Kaycee meets Korea!: Ewha Women's University and Hongdae. Part 1

Two of my favourite things. Shopping and having an awesome night out with great people. The area of Hongdae (Hongik University) and Ewha Women’s University were two places that offered a various spots for both of these.

Ewha Women’s University:

While I didn’t get a chance to shop in Hongdae, my friends and I took a shopping trip to the area around Ewha Women’s University. Since Ewha is a women’s university, many of the shops cater to the students--both in fashion and budget! Once you divert from the main roads, which carry the more expensive shops and boutiques, you enter into inner roads that are filled (I mean FILLED) with lines of shops selling accessories, clothing, and SHOES SHOES SHOES (so many shoes!). After about five minutes of walking through the market area, I looked around me and thought the place could be endless. In short, it was awesome. When shopping there, you definitely need to be up for walking a lot and for doing some bargaining and comparing prices from store to store. The same shirt at one store could be priced more or less than in another. Also, some stores are not very organized, you can't expect anything fancy. So patience and determination to find something is a must, luckily that is not difficult. I saw a lot of things that I would definitely wear.

Finding my shoes my size was not as difficult as I thought it would be. I remember telling my homestay host, Serena, that I was a size 8 US and she gave me a surprised look. Yup, I’m a beast, no big. And it didn’t help when I found out when ordering my training shoes that my male Taekwondo teacher and I had the same shoe size, hah. It was interesting to come from Canada, where I worked at a shoe store and saw sizes like 7/8 as average--11/12 as at least existent—to believe how tiny everyone’s feet was here. So I was afraid that shoe shopping would not be possible for me in Korea, but I lucked out. In the shops around Ewha, the maximum size they carried was a size 250, which I happened to fit into. My classmates and I tried to take it easy, remembering that we had a flight to China a few days later, with a weight limit. I picked up two pairs of boots for a ridiculously low price. I have to say, the quality of the shoes at Dongdaemun seemed to be a lot better, but for less than $20CAN per two pairs, I was all for budget shopping. We then went into a department store called YES! a pm. I think it might have been the same store we went shopping in when we went to Dongdaemun, but this one was had a much weaker selection of clothing, as I believe they had just opened up and were still in the process of renovating. I left with nothing but a bunch of photos of funny outfits we saw being sold (see belowJ). After we decided we had had our fix for the day, we left Ewha. The damage? Not much. We stuck to the market stores and picked up some good-looking things. I left with three skirts, a long top, and my two boots for just under $40.

I remembered I had my camera in my purse half-way through and so I took some pictures. They aren't that great, and they are mostly of the ridiculous clothes we saw inside of YES! a pm. But here you go!

one of the many places selling shoes

Always wanted the Pringles man on my sweater.

The following pictures are photos I took inside YES! a pm. I don't want people to get the wrong impression of this store, or shopping in Korea in general. There are beautiful little shops set up selling great items. I just was too busy looking through those shops to bothering taking photos of them! So I ended up with photos taken while passing by not-so-good-looking clothing. I kind of wished I tried on the pink body suit though.

"I want to become a flowerpot at your small window....

you're going somewhere faraway from the very start you stoke my heart"

My heart's stoked man.

Rabduckasauras

Shops

Taking tiger print to a whole 'nother level here in Korea. Oh look, the Rabduckasauras bodysuit comes in teal too! OUUU! Decisions, decisions...

Quite happy.

Hongdae

Hongdae is a great place to both shop and go out at night. Unfortunately, I only had the time to experience the latter. The area is beautiful and alive at night. The inner roads are insanely packed with young club/bar-hoppers and all-night shoppers. I honestly don't know how and why people bother trying to drive on those roads. Like Ewha, the area surrounding Hongdae caters to its clientele. There are shoe stores, clothing boutiques, and vintage stores all over. But unlike Ewha, the streets are also packed with bars and clubs. The people there are also quite different from the crowd I've seen around Sookmyung. More males, more party-goers. Hongdae is a larger co-ed university that is known for its arts program, I believe. The area is thus filled with the arts. Students play their music for an audience and others sell their artwork and accessory/clothing designs on the streets. Also, in terms of fashion. There is more variety in Hongdae. People show off their individual fashions and play around a little bit more. Hongdae is quite well known, and I suppose that because of its reputation, we saw that it attracted many other foreigners too.

On our first night at Hongdae, we went to a bar/pub type venue called Wara Wara. I did not order any food myself, but it did not look that great and it was a bit pricy. The beer and soju on the other hand, was quite inexpensive. That was great. A pitcher of beer was around $15CAN. Back home, a team pitcher could go up to $25-$30. And this pitcher was MASSIVE (see pic below). The night was a lot of fun and I learned some really cool Korean drinking games. They LOVE their drinking games! Most of the games included a lot of singing and yelling. I liked it. Two games I'm definitely bringing back with me: This one that was a kind of a chance game, where we chanted "mandu mandu mandu mandu...(number)!" And another, called the "Shock game" that was filled with confusion and lots of yelling. It was cool, you don't need to go out and buy any beer cups or pingpong balls or cards to play, all the games were simple and hilarious. Oh, and the loser's drink? Half a shot of coke and a half shot of soju dropped into a mug of beer. I tried a drink and I have to say, not bad. Apparently the stuff, after just a few drinks, will just hit you without you knowing it. I'm not up for that.