Hannam Bridge Cafe

On Monday my buddy Cecilia took me and some others out to Rainbow Cafe to celebrate the end of midterms! This cafe is super cool because it is located on a bridge and has awesome views of the Han River and Seoul skyline. Besides coffee and desserts you can also order fancy dinners! Here is a picture of the cafe:

Rainbow Cafe (plus Cecilia, Julie, and Melisa)!

The inside was really nice and we ordered cappuccinos and lattes (and shared a slice of cheesecake!) But of course, the best part was the views! We were able to go up to the roof patio to take some good pictures!

Han River!

The little green stick is the Namsan Tower. Korea University and where I live would be straight ahead and slightly to the right. 

It was a really nice night and a great way to relax after the stress of midterms! It's weird because for my Korean Language class our prof told us that we will not find out our midterm grade until after the finals :S. So I guess that is good and bad (you are forced to study very hard again for the final).

After the cafe we went down to the area of Gangnam to celebrate Hamza (exchange student from Morocco in our ItaeOne group). Gangnam is pretty awesome because it is like the "Tuxedo area" of Korea. There are lots of fancy shops (evan a Ferrari store-like selling real Ferrari cars, not just merchandise) and cool restaurants.

Gangnam is world famous now, thanks to PSY (again: click this if you haven't the other times I've posted this video). They even have a statue/set up/ touristy thing set up on one of the sidewalks to commemorate this feat:

"오빠 강남 스틸르!"
"Oppa Gangnam Style!"

Action shot of us dancing Gangnam Style.

Yeah! So that was pretty good for a Monday evening! :) (Don't worry mom, I didn't have an early class the next day and I got home at 11!). Love you and miss you all, thanks for reading!

Dog Cafe

Estelle had her birthday on Thursday, and since we all finished our midterms we went to Hongdae to visit a dog cafe! It is basically a cafe where you can order a coffee and just hang out with some dogs! There was an area for small dogs and another for big dogs. Besides dog cafes, Seoul also has cat and even sheep cafes! I really want to go to a sheep cafe next :P

Area for the big dogs.

Haha, they go where they please!

Awe, Celine making friends.

This dog was shaved to look like a lion lol.

Belle and the smallest dog I have ever seen.

Haha she had dog treats.

Sorry for the lack of updates. I was busy studying for midterms so there was nothing interesting to post about! Thanks for reading!

Coex Aquarium

Last week some of my friends (Belle, Chris, Joe, Tierney, Leslie, Emily (who are all American), and Estelle (France)) and I went to the Coex Aquarium! This aquarium is located in the Coex mall complex, which is owned by (of course) Samsung. This aquarium is awesome! They have 650 different species, with 40,000 animals in total. Besides fish they had seals, manatees, penguins, an alligator, otters, and even a monkey.

I thought it was pretty cool that there is a huge aquarium in a mall. That should be a staple of all malls.

Koi

Turtle!

Hahaha! My favourite fish.

Piranha's! They swam so fast I couldn't get a clear picture. They have crazy point teeth though.

TYLER! I took this picture for you. Fish in a Coke machine! 

Getting my hand nibbled on by little fish with the other kids. It tickled!

Haha, these ones looked constantly surprised.

Electric eel. It was so huge.

Otter!

Unfortunately my camera died about halfway through, so the following pictures are stolen from my friend's Facebook :)

Shark tunnel!

The seals spent more time swimming upside-down than right-side up.

Manatees. Almost as cool as narwhals.

Haha. Another small, yet hilarious fish.

Jellyfish

Lately nothing extremely noteworthy has really happened because everyone has midterms coming up next week. I have one on Monday (Korean Language) and another on Wednesday (Biological Psychology). Good luck to everyone else who is studying for finals! Thanks for reading.

Engrish Gold

This will be a very quick post, but I wanted to share this with everyone. For those who don't know "Engrish" is a slang term that refers to a bad translation of English from another language (for example Korean to English).

I understand language is difficult and mistakes are bound to happen, it's just that when they do they are often as hilarious as they are confusing. This was the exact text from the back of a girls jacket (she was sitting in front of my in Cell Biology class):

----------

Anyone Who Doesh't

Believe In Miracles

Is Not A Realist

Scine1986,desige and 218

Tlreatest victory has been to be able to live withyself

To ascent my shortcom ngs andthose ofthe

----------

That is exactly how it looked (bad grammar, spelling, spacing, and meaning). I wish I could have taken a picture for proof, but that would have been very obvious.

I will keep my eye out for more Engrish to share with you all!

Cherry Blossom Festival

For our last Friday event, our Itaewon group went to the Cherry Blossom Festival, which was held near the Seoul National Assembly Building across the Han river. They had a street blocked off so people could take a stroll and enjoy all the wonderful flowers. Because it had been a little "chilly" the past couple days (but not the sort of "chilly" you guys are having in Canada) not all of the flowers were blooming, but it was still beautiful nonetheless. Here are some of the pictures I took:

Not Cherry Blossoms, but still pretty. 

Here you can see the street lined with the cherry blossom trees. If the weather had been nicer I think they all would be blooming and make this picture more dramatic.

The Seoul National Assembly Building.

Parade! 

Looking across the Han River.

You can see the Namsan Tower on the top of the hill far away.

After we walked the street our group had a picnic of the grass (mandu and fried chicken lol) and just hung out for a while. It made for a really nice and relaxing afternoon! Thanks for reading everyone! Miss you and hope it starts getting warmer for you all!

North Korea

Now I'm no expert in the North Korean mindset or politics, but I thought I would share my thoughts regarding these recent developments. 

First of all, I think that a lot of the news that comes to North America has be made to make it seem like the situation is worse here than it really is. People here in South Korea are simply continuing with their lives as normal. Every little thing that the North does becomes "big news" so to sell more newspapers and make more money. Now obviously the situation is not ideal, but all of the threats (both past and present) have been proven to be empty. 

Second, I think that the reason the rhetoric from the North has increased at this time is because of the newly inaugurated president here in the Seoul. South Korea's new president (a female) came into office in February. With this change I think that tensions between the two Koreas increased. 

I still feel very safe here. I am not worried about a war starting. Reports have shown that North Korea's missiles are not directed at Seoul and their army does not appear to be on stand-by. I have received an email from the Canadian embassy, however they reiterated that travel is still remains at the "exercise normal security precautions" (lowest danger level), but advised to follow any developments that may occur. I also received an email from KU saying that although the threats are now different from before, they "have been proven to be void" and we should be more worried about the fact that it is supposed to snow overnight.

Anyways, please do not worry about the situation here. It would be outrageous for the North to start a nuclear war as their are too many allies against them and they would end up destroying the whole Korean peninsula anyways. 

On a happier note, here is a picture of some flowers right beside CJ House. On Friday our group is going to the cherry blossom festival, so I will have even more pretty pictures soon!