Ho lee chow!

Helloooo rain. I guess I can expect a month more of this. Meh. It makes everything inconvenient.

Yesterday morning I went allllll the way back to Yonsei (it's about 1.5 hours) to go to orientation. But orientation involved picking up a packet of information, my t-shirt, and my student ID card. While this stuff is all quite important, it almost felt like a waste of a trip because of how little I had to do. However, it was good practice in how to get to Yonsei: take the subway first, then one of three buses, then walk. =)

Afterwards, Jung-soo and I went to meet her boyfriend (Tae-yoon) at Shinsegae Mall in Times Square. This mall is huge! But apparently, the largest one of these is in Busan. And that one happens to be the largest mall in Asia. Oh goodness... Here's a picture of just the cosmetics area:

The picture doesn't really do it justice, but it's all I have.

We ate lunch at a buffet with delicious food and talked a lot about cultural differences, haha. And Jung-soo and Tae-yoon got to practice their English a lot with me. Pronunciation frequently becomes a conversation topic.

Tae-yoon is going to the army in a few months. This service is required of all Korean males unless you have a disability. If you're disabled, you're required to do some duty but it's nothing like the actual military. From what I gathered, it's something along the lines of cleaning up vomit in subways and helping people get from one place to another in the stations. Sounds easy, haha. To qualify as disabled for the army, you basically have to be different. My cousin is exempt because he's too tall. Jung-soo's friend is exempt because he's missing a bone in his toe. If you skip duty, you'll be thrown in jail for 3 years. Your service would only be for 2. There is a sect of Christianity here that doesn't support war, so it encourages all its members to go to jail instead.

After eating, we went to the arcade, which had basically the same games that ones in the US do. And the price is quite similar as well. It was fun and after playing DDR, we were all sweaty. We had some iced tea afterwards and then decided to leave. The subway station, which was pretty much beneath the mall, was packed because it's also a train station. And it was around 6:00pm, which seems to be the time everyone wants to leave.

We finally got to dinner. It was a Chinese food place called Ho Lee Chow. The food was amazing. I was just glad it wasn't "Americanized Chinese food."

After that, we went for dessert at a fancy building where the apartments go for 3 billion KRW (or was it USD? I can't remember...either way, expensive). o_O So yes, we got weird looks from the table next to us when we got our cakes. But chances are, they were just drunk.

We picked up Jung-soo's younger brother up from cram school (where students basically just learn more after going to school). He goes to one in an area that's famous for having tons of cram schools. There's a law that prohibits these schools from being open past 10pm. So every cram school lets its students out then. Thus, the area is congested from about 10:00 - 10:20pm. Then, it's empty as everyone has left already. It's incredible.

Today, should be an adventure! I'm going to see my aunt, who is going to get me and Jung-soo's younger sister, Jung-ah (I don't know how she romanizes it), into a broadcasting station. =) Yipee!