Culture Exchange in Korea Through Arts

Peace be upon you. Helloooo! ^^

I'm back! These few days have been waaaay hectic due to the beginning of spring semester. Anyways, I wanna share one of my favourite activities while I'm staying here. It's no other than FREE activities in Seoul Global & Cultural Center!

They never disappointed me with their prepared, fun activities for visitors and expats in Seoul. During the previous winter vacation, I gotta try painting class & dyeing class there. Check these out!

Visit their FB here.

DYEING ART CLASS

The teacher was giving instructions and explanations.

Before.

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After, With my name in Korean at the right-bottom side.

Tumblr-like-attempt-picture

Another attempt.

Besides the enjoying the activity, you will meet other international expats/visitors. Time to throw away that socially-awkward-manner of you.

KOREAN PAINTING CLASS

This is definitely my all-time-favourite class so far! I love playing with colours so this is what I enjoyed so much. I remembered how I love to buy colouring books when I was a kid only it's on a traditional Korean fan this time. *ear-to-ear grin*

Before & sample.

Mine is on the left side.

Besides these art classes, I've tried their Advanced Hanji class and other once in a while events they had at the center like traditional music concert and cooking class (trust me, I had so much fun every time). In fact, if you're a K-pop fans and love to dance (or even think of losing your weight by a fun activity), thery're having a K-pop dance class every Wednesday for only KRW5,000. 

For more info, do visit their FB page. 

Laters~!

Le Forever Boyfriend Birthday Celebration

Assalam.. Hye! 

It was Je Young oppa's birthday yesterday. We had a little celebration that night when the clock struck 12 and a date to Hanok village, Gyeongbukgung & Insadong. 

In the making...

So, I received a small oven from Yong Chol oppa and Je Young oppa's lab members (thank you so much :'D) for my birthday last year. But I can't really bake anything just yet here thinking of how expensive the ingredients are here and if I ruin the whole thing (I lack of confidence to bake using that one since the one I have at home back in Malaysia is way bigger).

But..

I went to Itaewon to find some halal baking ingredients on Thursday when I was destined to meet Brownie mix on sale. Alhamdulillah.. This is it.. This could save my life (awhvahwelming).

Because I don't have enough apparatus for baking (even a hand mixer), I just bought a box of brownie mix and one packet of semi-sweet Hershey's chocolate chips. I read a post here on how to make brownie mix tastes better and I love the ideas! Definitely will try again later.

It's totally easy >..< 

I mixed water, one egg and butter (instructions on the box). Then, I added the brownie mix, use manual hand mixer- yiiepp manual. It was a little bit hard because of the heavy texture but I didn't have to mix them for a long time.

The result...

Poof! Done in 30 minutes.

A little celebration. Omnomnomnom~ <3

What else? Gift! Hmm... I should have a nice gift since this is his first birthday celebration as my forever bf. After brainstorming for a few days. I thought a photo album consists of our pictures since we started to know each other could mean a lot for him. In fact, in this technology era, no one print out photos anymore and I kinda miss that. I love hardcopy (even for books) version more than anything else (fefeeling evergreen at the age of 23). 

I made this album on my own at the Seoul Global Cultural Center, Myeongdong by using hanji (Korean traditional paper for crafting).

First picture: Oppa and his very first durian. LOL

I added some captions to every picture and gave it to him while we were having some brownies. In the afternoon, we ate at one restaurant nearby our house. 

Bedal la apa lagi.

Of course a great day shouldn't over with just delicious meals. We sorta role-played as tourists after that. Haha

In front of Folk Museum gate (next to Gyeongbukgung)

So many people at Hanok village since it was Saturday.

Before the special day ended, we decided to give something special to everyone who wish to come to Korea under our private package.

Yeayyy~!!

Those who might have last minute plan to come here and haven't booked anything yet, do contact me at kimfadtravelmate@yahoo.com /Instagram: @snfad_diela regarding this promo. ^^

Guess that's about our celebration. 

Thanks for reading! 

Pepero Day: DIY Pepero

Hellooooooo! 

Assalamualaikum :D

11.11 marks as Pepero Day in Korea. It started as a symbol of wishing to be slimmer (like how pepero looks like) and then eventually a celebration among friends and couples (read more here). I heard some people give pepero to their teachers/lecturers too. I thought it's interesting so I'm all excited to celebrate the day too. 

Instead of buying the peperos gift set etc, I wanna try making my own. 

Some of pepero gifts I found in Artbox:

Besides these gifts in shops, supermarkets or convenience stores like CU, Lotte mart, Homeplus, I also saw a lot of DIY ads on online shops. I thought it would be more fun to make (I mean decorating plain stick pepero) them myself instead of just buying ready made ones.

I asked my friends on where I can get the supplies. Jin Hong helped me to buy the stuff and ingredients at Bangsan Market. It's like a baking street where you can find so many baking ingredients; thus, the name, get it? Thanks to Jin Hong, I had fun looking around and shopping there! (psssttt... spent 30,000KRW for everything. Got 40 big pepero and 30 small pepero. *imma happy kid*)

Things you need

Cookie crumbs in melon (green), strawberry (red), oreo (black) and cookie (chocolate). Topping set and cute choco mold with Korean words and emoticons. Edible pencils in vanilla, melon and strawberry.

 There are other flavors of cookie crumbs and edible pencils like blueberry, mango, chocolate etc. ((rambang mata muntah pelangi))

I chose different brands of coating. 

 The chocolate one is the most expensive and working way better than the other two. The taste is great. The only thing I don't like about it is that it takes quite a while to freeze. Strawberry sucks. It doesn't wanna coat the pepero. White isn't too bad. It takes less than 2 minutes to coat so I have to decorate quickly.

Pepero plastic holder. 

Plain pepero sticks.

The process

It took me around 10 hours to finish making all 70 pepero. But I really had fun. I think it will be so much fun to do it with friends too. It's my first time (and could be the last since we didn't celebrate pepero day in Malaysia haha).

Melt the chocolate coating

I started a little by a little to get to know which one is coating faster and manage to figure out later. When I knew that strawberry and white coat really fast, I made them first and I double coating some of them with chocolate one. Taste good! ^^

I got the white oil paper for free :D

My personal favorite is cookie crumbs coating! ^_^

Result

Ready to make others happy. :DD

Thanks to Jungmin and Minki oppa for these :'D

And 20 pepero for le hubby. Ing~ <3

T'was fun, really. Some of the receivers said I can even sell them because I made them so pretty LOL. XD N'ways, you should try it too (provided you've time and interest hah!).