Leaving Seoul

It's 4:25 in the night and my alarm rings in an hour. Then in another hour we will take the bus to the Incheon airport. Bags are packed. It's over.

For the past week every day someone has left and we have said goodbye. It was like... Well, it didn't feel like this, when you're leaving yourself! I'm gonna miss so many things here, even though this is not a place or society I would move to for good.

The most of all, I'm gonna miss the life we had here. We were living in a fairytale, a dream world with no responsibilities but to be and enjoy. I know I'm not the only one feeling this way. And the worst thing is when we have to return to the real life and worries about whatsoever.

At times I thought that what the fuck is this exchange for? To show that this is the most fun you're ever gonna have, and the rest of your life is gonna be more or less shit making your way through the career tube until you get old and useless??

But I also realized that this has been a great opportunity to view your life from a broader perspective and to realize what you really want. That is: not what you're supposed to want.

One thing... I'm not always devastated, I usually have a good time. But for some reason I write this blog always when I'm feeling bad or something. I guess it's like therapy.

But anyway, it's sad to leave. It would be so much easier, if the cashier in a close by food mart and the coffee girl in our usual coffee place wouldn't start to cry when you told them you're leaving.

For some reason I always try as hard as I can not to cry in public.

Last night we went to a norebang.

For the last time...

But heads up now, girl! You're going to go backpacking in Southeast Asia for a month! It's gonna be great!

Now I have half an hour until my alarm. The birds are singing and it's getting lighter outside. I'm looking at the neighbour's brick wall for the last time.

...

In the summary. Career tube: fuck you. Southeast Asia: here we come! (with Raita and Ho Yiu)

Saying goodbye

Gregor and Mari left back home. They were ones of the people I was closest to and gonna miss the most. It was sad to say goodbye.

But at the same time I felt peaceful. There was no need to prove anything or do anything great when saying goodbye. I know, that they know how much they mean to me. And I know that they care about me. And I know we're gonna meet again.

Even though we had to say goodbye for now, I was happy that I had found friends like them!

Gregor, we're gonna film "Sound of Revolution". And Mari, we're gonna go out! ;)

Rollercoaster

It's one week until I leave Korea.

Because of that and some other things going on in my life at the moment, my feelings are on a rollercoaster.

And at the same time I'm panicing because I feel like I haven't done, felt or experienced enough. I feel like I have too much to do and because of that I can't do anything. I'm just paralyzed.

I know, that I shouldn't let the stuff just hang and stress me. On Friday I'm gonna be done with exams. I hope I can stop stressing and just relax then. Because that's how I wanna spend my last times here: just relaxing and doing what I like the best.

I am positively surprised how my mind has already gotten quite ready for leaving though. My love story with Korea has come to a point where we have to go our own seperate ways. We have had some great, great times, but I know I gotta let go. It's no good feeling bad, you have to move on.

Mari jokes about when it's time to leave. When you start to like kimchi and when Korean men start to look gorgeous, it's time to leave Korea. :)

Today we ate dog. Koreans do that. And it's not pet dog that youre eating. Anyway we wanted to try that out and ordered some dishes of dog meat. It tasted like any other meat. It was just the uneasy atmosphere while eating that made it different.

But on the way to the restaurant we saw an odd thing. You know, I've written about demonstrations. But this was quite a one.

The demonstators were disabled people. That was not odd. What was odd was when the demonstration broke out to be violent.

Here you can see a shield of riot police (which was totally rediculous). And demonstrators trying to brake the wall. Imagine the situation: disabled people in their wheelchairs with motors trying to drive and push the wall of riot police. Dzzzzt, dzzzzt, as they drove their wheelchairs 2 km/h to the shield. I don't wanna make fun on anyone, but you have to admit that that kind of a situation is quite absurd.

There was one even fighting. He was kicking the shields.

Again bravo, Seoul. If there were no riot police provocating the demonstrators these violent incidents wouldn't happen. You could see that the demonstrators were feeling bad and just taking out their anger to the police.

In this case the police had problems too though. They couldn't use physical power against disabled people. So they couldn't really do anything. At one point some demonstrators got through the wall and all the police could do was to withdraw. Go wheelchairs! :)

Busan

We visited the second largest city in Korea, Busan. It's the "capital" of the south side with great beaches and a huge port. It's unofficially called the "Miami of Korea". And because it was a bit rainy weekend when we went there, we had to motivate ourselves by shouting: Busan, babe, Miami!

