Next stop: Korea!

My exam period has begun and I've taken 3 out of 6 so far - Now's time for the tough ones!
So until June 23rd, the day I'm graduating, I won't be too active on here, meaning I probably won't be able to reply to your comments, sorryyy > < 
I will still be publishing scheduled posts though so .. come back to check on me once in a while, yea? 

I recently scrolled through some of my older posts and found one conveniently named We ordered tickets!! in which I explained how Maria and I had just ordered flight tickets + hotel in Paris that year. It's pretty fun to look back at (especially comparing thoughts on a place before/after having been there) and I think that's going to be a thing from now on here on my blog. It also keeps you, my lovely readers, updated!
With that in mind.. let's get to today's post!

I've mentioned it here and there (and the observant reader might have noticed the countdown on the right side of my blog) but I never really made an official statement.

The thing is .. I'm going to Korea on July 21st!

..albeit the circumstances ended up being way different from what I had imagined.

In THIS final post about our trip to Paris I wrote that Maria and I had officially declared ourselves travel buddies, that we had already begun planning next this year's trip, and that it was going to be huge!

Well.. it was going to be huge. We talked about spending some 2-3 weeks in Korea and/or Japan but after going to a concert with the Japanese band One OK Rock here in Denmark + stalking our way to Disneyland Tokyo though Instagram we decided upon going to Japan. 

Then reality gave us a big, nice slap! Maria got into the university she had applied for and suddenly had to pay for a bunch of not-very-affordable-for-a-student books, which ended up draining most of her account. I had already been saving for months when Maria finally announced that we had to cancel our plans. She would not be able to save up enough money to afford it in time.

So... how come I'm still going?

For a while I thought of being adventurous and go alone... but in the end I was pretty darn scared.

I don't remember the details anymore but somehow I reminded myself that, back in December when he visited me, Philip invited me to join him and his friends on their trip to Korea. Of course I refused back then since it was right around the time I'd planned to go with Maria. So when I told him how we had to cancel our plans, he said that his offer was still valid. I checked with Maria to make sure she wouldn't feel betrayed if I suddenly went with someone else but she told me to go for it and thus it was decided that I'd join them. 

Meanwhile Philips friends had invited two other girls so at this point we were 7 who had planned to go.

【Timeskip to now】

Status is now that we'll be 6 people going: Philip and his two friends John and Alexander from Sweden, Cindy and Camilla from Norway, and me from Denmark.

Philip remains the only one I've met  in person but I've gotten to know the others a little more, especially Cindy, a bit after our group Skype conversations.

Alexander arranged tickets for everyone but Philip and I. While they're flying out from Sweden, I'm flying out from Copenhagen and we'll meet up in Finland from where we will take the next plane heading to Korea together. When we land we'll have to wait a few hours for Philip to fly in from Japan since he'll spend a week there first.

Here's my flight schedule. The others will be flying out an hour earlier or so.

As you see we'll be away from July 21st to August 4th (which means I'm going to miss Genki, noooh <//3)

Cindy and I arranged the hostel through a website called HostelWorld the other day. We're going to stay at Fortune Jongno Hostel in 2x 3 person bedrooms with bathrooms en suite - so we're pretty satisfied about that!

For now I have a positive feeling about the place (I'll make travel posts and update you later). We booked in my name and the following day I received a mail from them with a welcome, various descriptions (pictures, text, youtube videos) as to how we'd find the place, and contact information in case we had any questions or got lost. They also included their homepage and Facebook page.

This is the (very small) picture provided for the triple rooms that we will be staying in:

[EDIT as of July 10th]: Their website was updated and I found 5 neat pictures!

It looks even better now!

Also, more info:

• Room Price: KRW 72,000/75,000(weekend) per night
• Three Single-sized Bunk Bed
• Private Bathroom
• Includes: Air conditioning, fridge, cable TV, hair dryer, towels

Since we booked in my name I had to pay the deposit that almost equals to my share of the total payment. 

This leaves my biggest concern to be saving up spending money and figuring out what to wear - now that will be a challenge!

Are you planning any trips this summer (｡^‿^｡)?