SKKU Campus - Lantern Festival - .... and eating live Octopus

Too long time since I wrote here the last time ... So as you might have thought out by yourself, I am back in Sweden now. I will try to fill in some posts of what I have been doing since the last post, which is about 2 months. To try and sum it up, after Taiwan there was a lot of school work, presentations and group projects, in addition I tried to do and see as much as possible in Seoul before going to Japan. First of all I was around the SKKU campus and tried to capture it before it was to late. Wanted to get more pictures but this was what I was able to take :) 

First the old Campus in autumn colors. As mentioned earlier SKKU is the oldest University in Korea and they have rebuild the old campus next to the new one. I am sad to not have spent more time around the old Campus :/ It was quite nice there.

This time was when me and my best International Financial Management group-members decided to have one of our 50 coffees after a hard days work :) Went up to the rooftop of the Business building (which is the building I had all my courses in and where the cafeteria was located ... I kinda never visited any or the other buildings ^^), you could go up to any rooftop of any building 24/7, and because the University is located on a small mountain, you always get a pretty good view :)

We had one of our epic and interesting discussions here, I recall that we talked about DNA and why there are small differences in people from different places in the world ... and probably much more :D  

Another day I decided to take a walk to the school by night, and as mentioned before I have not been around the school that much besides the business school ... which I took the bus to from the main-gate when I was late (everyday). But it only costs 300won so it is so worth it, not climbing this mountain and being exhausted every time when I get to school. Anyway I decided to walk around up to the other buildings that was further up the mountain than Business building. I discovered that you could walk up the small mountain on a path/road. So I went that way and walked up and then down on the other side. Which was more of a residential area where normal families lived. It was a very nice walk and took quite long time but the view was beautiful so it was worth it.

Every year since 2009 Seoul arranges a Lantern Festival along the famous Cheonggyecheon Stream. They fill it with hundreds of various lanterns that all are unique in design. Both international artists and local citizens can get their lanterns displayed here :). You are suppose to walk on both side of the stream because many lanterns are directed towards the people walking on one side ... however it took so long time to walk along one side of the stream so we decided it was enough only to walk one way :)

 My friend Sam sings in a choir and her choir had their annual performance and she gave me and two other friends tickets for this event. This was a very nice concert even though many songs where in Korean, but Korean is a beautiful language so I enjoyed it even more :)  

Another day me and some friends went to the National Museum of Korea and had a quick look :) It was nice to see but we had to little time and had to hurry through the place, because this was a special day ... it was the day I had decided to eat living octopus :D So we were suppose to meet up with Sam at Noryangjin fish-market.

Before this day I had been talking with Sam about eating living octopus because I knew that you could die from it if you didn't chew it properly, so I had made sure that she would save me if anything like that would happen ... When meeting Sam on the d-day and I described my fear and how you are suppose to eat it she got confused and shocked, she had been thinking that I wanted to eat the chopped up octopus tentacles that still moved and not the whole octopus in on bite ... She had never had the whole octopus, and she told me it is not common at all to eat it like that, now she started to get nervous as well and that made me even more nervous ... she was suppose to be my safety nett ^_^ Well she agreed to still eat it after me nagging about it for a while. 

When seeing the living octopuses in the bowl trying to escape ... just made it worse ...  am I going to eat that? We ordered in some Beer and Soju. I had heard that some Soju before is good because then the Octopus might not get stuck in your mouth as easily because of the alcohol. Sam went first to eat the Octopus, it took some time from we got the bowl on the table till we started to eat. Had to gather all the strength. At one point when Sam was chewing it it looked like she struggled and I was thinking what have I got her to do ... what is she ...... But she did very good :D and then it was my turn. 

Just had to think that I was not eating a living Octopus and just eat it. The hard part was that it was quite big and filled my whole mouth and I had some problem chewing it, and it was so hard to chew it in to pieces and it got stuck in between my teeth. It took me 14 minutes, could probably have swallowed it a couple of minutes before but it was not that tempting, finally I swallowed it with some beer and I felt indestructible :D I was so proud of myself that I had done what I set out to do. After this I got back home and just rested for a while before going out with some people :)