topped it all, that was not a short ride. If I was not mistaken, it took about 40 minutes to arrive to our destination where we took another free shuttle bus to Everland.

Everland entrance

Although it was still morning, a lot of people were already gathered in front of its main gate and everyone seems to be in a happy mood, especially little children. Interestingly, for the first time, I heard there was such thing as foreigner discount. I don't think I ever heard or received this kind of discount before and it amazed me. So being a foreigner does had its own merit I guess. Another thing that attract

Her outfit looks so pretty and cute! >_<

my attention was how pretty their outfit was. It was pink and gave a sense of gentleness and it was complemented perfectly with wide-rimmed hat. Stepping into the theme park felt like stepping into some magical land thanks to the music that kept on playing and bright colored props they use such as a huge colorful tree.

While I and Jon on Double Rock Spin. It
was awesome!

It was a huge park with a lot of rides available and interesting places to see. The park was divided into several categories such as American Adventure, Magic Land and Zootopia. However, most of the popular rides had a pretty long line waiting and consumed a lot of time. For instance, for one of the ride that I, Jon and Spencer rode, Rolling X-Train, we had to wait in line for about half an hour before our turn and the ride does not even seemed to last for more that 1 minute. But since that was the first time I rode roller coaster, I was kind of glad it wasn't super long or else... However, due to all these waiting, we don't have enough time to ride a lot of the other rides we decided to visit shops and the European Adventure. It was really pretty with flowers everywhere and that was the place where most families

Taking a break..

chose to rest and eat their snacks or lunch. In these area, there was a rose garden where a lot of couples were strolling around while holding each others hand. Indeed, with all the full-bloomed roses shaped into hearts and faint sweet smell of roses, it created a rather romantic atmosphere.

Forever alone =.=ll

But then again, couples in Korea were pretty different that couples in Malaysia or in the States. Firstly, as being mentioned in Korean textbook that we used last semester, in general Koreans like to touch, things and human, a lot. For instance, its pretty common here to see high school or college girls linking arms while walking and shopping or guys putting their arm on their guy friends. And in dating culture, although there were more couples kissing openly in public in the US, I think Korean couples displayed their skinship more. It was rare to see couples that were not touching each other in Korea like holding hands, hand on the waist, girls linking their arm

Pororo couple.. hmm..

with their boyfriend or guys leaning on their girlfriend's shoulder in the subway. Another dating culture that was really obvious in Korea was the way they dressed. And I dare to bet that 98%, if not 100%, couples in Korea own at least a matching cloth or accessories with their partner. It could be anything like similar but not the same colored shirt, stripes t-shirt, shoes, pants, matching animal ears or even the exact same shirt. It was as if their skinship was not obvious enough to declare they were dating, matching apparels helped to bolster their silence declaration. While I think it looks pretty funny sometimes and I don't think I would be able to do that ever, there were some couples that looked pretty cute wearing matching attire. All of us became more aware of matching couples since one of us secretly collecting pictures of these couples as his collection. And I was sure in Everland, he would managed to snap a lot interesting pictures.

Its Caribbean Bay, people! 

We had lunch in one of the restaurants available in the area and luckily they served seafood spaghetti. When we were done, all of us except Aidan and Brandon left Everland and went to Caribbean Bay which was right next to each other. I could never believe that I actually would be able to go that place ever since I first saw it being promoted by 2PM, SNSD and Bae Suzy  in YouTube. Thanks to hundreds of people there, I managed to blend in(or I believe so) and join the rest and play together. However, getting into the women changing room gave a rather big shocked to me. Although I was perfectly aware of how Korean would be naked in "jjimjilbang" and thus I was supposed to be sort of prepared

Just being a little bit crazy.. =p

for it, I guess knowing and experiencing things were two different matters. I really couldn't take it and it felt extremely, extremely weird to me. I was basically rushing from the locker to the restroom to change and went out. We were in the wetworld for about 2 hours and as we came few days too early for all the rides to be open, the lines formed for the rides were much longer and time consuming. In the end, we only managed to ride one attraction and just swam around.

Dessert hunting begins!

Around 5:30pm, I decided to go home early with Prof Ahn, Elise, Spencer, and Christine as Elise and Spencer need to pack their stuff since they were leaving early in the morning in the next day. It was a long way back and took about two hours before we arrived at the temple. As we were pretty hungry, we dropped our stuff and went to dinner right away in Blacksmith. It was an awesome dinner and since I didn't made it on time to order for dessert, we went to a dessert/cake hunting before we headed home. Most of the cafes were closed since it was pretty late but luckily we found one and I bought one of my favorite dessert, blueberry cheesecake.