Hyehwa, Nanta, Naksan Park, Insadong, Itaewon, High School Musical

More places!

When school ended on Thursday, I went to Hyehwa (혜화동) with friends to go to the batting cages. Each round of pitches was 1000won. I had fun, even though I was sore after just playing two rounds!

Friday was the final school trip (I think). We went to see the Nanta performance, which you can watch a bit of in the video below. There was a lot of audience interaction, so it was pretty entertaining! Of course, I avoided eye-contact whenever they were looking for people to bring on-stage though. :)

This was the view from where I was sitting. The theater wasn't large, so our students filled up most of the seats:

Then we went to Naksan Park (a residential area revived with art) with just the group of us! I've

been meaning to go here for a while, since it's a place I know from a drama. For comparison:

From drama Rooftop Prince

From drama Rooftop Prince

From drama Rooftop Prince 

Finally a group photo! It is slanted haha...

Oh, and I ate cold buckwheat noodles (soba) near this neighborhood! I hadn't tried it before, but it was good! It seems many cold noodles dishes are pretty safe to order in order to get something nearly vegetarian.

After Naksan Park, the group split up. Some went to a jjimjilbang, others went to another spa, and I went with two others to Insadong (neighborhood with many shops of trad. goods) and then Itaewon (big place for foreigners).

We ate at this apparently well-rated place where Running Man had filmed once in Itaewon, so there were a lot of people inside. You might have noticed we got the one remaining backup table away from everyone else, right next to a parked car. The food was actually really good though, which I should have expected since we came here specifically for the restaurant's jeon (pancake)! We ordered traditional kimchi jeon, potato jeon, veggie/seaweed rice balls, and pan-fried flat dumplings.

Today (Saturday), I went back to Itaewon. We ended up eating at a breakfast place after walking back and forth a few times trying to find something. I was a bit disappointed because we kept passing this Mexican restaurant. It's been a month since I had Mexican food! Actually, the Mexican place was right across the street from the picture above. I had my eye on it then too!

After Itaewon we headed to Hongdae (shopping area) for no particular reason. We were just wasting time before our musical began at 7pm. In Hongdae, there is a "freemarket," or open-air market for artists to sell items, on Saturdays. I enjoyed seeing the types of things they were selling, such as hand-designed shoes, cigarette holders, drawings, jewelry, etc.
There was also a Hello Kitty Cafe in Hongdae. We decided to check it out:

At last the show rolled around and we got ready to see High School Musical. This was the cast for the show we saw:

My friend was disappointed that a few kpop idols who are also main cast members weren't performing in our showing. I didn't know the others performing today, but I recognized some dramas of the main actor (Kang Dong-ho). Anyway, the show was pretty good and easy to understand since we had seen the movie in the past. There were no English subtitles this time, but they had Japanese subtitles on the sides of the theater. My friend got the below picture, which shows the stage, when the musical ended. They revealed where the orchestra was at the end of the show (see the top):

Good weekend! Most of the group is going to go bungee jumping and do water activities/sports tomorrow, but I'm staying back to rest and do homework since those things scare me!