Day 1: We left from Seoul in the morning. We took the KTX which goes 300 km an hour. It was funny; we travelled through the whole country in three hours.

Crossing Hangang on the train with a view to 63 building.

Making our way in the subway in Busan.

As soon as we got to Busan and to our "hotel" we went swimming. Water temperature was swimmable :) at least to Finns... But there we saw how Koreans spend time on the beach. Because Koreans are so concerned about not showing any skin and terrified about getting tanned, they don't have that kind of beach culture where they would wear bikinis and hang out on a beach or go swimming. They're fully dressed. And their activities are carrying each other into the water. I mean, this wasn't that just one person did this. On the beaches there were people everywhere, fully dressed and completely wet. They're gonna have a nice way back home in the subway then... :)

We showed an example and wet swimmin properly.

Feeling refreshed we hit the town. Busan wasn't that different from Seoul. I heard that there would be a huge change, but it was quite the same. However I noticed a light defference in the way people dressed. Busaners wore more laid-back clothing that Seoulers. For example there were no high heels-tight stockings-small dress-girls Seoul is full of. And people didn't look like the last time they had eaten was last Christmas.

A sight Busan was full of: seafood restaurants with aquariums outside. Some aquariums were so full it felt bad to see the animals inside suffering and waiting to be eaten.

We ate dinner on Gwanganli beach in a cool restaurant with a really cool view to a big bridge. And this is a really nice picture of Raita. :)

Us and the big bridge.

In the evening we played Gregor's favourite game, "Greifen!" :) (but i sucked in it...)

It was a bit weird though. We accidently went to an escort bar which was supposed to be classy and stuff, but we made a lot of noise. Well at least Tola here seems to fit to the classy part. :)

After that we went to celebrate Busan, babe, Miami! and shot fireworks near the beach.

And after that we went to a norebang. I was totally exhausted, because the night before was my hip hop performance, but everybody else rocked the house singing 99 red balloons and Let's twist again.

There is also a video of this, but i guess the singers would mind if I uploaded it... ;)

Soon after this wild performance my wish got true and we wen't to sleep.

Day 2: Our "hotel" was a traditional Korean one with no beds. There were thin blankets as matresses. Yay... Sleeping on that kind of a bed wasn't really that awful though, but some of my body parts were a bit sore the next day.

Our beds.

Our day 2 was a bit... well... Tola, Aapo and Gregor went hiking, but because of the rainy and foggy weather they didn't really see much of the views. But they enjoyed the hike. Ho Yiu and Birgit went to some temples and I guess they had okay time too. But me, Raita and Ville we wanted to go to an indoor snowboarding place. And we had problems one after another.

At first we took the subway to a wrong place we thought the "Snow Castle" was at. After wandering around and getting the real address, because we were so lazy and slow in the morning, we had to take a taxi there to win time. Well, it was quite far and we sat in the taxi. And after a while we arrived to the right place. But the place was closed. It seemed like it had gone bankrupt or something, but there was no mention of anything on the website. Well, it was already late afternoon and we hadn't done anything but sat in a taxi. And we were in Busan! And it was raining... Soo, we kept sitting in that same taxi and gave the driver another destination: jimjilbang (Korean sauna). That was the best decision that day. (By the way, taxis are cheap here. Our one and a half hour taxi drive cost 15 €.)

The jimjilbang was pretty fancy. There were many different pools inside and also on a balcony. There was a great view to the beach and my favourite sauna was one with huge windows and the great view. It was a perfect way to spend a rainy day: bathing and relaxing in hot pools and saunas.

In the evening we all met up and went to have dinner.

I was the grill master. :)

We also went to a sport bar because the soccer fans needed to see a game. We others hung out and played celebrity games.

And Raita taught Aapo a lesson. :)



It was a rainy night and Gregor shot a video of the ambiance.

We didn't feel like hanging in the bar the whole evening, so we rather went home to do activities. :) We played Greifen!, human piles on Ville, rolling Tola to the toilet and other quite weird things.


Another pile.

