Seoul University & Han River

I really should've finished blogging about Korea within the week that I came back from Seoul, but laziness sure got the better of me. I promise though, that I will be done before this week is over!

This post will be (obviously) be about my little trip to Seoul National University and the Han River.

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I had mentioned my love of mountains to Yeseul and she recommended that I go visit Seoul National University - which is situated in a mountainous area. It seemed like the logical thing to do, since I was already planning to see the campus. I always make it a point to visit a city's main university and Seoul was no exception.

So I left my family to their fun in Lotte World and hopped on a subway towards Seoul National University Station.

I really enjoyed my time hiking around the campus grounds. It took about three hours to walk from the subway station to the highest point of the campus, back to a different subway station on the other side. By the time I reached the highest point, sweat was rolling down the insides of my scarf. Still, the wet and cool weather kept my fingers stuffed inside my coat pockets. 

Light rain discouraged me from taking a gadzillion photos, but I think I wouldn't have taken many photos anyway if the weather were sunny. I was simply too caught up in the thrilling experience of walking and exploring.

The only reason why I paused here at the entrance to take a photo was because I noticed a bunch of tourists pouring out of tour buses to photograph this metal structure. I figured: if they're taking a photo of it, it must be something significant. 

The structure itself made no sense to me. I found out later that it looks like a Korean character. It also looks like a mountain and trees. 

Duh.

Just the sight of mountains in the hazy background made my heart throb with excitement.

Can you tell how starved I feel in Singapore, with our little Bt. Timah Hill? Sigh... And it's only been a year and a half...

SNU's campus grounds is huge. Most students here rely on shuttle buses or drive to get around. I hardly saw anybody walking or riding on bikes. The steep inclines everywhere are obvious deterrents.

Walking past the track, I had a wave of nostalgic sentiment wash over me for a second. I watched the track team pack up to leave from a distance.

I almost wished I could do a set of 10 x 400m right there and then. 

Then, as I recalled the miserable days I'd spent training out in the cold smoggy air of Jersey City, that sentiment quickly disappeared.

My journey took me through throngs of students weaving in and out of buildings. All leisurely heading to their next class or dorms. It felt a bit weird. It was almost like... I was an exchange student exploring the school on my first day. I avoided stares from other students (five of which sounded Singaporean) and found the straightest path I could to a lonelier corner.

I guess I didn't really care about seeing the campus after all. 

I just wanted to feel the light rain on my cheeks... Smell the fresh pine perfume.

I could feel a natural blush coming on. 

The higher up I climbed, the sweatier I was getting. It felt as though I had just gone for a nice long run and I liked it.

A pack of dogs appeared from nowhere and I honestly thought they were some sort of Korean wolf when I first saw them. This whitish guy stood there and stared at me for a good minute. 

Unafraid, uncurious and unyielding.

As his companions slunk away into the trees, I realised that I felt more welcome among them than I did among the students. 

Too many foreigners.

Ain't that the irony!

The views from everywhere were pretty spectacular. I could only dream about what it looks like here in the fall or when all the spring blooms are out. This place is Instagram heaven!

The dorms look a bit drabby from the outside though.

On a different day, I took my skates out for a spin at the Han River.

I was the only person in that entire stretch of asphalt who was rollerblading and that garnered quite a few stares from the hordes of cyclists.

I was glad that the weather forecast was accurate. I had chosen to go on the warmest day of the week. 19 Celsius at its peak.

I was not expecting so much SPACE.

This was the first day that I noticed the severity of Seoul's air pollution.

It was getting hot under my layers of clothing.

I skated towards the west side of the park, away from the Gangnam district. Apparently it's the lesser-pleasant side of the park.

Still thought it looked beautiful in the haze. 

The delusions of a traveller's mind.

The tallest building in Seoul.

As I was looking for an appropriate exit to Noryangjin Station, I had no choice but to approach a local to ask for directions. 

You should have seen us. 

Me - translation app and phrase book in hand. Broken, inaccurate (and often impolite) Korean.

Ahjussi - ZERO English

We had a little conversation for about ten minutes as I was removing my skates. It involved a lot of nodding on my part and plenty of rambling on his. 

Weekend In Pictures

July 15th full moon.

Gorgeous skies the next day.

