Midterms & Jeju Island Trip

Midterm Week

Midterm week ran from October 21-25, but I luckily only had 2 midterms out of my 4 classes. My first midterm was for International Marketing and it was closed-book and multiple choice. My other exam was for Korean Popular Culture and Korean Wave and it was taken online (from Zoom), open-book and it was a combination of multiple choice, short-answer, and true-false questions. Instead of studying in advance, I'm usually the type to cram all my studying the night before, which I unfortunately did this time around. I underestimated the difficulty of my marketing exam, so I wished I had studied a bit more, which I will hopefully do for my finals.

Jeju

Since I only had two midterms, I finished everything by Wednesday and I left for Jeju on Thursday. My friends and I booked our flights through Jeju Air for ~$140 and it was about an hour flight from Seoul; we also stayed at an Airbnb and it was only ~$32 for three nights!

We heard public transportation isn't used often here, so we got around by booking taxis through Kakao Taxi. The other option was hiring a taxi driver for 8 hours, but we decided it wasn't worth it since we were doing so many things the whole day. I went with a group of 4 people so we were able to efficiently split the Kakao Taxi fees and it came out to be ~$68 total for the whole trip!

We arrived on Thursday evening and stayed there for two full days. Because we were staying for a short duration, we created an itinerary of what we were going to do beforehand to make the most of our time, one day for the East side and one for the West.

🍊 Cafes & Food

• Abebe Bakery

• Ojik Black Pork

• Sae Vill

• Ossuloc Tea Museum

• Gamtta Nam

• Dongmun Market

💃 Activities & Shopping

• Gyulgyul Store

• Rainbow Coastal Road

• Hamdeok Beach

• 9.81 Park Jeju

• Arte Museum

• Hyeopjae Beach

• Snoopy Garden

• Jeju Rail Bike

• Dongmun Market

Weather in Jeju

We had thought that the weather in Jeju would be pretty cold since it was cold in Seoul. On one of the days, it was sunny and slightly hot. On the other day, it was rainy, but not nearly as cold as we had expected.

The Jeju Experience

I heard Jeju was the "Hawai'i of Korea" and I absolutely loved seeing the similarities between them. It was my first time in months seeing the ocean, touching the sand, and smelling the salty ocean; there's also beautiful sunsets, which I felt like I haven't seen many of in Seoul. Also, many of the areas felt more like the countryside because we were surrounded by nature and there weren't as many big buildings compared to Seoul.

Tips:

• Pack light! I underestimated the size of the stuff, mainly snacks, that I was going to bring back so it was a bit of a struggle fitting everything into a carry-on and backpack.

• If you're planning on going to the Snoopy Garden, allot more time. We allotted 1.5 hours for it on our itinerary, but it ended up taking 3-4 hours because of how big the garden is, in addition to eating at the cafe and shopping at the store.