Weekly Wrap Up | 6/15/25 – Past Midnight Book Reviews & More

Aloha friends!

Another week is over and here’s what happened:

+ I had two Saturdays yesterday. I ended Saturday in Haneda International Airport in Tokyo, boarded our flight home at 9pm, Saturday. And landed in Hawaii at 9:45am, Saturday. So I was all messed up and dealing with jet-lag!

+ I was in Seoul, South Korea all week – and I LOVED it. What a fun tour group we had, a mix of retirees, families, some seniors (which was kind of hard on them with all the walking). But it was a great group!

Making our own Tal Masks (to ward of bad spirits/ghosts) at the Bukchon Art Center – made this one for my hubby! Then a walk through the neighborhood, it had lots of hills but loved the old traditional Korean houses.

DDP (Dongdaemun Design Plaza) – we had a chance to explore, while most of the group went shopping in the area.

Cheonggyecheon Stream – my sister and I at this really pretty stream.
Gyeongbok Palace – my sister and I again at the palace. It was a warm day, glad we brought our umbrellas for shade but wow did I sweat and my feet were killing me after this long day.
Girls in the Hanbok dresses at the palace! They looked so pretty!

After the a day of going to the stream, Gyeongbok Palace, the National Folk Museum and the Blue House and walking a LOT – we were all so hot and tired BUT we still had one more thing to do. We had a cooking class with Food & Culture Korea. The woman who runs this class, Ellie is the food styler for shows like Squid Game (Season 3), Pachinko on Apple TV and other K-drama shows. She is amazing, full of energy and so much fun! We learned to cook japchae (we cooked this) and bulgogi (we watched a demo). Everything was delicious and we got a copy of the recipes and a certificate with our names written in Korean on it.

For one of our free days on the tour, my sister and I booked us hair appointments at Juno Hair in Myeongdong (I think she says there are 3 of them in that area alone). We had a haircut at the scalp treatment which was over a fun and relaxing experience! Judy (@juno_judyy on instagram) my stylist was the sweetest. Then we did a LOT of shopping before m sister had a facial at Muse Clinic. I sat and waited with all our shopping bags. After dropping the bags off to the hotel we ended the day with dinner at bhc Chicken to eat some fried chicken and my sister had beer.
Our last free day we went back to Namdaemun Market (which is across from our hotel, the Courtyard by Marriott Seoul Namdaemun. We did our last minute shopping, but we also checked out the smaller palace up the street called Deoksugung. It was another day of a lot of walking but we ended the night with our last tour group farewell dinner which was a buffet.

It was such a great trip, and I definitely want to go back again to explore even more!

Blog Posts:

I didn’t post much this week it seems!

Books I Finished

A Spell to Wake the Dead by. Nicole Lesperance

Currently Reading:

A Magic Deep & Drowning by. Hester Fox

Throne of Secrets by. Kerri Maniscalco

The Homemade God by. Rachel Joyce

Wrath of the Dragons by. Olivia Rose Darling

Shows/Movies/Music I Watched/Listened To:

Movies I watched on the airplane:
- Wicked
- 27 Dresses
- My Best Friend’s Wedding
- Inception (but I fell asleep for parts of it)

Videos I Posted to Youtube:

How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!