Weekend of hiking.

Fishing.

Polski kielbasi.

Campfires.

Church.

And fellowship.

Roadtrip Part Two

Wow there were a gadzillion pictures to upload for this post! Took me about two days to get everything up.

Be warned, it's going to be a long one.

By the way, this post is a continuation of Roadtrip Part One.

So early that next morning in Montreal, we woke up to a cute breakfast downstairs. To be honest, the spoiled little girl inside of me was expecting a little more than just a few pieces of bread for breakfast but since I was so hungry, it didn't really matter what I had for breakfast.

After breakfast, we went back upstairs to pack our bags for checkout.

Afterwards, we headed down again to Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal) for more sightseeing.

Near the water.

Bonsecours Market.

Such a lovely place to sit and read.

Horse carriages waiting along the street. Those poor horsies!

I loved the pretty flowers in pots everywhere.

After Montreal, we took off for the U.S. of A.

The drive from Quebec to Vermont was breathtakingly beautiful. It took us through the state of New Hampshire which was just covered in pretty green mountains.

I guess that's why Vermont is called Vermont. In French, "vert" means green and "montagnes" means mountains. So Vermont must mean "green mountains"!

By late afternoon, after we'd done all our grocery shopping for the coming days, we got to Silver Lake State Park which turned out to be full.

Thankfully, the park officer had another park to direct us to so we went to Gifford Woods State Park to camp instead.

The park turned out to be really nice and the campgrounds were super clean. A reservation for two nights costs 48USD and we bought more firewood there as well. My favourite feature of the park is that the Appalachian Trail runs right past our campground.

We promptly got the tent up and the fire going in no time.

Had cubed tomatoes, cucumber, onions and mozzarella cheese for salad.

Dinner consisted of hotdogs, sardine pasta and Blue Moon.

The next morning, we got up around 08:30 and went for a short run. After breakfast, we set out for a hike on a nearby trail and part of the Appalachian Trail.

For some reason, there were a lot of butterflies flitting around- most of them half dead anyway.

The trail brought us to some small but beautiful waterfalls.

Saw baby geese along the way.

The weather was just right. Not too hot and not too cool.

Our hike ended at much bigger falls but they weren't "thundering" like their name suggested.

The hike back seemed a lot faster than the hike to the falls.

After about three hours of hiking, we finally sat down for a break near the end of the trail.

The river flowing beneath our feet.

We did not know that there were bears in our area until the last day, but it wouldn't have bothered me anyway. I think bears are usually more afraid of humans than we expect.

That afternoon, we decided to drive nearby to get more hotdog buns. We didn't have to go very far before finding ourselves at the Killington Deli & Marketplace.

It's a really small store- kind of like the ones you see at gas stations. But it had the hotdog buns and mozzarella cheese that we needed.

The view from the small town of Killington is killer!

Mountains on every side, blue skies up above...

We crossed the road to a gift shop but they were already closing so we could only afford pictures near their pretty front door.

Back at the campground, Nat decided to try her hand at starting the fire for once. She did a pretty good job, considering that the ground and wood was still slightly damp.

I had chilli beans on my hotdog for dinner. MMMMM....

Night fell and it was time to clean up.

The next morning, Talia and Nat decided to try brushing their teeth with a piece of charcoal after I told them about how I brushed my teeth with charcoal in Washington State. I guess they wanted to see for themselves if it really did whiten teeth as I said it would.

Muahaha!

Before leaving Killington, we wanted to get postcards so we headed to the same giftshop that was closed the day before.

The shop turned out to be a gigantic cavern filled with interesting knick knacks and we ended up spending close to an hour just browsing around inside.

I found Vermints haha.

More pretty flowers.

Dropped by the Sunup Bakery for breakfast.

Again, a breathtaking view from the store front.

We waited about ten minutes for our bagels and sandwiches since they were cooked fresh.

My pesto, tomato and egg bagel definitely did not disappoint. Next to bagel with lox, this has got to be my second favourite bagel combination ever!

After breakfast, it was time to leave the little ski town and drive back down the mountain.

We ended up in the equally famous town of Woodstock.

Stepped into another crazy gift shop with a balcony decorated to look like a garden.

