Shopping Spree 

So if there’s one thing I learned about myself since I came to Korea is that I have absolutely no impulse control when it comes to shopping. Like absolutely none. The first time I went shopping in Korea was on my birthday when I very impulsively bought a $65 perfume just because I liked the bottle. 

And since then it has just gotten worse, I am so glad my Kazak friend who I’m always with has more common sense and doesn’t hesitate to tell me if I shouldn’t buy something because it’s too ugly or too expensive. This past week both of us were on a mission to find a cheap or affordable small suitcase and I was very determined to find good quality plain black and white t-shirts. We started off in Hongdae, which was an absolute fail because after 5 hours in Hongdae we bought everything that was on neither of our shopping lists. I would like to defend myself by saying I only bought an Airpod case and a pair of earrings for my cousin. This time it was my friends who did actual shopping. After an overpriced dinner, because we both always seem to overestimate exactly how much we can eat and order much more than we can ever finish, and giving up on finding a suitcase there we headed home. Well, at least we thought; while leaving the shopping street my friend noticed a store that was selling bags so we went over to see if they were selling suitcases and after asking the owner we realized they did not, but from the outside, a purse caught my eye and before my friend could even think of leaving I dragged her into the store. When I tell you we literally stumbled upon a gem, every single purse no matter size or shape was $10. I tried to pull the stitches and smell the leather, which my textile teacher taught me as a way to check the quality, and decided that these bags were amazing quality. So we both left with two new purses each. 

The day after we met around 5 pm since we had only two locations in mind, one was the largest Jordan Seoul, and then a store called Travel Mate, both of which are in Gangnam. Both ended up being really disappointing, because for being the largest Jordan store they had a very small collection of shoes. After taking a 15 min bus ride to “Travel Mate” we realized that store has been closed for a while now. After getting dinner and this time properly estimating how much we wanted, we were heading home when a sale sign caught my attention. It turned out to be an underground store that was having a great sale. So all the money we didn’t spend all was made up in that one store. I finally found the black and white t-shirts on my list. As much of an inconvenience as it was, I would say that me impulsively running into every interesting-looking store definitely worked out for the best this time.  

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