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seoul diary

february 24th, 2018:
getting to know you

Hello again! I've moved into the dorms! My room is a cute little double with heated floors, a telephone you can use to call other rooms + the front desk, very little closet space, a slot where you put your key card into and it turns the electricity on, and no door to the shower? But it's clean and neat and I like it. My roommate, Marnia, and I took many trips to Daiso to prepare our dorm for the semester. Daiso is a Japanese dollar store that sells everything from school suppies to gardening supplies to decor and it's REALLY cheap. There are a couple of Daisos in the US but they're not as big as the seven-story stores here in Seoul! The dorm building itself has a cafe, a convenience store, a gym and a couple of small restaurants on the ground level. It's a bit of an uphill journey to get to the building, but Korea itself is hill-y. The Yonsei campus is so beautiful; the other night it snowed and I got to see all the trees covered in white!! Even though the school is in the middle of Sinchon, a busy area, the campus itself is very serene and integrated with the nature that surrounds it. The International Student Orientation was uneventful, just two hours of information about the academics, the city, and life at Yonsei. I honestly don't have much to say about it? Except you can tell they are very enthusiastic about their international student population lol. I've been meeting a lot of nice people and exploring the city, though. Before Onji left to go back to the States we visited a Meerkat Cafe :o It had an area with 15 meerkats that you could play with, 2 very sleepy raccoons, 2 VERY energetic wallabies, and some wild cats. My favorite were the raccoons but they weren't interested in being held at the moment :(

We also went to the flagship Stylenanda store in Hongdae, which is a fashion brand. They recently opened a cafe on the fourth floor called the Pink Pool Cafe. The entire room is pink and there's... a pool. It was so so cute and very much my style. Also, the jeans there were such nice quality and so much cheaper than in America. I often have a problem with jeans in American stores because the legs are so long and I am very short but the pants at Stylenanda were just the right height :')

At one point we were just walking and came across the Ghibli store and both of us lost our mINDS!! It was an official Ghibli merchandise store with greenery and woodsy decor ;_; I love how you know the merch is real when it has the little authorized Ghibli sticker....I just had to buy a Kiki's Delivery Service notebook like there was no stopping me.

uhh Until next time,
-mary