Take A Simple Breathe

Stolen Lavemder(?) from the Pyongtaek subway station.

Sometimes it's hard for me to PAUSE.BREATHE.AND RELAX. I don't have much going in my life but my mind is a hodgepodge of crazy. So I have to tell my mind to shush up from time to time. And haven't you found yourself in the same position? Latelty, though, I've found calmness in the small things, as people tell you to. For example, seeing the clear(ish) blue sky for what feels like the first time in forever. Here in South Korea it always seem to be smoggy, but you tend to get use to it. I feel like our little town even looks nice when this happens. Secondly, I've always been a big fan of making a space your own. Since being married and living with my husband I haven't gotten the chance to do that. We moved to California which was super expensive so any extra money was used for groceries or transportation. Then here we are now! In S.Korea, where we will only be living for about a year and a half now. So I guess whats the point? Well I still try. So I bought a set of cheap shelves! To my disdain our walls, I later found out, were concrete! SIGH!! So I sat and looked at those selves for months. My friends had suggested some solutions but I was to scared to be disappointed again. Well I gave in finally low and behold, SHELVES! Sadly, I don't have much to put on them and one of them is crocked (which makes me a smidge crazy). It might be ridiculous but these things have chipper me up. And of course as always my baby pooch Lily keeps a smile on my face every day.

Our little town of Songtan.

Our Hot Seoul

So as a extended birthday "celebration" I wanted to go to Hongdae to find these nice unique shops. Everybody else was busy with work and such on on my actual birthday so we did this that Saturday after.

We started off our day pretty early, 9 am wake up! After that we got on a bus, which we had to wait for, and rode on it to Seoul for about an hour. Once at Nambu bus terminal we hopped on the subway and rode around 11 stops to Euljiro3 then transferred to the Green line for 7 more stops until we arrived to the Hongik University stop. Seoul being in 95 degrees F weather sucked loads. Thankful the subway cars were all air conditioned.... but the streets weren't. This was our first time traveling in Seoul together, my friend Liz and I, without and Korean speakers. We were determined to make it out alive.





After having visited at some clothing shops, such as Uniqlo and H&M, we decided to try and find what we had come here for. Everything was in Korean and made everything difficult and the hot weather did not help at all. So we decided a cold drink would help calm us down and give us a mental boost so we could find this shop.

As a lot of shops here in Korea, this shake and ice cream place was tiny just like the rest. It's quiet quaint. Only four tables inside with minimal but cute decoration.

Our desperate attempt at using a Korean map

We busted out as many maps as we could. Obviously most of them were in Korea so it got pretty desperate.

While walking around we arrived to a pretty hip part of town. This is were we were to suppose to find our shop we were looking for, Lomography. This graffiti caught my eye so i stopped to take a picture of it. Funnily enough this building was wrapped with a Lomography sticker. We busted out laughing at our dumb luck. We circled the building hoping to find said shop but with no luck.

My favorite of the graffiti!

There was a lot of nice wall art as we walked around so at least we got something nice and beautiful out of it.


At this point our legs and feet we aching and the heat was weighing us down. Slowly I was giving up any hope of finding the one place I had set out to find. We kept walking and I finally just settled down for Lush and other cosmetic stores.

My friend Liz at the Hello Kitty cafe in Hingdae

 To our wonderful surprise, we found the Hello Kitty Cafe!! It was hidden in a deep corner. The only reason we saw it was because it was the only bright and pink building in town! It being a Saturday the cafe was a little too busy for us to go into.

They even had their own street signs

Nine hours later we were more than ready to go home and relax. We hopped back on the subway and did it all again... For far too long. This was definitely enough traveling for about a month or two.  I might not try finding these shops for a while or at least until the weather cools down here in South Korea.