Monet to Picasso to Turkey to Line 9

10:45am. Oh shit!! I’m late!! I message Nicole..”just woke up” and I closed my eyes again. My phone beeps but my eyelids are too heavy to even read her reply. With one eye open, I read her reply and smiled. Haha..good! She’s sleeping too! Guess we can do our hair tomorrow in the afternoon when we are functioning humans again….And with that I fell asleep again.

11:30am. Dun, dun, dunn…It’s the msn tone and it wakes me up. Ric messaged me and his flight got cancelled! Aww…he was so excited too! Still half asleep, we chat for a bit longer.

12:10pm. Audrey messages me to hang out. Hmm…should I stick to my original plan of going to the museum?? I reply asking her to join. Come to the art gallery with us, she says. Cool!! I jump up to get ready and crap~ my hair is still half-curled from the night before. Shit…I don’t have time to wash my hair. Hairspray, where are you? I tousled my hair and wrapped a thick scarfe around it, and ran out. I catch my reflection in the mirror in the elevator Bleh…it’s horrible! Why is it curly only on the right side and straight on the left? Bleh…who cares! It’s saturday!! Ding…..a blast of icy cold air hits me in my face. Shit it’s cold!
12:20pm. Finally made it to Kuna’s apartment after making a couple wrong turns. Audrey gives me a Reese’ peanutbutter and chocolate cupcakes and they are the best thing next to diamonds. It’s like a mouthful of nutella and peanut butter. MMMM…..

1:50pm. We see the bus coming from across the street and us four girls made a dramatic run for it. Turns out….wasn’t even our bus! hah…

3:30pm. We are here. Seoul National Arts Centre. I whip out my camera to take a photo and realize that my memory card is stuck in my laptop. SHIT! What an idiot I am!!! And I recharged it last night too…-_- Lucky Megan and Audrey had cameras. We walk in only to be faced with a super long line waiting to buy entry tickets. Bleh…this sucks already…

We wait 15 minutes…….and had to pay 12 bucks to get into only ONE exhibition. What~?!?

Then we wait another 20 minutes to get into the exhibition. WHAT~~?!!???!?

FINALLY……..we are at the front of the queue and the man takes our ticket for our “Monet to Picasso” exhibition!

Excitedly, we walk through the doors and BAM…there are like a million people crammed into the first exhibition hall. I felt like a prisoner waiting in line for our lunches where we shuffle our way along the room……disappointed we walk into the other hall, and the other hall and the final hall only to have to return to the first hall because they were all the same. So we ended up cutting lines whenever there was a free spot, peeking at the paintings behind a sea of bobbing heads, pushing and walking in the wrong direction, getting stared at and glared at and us glaring at crying babies and elbowing the girls back. Hey, this feels like NB all over again! Why do parents take their young children to see such an exhibition? It would be so boring for the kids…….I was beginning to feel aggravated and annoyed!! However, I did see some really beautiful paintings, they were originally in the Philadelphia Museum and are currently here in Seoul for a few months. I think I will have to come back really early in the morning on a weekday some other time…..this is ridiculous. Having that said, I was very excited to see the world famous sculpture, The Kiss. It was mesmorizingly beautiful. There were many many works of art that left a deep impression on me, but my favourite one was by Wyeth called The Cooling Shed. Very cleverly done piece of work. Okay…won’t bore you anymore!

5:30pm. We have all maxed out our quota for the week. What quota? The number of Koreans we come into contact with. I think I just liked Korea a little bit less…….We head out to Gangnam to eat dinner. Yes…that would make us feel better. Kuna takes us to this really cool restaurant with funky design and we ate Turkish food. It was delicious and definitely a change from Ansan! We talk about all sorts of things from candy to shopping to being naked. Yea, that was the sauna and whether we felt comfortable enough to be naked…….

9:00pm. We step outside once again after having coffee at this really cute hole in the wall cafe with rusty chairs and wooden stairs and crystal chandeliers. Clashing, but tasteful. We are going shopping! Yes…we go into this huge, and I mean HUGE cosmetic shop with has like 6 different counters and different brands. We try on everything we could fit on our faces. We walked out all glittery and pretty. Who needs to carry makeup when you can touch up or even do your whole face at a shop (which there are millions of all over the place!).

10:30pm. We look for our bus stop but we keep getting distracted along the way. Oooh…look! Earrings….Oooh…look! Gloves and scarves! Oooh…look! Fuzzy pants and fuzzy shoes! Oooh….look look! Sparkly headbands!!! Oooh…street food. Ooooh….more street food! Oh no! It’s too late now and we have to catch the subway!! >
11:40pm. We are power walking down the streets to the subway station. Weaving in and out of people, pushing through crowds, panicking because we didn’t want to miss the last train and have to catch a taxi.

After a dramatic rush, we finally made it!! Good work girls! Pat on the back………

12:20am. We made it home…..=)