midterms, cocoon, and gyeongbok.

last week was midterms for my school so i only had to come to work until noon everyday, which was awesome. on wednesday i went shopping in myeong-dong and spent way too much money (oops) and on thursday rebecca and i ventured to a vintage market. this is one of my favorite finds so far in Seoul. Dongdaemun market is one of the world's largest wholesale markets and you can find basically anything on the planet there. In one building of the market (called Gwangjang market) there are 2 floors of secondhand clothes. The only way I found the place was because i researched it on the internet, its actually really secluded. The market smelled like mothbolls, which was awesome, and had tons of vintage leather bags, jackets, boots, t-shirts, and all around awesome things. I could have spent hours upon hours there digging through all the things. At the market I got a sequined vest, shirt, a little purse, and a Detroit Tigers shirt.

The weekend officially started on Friday and we headed to Hongkik University or Hongdae as it's called (Dae means University). We went out to dinner and then hit the bars and clubs. We met some Koreans who took us to a club called Cocoon. It was a packed dance club that reminded me of London+Acapulco. We eventually went to Burger King around 4:30AM to wait for the subway to open at 5:30 and then all went home. I walked into my apartment around 7AM. Killer.
That day I mostly slept off the night, but then it was the guy I work with, Luke's birthday. We all went out to dinner in Bundang for some Indian food and it was sooo good. After dinner the group was headed back in Seoul to Hongdae and I decided I couldn't do it again (i know im old) so i met up with Amy, Adam, and Rebecca around the corner at a bar. We hung out at the bars for a little while, smoked some apple hookah, and then all hopped in a cab to my house. We had a slumber party at my place and in the morning cooked some eggs and watched Michigan lose to Iowa. We had woken up in the middle of the night to see if Wisco was worth watching... aaand it wasn't obviously.

On Sunday Me Amy and Rebecca decided to keep to our tradition of not wasting Sundays and doing something touristy and went to Gyeongbok Palace in downtown Seoul. This palace is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Seoul and it's HUGE. We walked around for a few hours taking pictures and enjoying the perfect fall day (sorry to all you at home, its still around 70 during the day here). The palace literally took 2 hours to walk through and was full of doors and colorful fun things to take pictures of.

After the palace we walked around the main drag of Seoul. The downtown area acutally reminds me a lot of Chicago. I could tell it was going to be a cool sunset so I wanted to watch it. We happened to be walking near one of the tallest buildings in Seoul so we decided to try and see if we could get to the top somehow. We took the elevator to the top floor and stumbled upon an amazing resturaunt with 2 story windows overlooking the whole city. We decided to have some expensive glasses of wine and enjoy the sunset. Sometimes spending money on something like this is worth it. We also made reservations here for November 6th (yeayuhh).