Korea Diary | Doshirak All Day, Everyday (Day 11-12)
The lovely campus of Yonsei~ This city girl was thoroughly amazed by how well kept the landscaping was. One of my regrets of the study abroad trip was not taking the chance to fully explore all of Yonsei University.
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Obong Doshirak is apparently a chain lunchbox restaurant in Korea. I have only seen (or noticed) it at the SK Global House dorm building. My friends and I loved the convenience and variety they had to offer. Even though some of the portions may look to be on the smaller side, it was actually a very fulling meal. For those that are bigger eaters, they also offer combo lunch boxes.
Day 11 marked the first day of Korean language classes. After the fact that I was actually going to be in Korea, being able to learn Korean in an official class setting was the second most exciting part of my study abroad experience. The first lesson we had involved a lot of emphasis on pronunciation.
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I don't remember exactly the situation, but judging by my dinner meal it seems like everyone had a busy school night. Eating in? No problem! A few convenience store food options can make a hearty meal.
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What I thought would be a not-so-interesting school day on day 12 ended in a surprising way.
Since this was our first week of classes, I wasn't daring enough to venture outside of school grounds for my meal between classes. Obong Doshirak seemed like an obvious choice since the first lunchbox was pretty tasty and it's right by the dorms and Korean language center.
The second day in the Korean language course was all about forming words. From the way different letters of the Korean alphabet (hangul 한글) can and can't be combined to how the combinations are pronounced.
Once the Korean language course ended and I made by way back to my dorm room, my computer greeted me with a charging issue. Wonderful!...Where was I going to get my MacBook issue resolved in Korea at night? The hunt was on.
Before trekking to fix my computer issue, the tummy needed to be filled. A quick dinner was definitely much needed. Thus my third meal from Obong Doshirak in 2 days! Perhaps this is some kind of food record for me? So much fried food and eating from the same restaurant so frequently is not ordinary for me.
During my frantic research, I found that Apple didn't actually have an official store in Korea. Considering that Samsung and LG are Korean companies and the most popular brands in Korea, it makes sense that there wasn't an Apple store.
I only managed to find a bunch of authorized Apple retailers via blog posts. Most of which seemed like they were near Gangnam, which was a good 45+ minute subway ride from Yonsei University. Luckily I recognized a name of one of the retailers, Frisbee, being in Hongdae. I didn't notice when we first passed by it but Frisbee in Korea is practically like the official Apple store.
I was shocked by the cost of the laptop charger that I needed (close to ₩100,000 or ~USD$100). If I didn't already research how much this would cost back home (USD$79) and this happened near the end of my trip, I would have seriously considered not purchasing the replacement whilst in Korea.
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