It was odd to not have Good Friday and Easter Monday off for the first time in my sixteen years of schooling. Wow that does sound like a very long time. As big as religion is in Korea, those are not considered school-free and work-free days. However, to encourage Korean citizens to vote, today is a work-free and school-free day for everyone so they have no excuse not to vote. Well, everyone except exchange students, thus I still had Korean class in the afternoon to go to.

As holidays are hard to come by during the school term, we took this opportunity to go to Insadong (a popular touristy area that is great for souvenirs, local crafts and arts, traditional Korean activities and snacks). Last time I came here I was too tired with all the tourists and busyness of the place that I didn't bother to take a more indepth look. This time around, we started our day earlier so we were able to take our time exploring and doing the things we had set out to do.

First stop we went to Ssamziegil, a famous mall here that ascends gradually as you walk from one floor to another so there was no need to use the stairs, though stairs were available. Here, there were lots of local arts and crafts you can buy as well as Korean snacks, clothing, and indie like goods. We had a blast here taking lots of photos, browsing at too cute but too expensive stuff, and spending time on the rooftop writing our "friendship circle" to add to the mass of them all around the surrounding area. It felt like the love locks from Namsan tower, only less romantic and more single friendly. On our way out, we spotted something we had been wanting to do for a long time now, dressing up in hanboks and taking sticker photos. This was my third time putting on a hanbok and I'm still not sick of it. I bet I will end up buying one to bring home with me =).
After lunch, the fearless ones of the group went to a spa to get our feet done. This was not your typical pedicure, instead its known as 'Dr.Fish,' where these little fishes come and nibble at your dead skin on the bottoms of your feet. It was $9 for 20min and we gave it a shot. First you rinse your feet to make sure it was clean and then you put your feet into an aquarium like tub. I was so scared at first as I didn't know what to expect or how it would feel, but finally I sucked up my fear and dunked both feet in. I started laughing because it felt so ticklish and schools of these fishes just came and started eating away. It sounds gross, but it looked so cool! These fish would open their mouth and chomp-chomp-chomp as if their vacuum cleaners haha. At one point, the receptionist had to tell us to be quiet for making so much noise in a spa. After about five minutes, I got over my initial reaction and started enjoying the work of these fishes. Not only did they nibble the bottoms of my feet, but the top and sides too, some were even trying to get higher... good thing my whole leg wasn't in there. Imagine how it would feel if your whole body was being nibbled. Anyways, it was a fun experience and I would definitely do it again because these fishes are miracle workers! My feet feel so soft and where there was dead skin, there is none now.

Last experience of the day was a spontaneous one. My friend had been spotting people eating these long, yellow coloured, hollow looking, tube-like giant swirly things. Turns out, it was this snack made out of corn (kind of like cereal) and it would come out of machine in a long tube like form. It came out soft at first, but once it was exposed to air, it immediately hardened. It was a fun snack to have despite tasting quite bland.