Seoul Day-1

I woke up feeling fresh and energetic for our first day in Seoul since I slept rather early the night before. After done getting ready, I and my roommate went to the basement of Shin Chon Hostel to get our breakfast, toast with jam. We ate and talked as the rest of the group members joined in and finally around 9:40a.m. our excursion began.

Our first destinations were Ewha University and Yonsei University. Both universities were founded by missionaries and located within walking distance from the place we are staying. While we were in Ewha University, I was impressed with the design of its building structure which seems like a valley of glass to me. People can walk from  both end sides of this “valley” and enter the building through various doors along the glass walls that lead to different floors of the building. Despite the fact that it is a university, the internal of this building gave me a slightly different vibe than most universities I had visited. In certain parts of it, it felt like I was walking in a small shopping mall with the existence of Starbucks and shops that sells bags and shoes and not to mention, we were informed that it even has movie cinema built into it.

After spending a good short time at both places, we continued our exploration to Hongdae area which flourishes with art and indie music culture under the presence of Hongik University, which has one of the top fine art colleges in Korea. The buildings in Hongdae area are pretty close to one another and it strongly reminds me of Japanese neighbourhood. In fact, there were a bunch of Japanese restaurants that we passed by. Since it was almost noon and everyone were getting hungry, we decided to stop at one of the Korean restaurants and ordered thinly sliced beef for everyone except for me and another friend who is a vegetarian.

In the restaurant, I managed to observe some Korean culture that I usually watched in Korean dramas. The first one, as also being pointed out by our professor, Koreans usually prefer lighter and non time-consuming for lunch as compared to what we ordered. As most of them were working and only in lunch break, having something like the grilled meat will slowed them down and slightly inconvenient. In addition, I also noticed vertical culture among Koreans which was displayed by a group of workers who were also having lunch in the same restaurant. Based on their behavior, it was clear that one of them has a higher position than the rest as the others were waiting patiently for him to exit the restaurant and bowed to him before they went to different directions.

Fully energised, we went to Yeoeuido Island located at the south of the Han river and rode bicycles along the river. It was interesting to note that despite the hot weather, most of people, young and old, were bundled that one could not even see their face other their eyes to prevent sunburn and /or tanning. For some, even their eyes were shaded behind a pair of sunglasses. I was told that it was because darker skin has a stigma attached to it. I believe this idea rooted from the idea of the importance of “pure blood” and sense of homogeneity among themselves. Generally having fair skin, someone who has darker skin tone might be considered “less Korean” compared to others and lead to difference in treatment from the society as being experienced by some mixed-race children born in Korea. Therefore, in order to prevent this unfavorable treatment, they chose to keep lighter skin tone at the expense of having to deal with such a hot weather.

Then, we ended our little tour with a visit to fish market in Noryangjin. We got the opportunity to choose the fish that we want before it being served raw in slices. Although I’m not a big fan of sashimi due to its taste and texture, I found that the fish that we ate tasted so much better. Although it was still slightly chewy, I was delighted to notice that it was free from any “fishy” taste that might comes with it. We also had some tempura shrimps and vegetables as additional to our meal today.