Seongsu
For my last few days in South Korea, I decided to make the most of it! My friends and I decided to visit the cities we liked the most. One of them is Seongsu. Seongsu is known for cafe hopping, pop-up stores, and shopping. We knew we had to come back here one last time to cafe-hop and shop. There are a number of dessert cafes and bread cafes that were really good, but the lines can be long sometimes. South Korea’s only Brandy Melville is in Seongsu, and popular trendy shops like Rom&nd, Musinsa, Samo Ondoh, Hince, Dasique, and more.
Acqua Santa
After walking around for a while, my friend and I decided to stop at this cafe for a cold treat! We got mango bingsu, watermelon juice, green tea, and strawberry cake. It was actually our first time eating bingsu on this whole trip. Bingsu is a popular Korean dessert that is made up of shaved ice with toppings like mango (like in the picture) or with other types of fruit/red bean paste. It also has condensed milk and fruit syrup. It was so good, especially with how hot it was outside. It was a small cafe, so waiting to get a seat may take a while, but I would say it was worth the wait.
Hongdae
The next day, I went to Hongdae to do some last-minute shopping. They have a lot of clothing stores with cheap clothes, plus this place where you could get your caricature done for about $5 in about a minute. There are also a lot of restaurants nearby, like K-BBQ, where you can order some delicious pork belly! Karaoke is also a popular activity to do here. My friends and I did it, and we had a blast. Even though we aren’t the best singers, we still had so much fun together.
Korea University
This is me last time on Korea University’s campus! The building, Woodang Hall, is where I took a class called "Hanja: A Journey into Korea and its Language" with professor Adrien Carbonnet! The class was very interesting and very relaxed. The professor really cared about us and wanted to make sure we were really enjoying our time in Korea by exploring the area and not spending the whole day in the library studying! I would recommend this class to anyone who is thinking about studying abroad at Korea University too.
Kintex
The last couple days, my friend and I spent it going to K-pop concerts! We attended this festival called SBS Gayo Daejeon, and each day had about 15 artists performing. Some of the artists were IVE (in the picture), Itzy, Meovv, NCT 127, NCT Wish, NMIXX, and much more. It was super fun event and we were able to get seats that were close to the stage. They had this mini festival called Unipop before the actual concert where you could get some food, play some games, take photos, and listen to smaller artists perform.
We went to day two of the festival, but this time we got even better tickets! We did this blue carpet event, where we were able to see the celebrities up close. This is TXT, one of my favorite K-pop bands! For the actual concert, we had standing tickets on the floor, right next to the stage. It was so cool to get to see them perform up close, and I would definitely spend the money again. Some of the other artists that performed on day two were Enhypen, Babymonster, illit, NCT Dream, I-dle, and more.
Dongdaemun
This is the area where my friends and I stayed at in Dongdaemun. We left our dorm on July 25th, and our flights were on the 28th, so we booked an Airbnb for a few days here. I took this picture when we were waiting for our taxi at 7am to take us to the airport. While the surrounding area was super hilly and hard to walk with our luggage, I still found the views to be peaceful and beautiful.
ICN airport
This is the last meal I had in South Korea, pork bone soup. I never had this type of soup before, and I’m glad I was able to try something new for my last meal in South Korea. I will be missing the food in South Korea, like the kimchi, their KFC, watermelon juice, fried chicken, pork belly/K-BBQ, and so many other foods. I will miss getting up early to grab breakfast from the convenience store and a treat before class started. All the different flavors of milk, like banana milk, melon milk, strawberry milk, cantaloupe milk, etc, will also be deeply missed.
This is my airport ticket going back to the USA! San Francisco wasn’t my final destination; my final destination was Cleveland, Ohio, but even Cleveland was still two hours away from where I actually live. I was supposed to have a 12-hour layover in San Francisco, but luckily the staff at the airport was able to change my flight to where I only had a three-hour layover. I had such an amazing time in South Korea with my program. I made so many new friends, made so many memories, and got to experience so much. I will definitely be back to South Korea in the future, and I want to visit other countries too!