Insadong!

So, as promised, today was a lot more interesting than yesterday, mainly because we tried to cram in as many things as possible (as usual haha). We went to Insadong, which is a really cool place in Seoul (possibly my favorite?) with a bunch of cafés and cute handmade stores. It is a very touristy area so they had a bunch of 'cultural' souvenirs too, which I might come back to buy. There is so much to do there anyways so I'm coming back no matter what, mostly because I still want to see dragon candies made, which I haven't yet had the chance to do haha.

But I arrived pretty early at the station today so I went and bought orange juice, which was a very good choice. I usually don't like orange juice, but everything tastes better in Korea so it was delicious. Then we walked to the main Insadong area, which had a 'spiral' mall- aka a mall that spirals upwards instead of using stairs. 

It had a bunch of really cute shops, but the cafe at the top was the best! Themed cafés are really popular is Korea, and this one was 'poop' themed. It sounds weird and it was weird. We bought poop bread. 

The bread was filled with red bean paste, which looked vaguely brown ish and so it was both unnerving and hilarious. The cafe also had an assortment if other poop themed things, including squat toilet plant pots and poop shaped messages you could stick on the wall (free with a purchase of a drink. We told the guy we just wanted a message sticker and he said we had to buy something so we just bought one coffee and he was nice enough to give us four stickers!). I dedicated the sticker to my brother, because he is a poop. 

This is me flying with wings, surrounded by poop. 

After the poop cafe we went to take hanbok sticker pictures, which was a lot if fun. It was my first time wearing hanbok! Even though they weren't really the full costume, it was still a ton of fun haha. 

Then we went down and into a little garden like area, where my friend took us to a traditional tea house that her host mom had taken her to a few days ago. It was so good, and plus the inside was beautiful. We sat in the floor in this little side room and ordered our drinks, which came with rice cookies ('cookies', they tasted like nothing). My drink was some cinnamon, persimmon drink that was served in a bowl with a spoon. It was a little thick and syrupy and it basically tasted like Christmas. 

After that we were hungry for real food (even though we basically just ate all day) and we got bibimbap which is like hot vegetables and rice that you mix at your table. 

It was delicious, and it came with a lot if banchan (side dishes). After lunch we paid and ran to school, but we made it in time and class was fun! 

Coming home it was raining a little bit so I had my umbrella out, but it was just sprinkling so it felt nice. A group of middle schoolers yelled "HI" at me from across the street so I waved back and a lady came up I me and asked (in super fast Korean) where I was from and stuff. She was really nice, and I was happy to practice my Korean with someone!