Lunch at Hongdae

Last friday, I met up with Ken for an overdue catch up session in Hongdae (홍대). This was my first time back in this neighborhood again and it certainly felt good to back in a familiar place. If you visit Hongdae frequent enough, you'll eventually noticed that there are certain spots that are very popular for meeting point. Exit 8 and 9 are those spots for Hongdae subway station. Whether you come in the morning or in the afternoon, there will always be people standing or sitting around those exits, looking at their cell phones waiting for the people who they're gonna meet to come up from the steps.

So, following the popular choice, Ken and I decided to meet up at exit 8. It's just easier that way to find each other. We haven't seen each other for almost half a year and it was nice to feel that almost nothing has changed since our last meet when he showed up and greeted me like we just hung out yesterday. We made our way to the lunch place, Gaemi (개미), around Sangsu (상수) area and the food there was delicious and cheap. We had the Steak Rice Bowl (스테이크 덮밥), the Cube Steak Rice Bowl (큐브스테이크 덮밥), and the Salmon Rice Bowl (연어 덮밥) to share. And each menu was under ₩10,000. A pretty good place for a solid lunch I would say. We walked around the area for a bit to shoot some stuff before moving on to the next place. It was a successful lunch outing overall. 

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Paul Bassett

For those of you who doesn't know, I've been spending time in my hometown these past few months and now I'm back in Seoul again. Spent the first day back just chillin' with @unlikelysquiggle at Paul Bassett (폴 바셋) the whole afternoon after meeting with @soozee324 to wish her a happy birthday. I've passed by Paul Basset hundreds of times before, but never actually tried this place before. The places always seem to be crowded for some reasons when I passed 'em by. Ordered royal milk tea lattes and the earl grey roll and we were pleasantly surprised on how good the food and drinks are. And by good, I mean not too sweet. The cake was really moist and fluffy too.

Anyways, I will be staying in Seoul for a while so things should be interesting in next couple of weeks. You can follow along daily on my instagram or my snapchat (@greysuitcase) to get a peek on what I'm up to here in the city. 

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Chocolate Snowflake Bingsu

Patmiok's (팥미옥) version of chocolate snowflake bingsu (초코 눈꽃빙수) is my favorite chocolate bingsu that I've tasted so far. The thing about it is that it's not overly too sweet and those really crunchy chocolate toppings are just delicious. They also offer two different serving sizes for your order that you can choose from—1 person or 2 persons (1인/2인) serving. This location that I visited is the one located in Sinchon (신촌) area, but they have multiple locations all over Seoul so you can find them in different neighborhoods as well. I would definitely recommend this bingsu, especially if you are a fan of chocolate.

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Graduation Day

Last summer, some of my friends from Yonsei Korean Language School finished their 6-levels language program and I got the chance to attend their graduation day. It was truly a bittersweet moment. I've became good friends with some of these people and I know how hard they studied and worked for to get to this point. I was truly happy for them for completing the whole program and made it this far. On the other hand, it was kinda of sad because I know we probably won't be able to see each other that often anymore. A good number of people are going back to their home countries after this graduation to go on with their next chapter of life and, to be honest, I don't know when I will be able to see some of them again in the future. Even so, I'm grateful for the experiences and good memories that we've shared together during the short time that we have in school. Some I got to be friends with and some, I'm even lucky enough to call my good friends. 

It's apparently a tradition at Yonsei KLI to wear Hanbok for graduation day, so almost everybody wore Hanboks at the ceremony. I went for a little fun impromptu photoshoot with a couple of my friends to commemorate their last day at school. Sharing with you some of my favorite shots from that afternoon. Hope everybody have a great weekend ahead! :)

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Here are some behind the scenes shots. My friends are one silly bunch :P

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Royal Guard Changing Ceremony

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this ceremony was "the royal guards sure have a really cool uniform". My eyes were feasting on the colors of fabrics that the guards were wearing. I mean, how can you not, really? Plus they have really cool hats, flags, weapons, and musical instruments too. There are two royal guard changing ceremonies that you see in Seoul, one in Gyeongbokgung Palace (경복궁), and the other one at Deoksugung Palace (덕수궁), which is the one I went to. The ceremony itself took about 20 minutes or so, consisting of the guards marching out of the gate bearing flags and playing traditional musical instruments, the exchange of guards, and the final march accompanied by the traditional musical instruments once again. I would probably recommend checking this ceremony out at least once because it's pretty interesting. Since it's a scheduled ceremony, you can check out the time to see it here before coming to Deoksugung Palace.

Fun fact: I had to get pretty close to the guards to get the low-angle shot and when the head guard saw me squatting in front of him, he stared directly at my camera for a good minute without blinking. He's so cool for being a good sport about it. 

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