We realized that we hadn't gone swimming that day, so at 3 am we Finns (surprisingly...) headed to the beach. Since it was raining outside, towels were unnecessary. So off we went to the street wearing only bikini. Nah, it was fine, we got wet anyway. But when some Koreans saw us, they shouted: foreigners! :)

Day 3: Our last day in Busan. And it didn't rain! Yay! Of course the first thing in the morning we headed to the beach, cause we were in Busan, babe, Miami! That day was basically just beach and another beach until we left back home.

Aapo starting his morning with a little yoga.

On the beach.

Doing what Koreans don't.


Haeundae Beach.

Busan, babe, Miami!

Hip hop club Ggun

When I came to Korea, I wanted to get a hobby so I would have activities and something to do outside school. And in SKKU there are dozens and dozens of clubs to choose from. At first I tried out taekwondo club. It was okay, but really hard traning, which I do like, but it wasn't quite my thing. Well, later Anja asked if I wanted to go with her to a hip hop club she had found.

It was great! :) Just the fact that you have an activity where to go two times a week was really nice. But what was just awesome was that you met new people and did what I really like: dance!

Ggun.

The hip hop club is called Ggun. It consists of rappers, singers and dancers. And there are many different dancing groups: regular hip hop, locking, popping, girls' hip hop and break dance. We did regular hip hop and locking with Anja.

We danced the whole spring. And we had a performance in May. But apparently the Korean style is that you start to practise for the actual performance 2 weeks before the performance. This is true. We did just some random dance moves and small coreographies the whole spring, and 2 weeks before the performance everyone started to panic and we had practises every day. Those were very stressful times actually. I mean, we had a lot of fun in our practises, but during that time I didn't have a minute for myself. I went to school in the morning, had group meetings, more classes, and straight from those went to hip hop practise. And from that ran back to dorm to get in before the curfew. Yes, ran. And before going to bed did some school work. Because of that I didn't have much time to update my blog either...

Our locking team and late night practise.


People falling asleep...


But then came the big night! :D A concert of the whole club in our school's concert hall.

Anja watching the dress rehersal.

The atmosphere in the backstage was... I love it! You could feel the excitment in the air! People going through the performance in their heads and doing some last minute practising. And cheering before going to the stage. :)

Girls trying out their moves.

Guys doing their last minute practise.

Lockers getting dressed up.

Us in our hip hop performance outfits.

The hip hop outfits were cool, but when we saw our locking clothes for the first, okay also for the second, third,,, and probably even on the fifth time we were... shocked. Hidious. We were about to tell everyone that the performance was cancelled... But. After a while we realized that we're not ourselves on the stage, the clothes are part of the act we're doing. And when I look at this pic, I have to admit that we do look kinda cute with our pink bows. :)

Our locking team.




Our performance went well and we were so excited! After we had ran back to the backstage, we were out of breath, smiling and hugging each other. Oh, I don't want to leave Ggun!

After the performance we had dinner together. Awwaww, I'm gonna miss u! ^__^ <3

Hi Seoul Festival: Day time

The Hi Seoul festival was really cool. The theme was something like "from history to today" or something, and they had some old stuff on show. One of the exhibitions was a timeline through the last 50 years in Korea and one presented old everyday life places, and that exhibition you could take part in. There were actors interacting with the people. I got punished by a police woman for wearing too short shorts!

And as you can see, the theme color was pink.

The timeline of Korean history, aka the great things that happened to change the world:

1982 Antti was born.

1983 Mari was born.

1986 Tola was born.

1987 Greete was born.

Great events indeed...

But the intresting thing was how the years of Korean war were presented. Rainbows and flowers.


We experienced the old life with Mari.

Posing in a photoshop.

Sitting in a comic book store.

Admiring the precise work at a tailor.

Spying on a hairdresser.

Waiting for a school bus at the bus stop.

Not concentrating in the class.

But Mari was made to study by a strict teacher who hit his pointing stick to the desk. We got really scared in the beginning when we didn't realize what was going on!

And Birgit got a trimming at a barbershop.

It was a really nice day to go there. It was sunny and the weather was warm. Also the actors were all enthusiastic in the beginning of the festival. We walked by also on the last day of the festival, and the actors seemed quite tired... :)

Children playing in Cheonggyecheon.