Interlude to Taiwan~

When the weather is warm and the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, studying is the last thing hat anybody wants to do. Yet my first midterm is this Tuesday, and it is followed by exams on Wednesday and Thursday. Another project has to be finished before I leave for Taiwan on 5/3, and my transfer application to Emory is due 5/1. Still, I can't get in the mood to study.

You can do Cherry Blossom viewing in Sinchon too!

The weather has been lovely all week, but today is a rainy day. Maybe that's why I was finally capable of burying my head in a textbook for a few hours at a time. Studying in a cafe would have been better.

Tonight I am having dinner with a friend from home. There is a popular okonomiyaki restaurant in Hongdae that I really like, and a branch just opened up in Sinchon recently. I'm looking forward to seeing if this branch is as good as the Hongdae one.

Yesterday I went with a friend to get Sbarro's pizza at COEX mall at Samseong Station, and took a bus from there to visit Orga Whole Foods. The pizza didn't taste exactly the same as at home, but close enough that we wolfed it down before even taking a picture. We tried the Baked Ziti too, but even though it's my favorite at home they drenched it in so much tomato sauce here that it was more like tomato soup than a casserole.

After eating we browsed around all of the cute stationary shops in COEX looking for keyboard stickers. We were able to find a few sets in the Hello Kitty store, but I wanted to check if I could find any different styles online so I didn't buy. I did buy a really cute paperback book that is blank on the inside and can be used as a journal! This post was written down in that book :)

After we splurged on cute things we took a bus to the Orga Whole Foods for some long awaited healthy shopping. It was a lot smaller than expected, but I managed to find Amy's Vegetable Lasagna in the frozen food section as well as some unsweetened soy milk! In Korea most of the soymilk in the stores is sweetened, so finding this was heaven for a lactose intolerant person like me.

I spotted a freezer containing green tea coconut ice cream, but the dormitory doesn't have a freezer and there was no way I could eat it all in one go. That's probably a good thing, because a 200ml bottle of kiwi juice and a bowl of instant 팥죽 (red bean porridge) brought the price up to 20,000 won! (about 18~19 USD I think)

We took the bus back to COEX, and from there the bus home took almost two hours. It was already late, so the kiwi juice became my dinner while I was sitting on the bus. I felt too tired to study after that but it was too early to sleep, so I ended up looking at Taiwan travel guides for about an hour, then unintentionally talking to my boyfriend on the phone for longer than that.

I slept later than expected last night, but that didn't prevent me from waking up at 6:30 without an alarm and lazing around in bed until breakfast started at 7:30. I studied from around 8 until 12:30, then ended up looking at Taiwan travel guides again for another two hours... I'm really excited for my second trip to Taiwan!

I was lucky enough to get food poisoning, some throat infection accompanied by fever, and find out that my eyes are damaged from wearing contacts too often all in the two weeks before exams. I'll probably have to go back to the optometrist tomorrow, was supposed to go on Tuesday but had too many assignments due last week.

I know I was supposed to update on my last trip to Taiwan but it takes me a long time to write those posts! I'll update on how dinner was later :) and try to get back to the Taiwan update ASAP.