I actually never heard of Woodstock, VT before until that morning in the first giftshop where I was thumbing through a "1,000 places to see before you die" kind of book, and I saw that Killington and Woodstock were listed as top places to visit in Vermont.

Graffiti on the wall reads: "what matters most is how well you walk through the fire".

I thought these flowers were so beautiful and I just found out what they were called today!

Fuschias.

Hah. So weird to finally see what fuschias look like in real life. All this time that I've read about them in books, I've never been able to visualise them in my head until now.

Lovely day to be out about town.

More pink pretties.

Kids walking around in the ankle-deep river that runs through Woodstock.

After leaving Woodstock, we drove a little further until we hit Quechee Gorge.

The whole place was actually crawling with tourists and I can definitely understand why. The view was amazing.

Time to hit the road again!

Talia promptly fell asleep in the back.

Finally saw a Massachusetts sign. Had to brake in the middle of the highway for this one since nobody wanted to let me into the right lane (I was driving in the middle lane). Surprisingly, nobody beeped at me.

Cambridge, Massachusetts greeted us with a very nice wall of graffiti.

When we finally got to Talia's apartment, the first things we did were to check our messages online, shower and change.

Then we walked around in Harvard Square looking for something to eat.

Upon the landlord's recommendation, we finally decided on Border Cafe for a night of Mexican food.

Here's Nat with her enormous biscuit dish of salad.

My equally ginormous shrimp and crayfish quesadilla.

I loved the decor in the whole restaurant. Very colourful and interesting.

After dinner it was time for Pinkberry!

Mmmmm. But to be honest, I think that was my last time getting Pinkberry with gummy bears. And I still cannot believe that they DARED to introduce Salted Caramel as one of the new flavours. Yuck!

Next morning, we drove from Cambridge to Boston.

Lots of pretty buildings scattered near Harvard.

I was soooooo happy when I finally found parking.

The gals.

Nat suggested that we went to Quincy Market so we headed there.

Doesn't this photo look as if it were taken in Singapore? This could definitely pass for a street in Bugis or something.

I love it.

Boston's definitely cleaner than New York City.

I loved the little harbour. Very New England feeling.

We waited for someone to walk by to take this photo for us.

Again, upon Nat's recommendation, we headed to Joe's for their famous clam chowder.

Oh the anticipation!

The chowder arrived in a large bread bowl.

I must say, it was not bad at all. In fact, the chowder was pretty good! It wasn't too salty, too creamy or too watery. I could even taste the clams in it! That's something you won't find in a Campbell's soup can.

We all liked what we were tasting.

On the way out of the restaurant, I noticed this painting. The track and field tradition is following us around!

Should've seen these guys' faces when they heard our photo request.

"Could you look as if you want to kill us please?"

Naughty Talia hopped onto the UPS truck while the guy was off delivering stuff elsewhere.

After more shenanigans in Boston, we took off for Connecticut where Nat lives.

Stopped by the mall to get some shopping done.

Finally got to her house!

The next day, Nat took us hiking up a place nearby called High Rock. It was a fairly quick hike and we got up to the top in about fifteen minutes or so. The view was definitely worth it as you could see rolling hills and valleys for miles around.

But what really interested me the most was the geology in that place. The floor was littered with shiny rocks that I later confirmed was called "mica". I also noticed long grooves in the large slabs of rock which led me to think at first that rivers used to flow through there. I was right to an extent because of the smooth round stones that were littered around and that can only be formed from the eroding act of flowing rivers. However I was wrong about the grooves when I later found out that they were formed by retreating glaciers over Northeast America about 20,000 years ago.

SO COOL!

I miss geography classes. I know Mdm. Yap (my ex-geography teacher) would really appreciate this.

Back down at the bottom, we explored the train tracks for a bit.

Then we went back to Nat's and had a blast in the pool.

Her brother and dog are the cutest things ever.

Even if no one told me, I'd definitely be able to tell that they were related. So many of her brother's gestures and mannerisms are just like hers.

Nat's mom cooked the best dinner ever. I had more than one helping. I think all of us did.

And the night ended with me destroying my nails with crazy nail polish colours.

Saying goodbye on our last day.

Sob!

At the end of it all, I dropped Talia and her other friend off in Manhattan and headed home to Pennsylvania.

And that's all!