Hi, I’m Ellie!
I started this blog on a whim to talk about K-pop, food, travel, and other random things. I play violin, watch kdramas, and I love K-Pop.
As for my first story, I was thinking about talking about my winter break since it had a little of everything going on. It wasn’t much- we mostly stayed at home, but I did do a couple interesting things. First, we went to our cousins’ house in Pennsylvania! We got to hang out and do hotpot with some family friends. One of the highlights there was the tofu skins. If you don’t know, it’s pretty much just tofu sheets rolled up into a kind of tube-y thing, which you dip into the boiling soup, and it’s so, so good. The tofu just soaks up the yummy soup flavors and its steaming hot and delicious. I’m pretty sure you can buy them frozen at your local Asian store.
Sometime during the Pennsylvania trip, we went up to NYC for a day! We left criminally early, 7:00-ish (remember this is winter break- I’m sleeping until 10:00 on a good day). As we pull out of the Lincoln Tunnel I put on Welcome to New York (Taylor’s Version), as one does. We walk around for a bit, visit the Rockefeller, see the tree, look in the Saks windows but don’t go in (criminal!), and go to Carnegie because, you know, music! New York really gets interesting when we head over to Bibble and Sip, which is the cutest bakery I’ve been to, like, ever. The whole vibe is super chill, and their sweets are super cute. I had an Earl Grey tea flavored craquelin, which had this beautifully creamy tea-flavored filling. If you’re in NYC, definitely stop by. After the snack break, we hop on the subway to visit Chinatown. Dodging scammers selling fake Rolex watches, we trek through the streets and finally make it to the Dim Sum restaurant. I honestly hadn’t had proper Dim Sum in a while, and this really hits the spot. My personal favorite dim sum dumplings are the Har gow (shrimp dumplings) and Siu Mai (pork and shrimp dumplings), but the beef chow fun is definitely a dim sum must for me. We can’t stick around Chinatown all day, so we visit the 911 memorial next. Finally, the best part of break, we went to the Line Friends store, where I had been begging to go all trip. As soon as you walk in, you immediately see a huge Brown statue, but the rest of the store is pretty much exclusively BT21. My sister and I make a beeline for the signed BT21 statues and photobooth, while the rest of my family browses. We take an 8$ picture (worth it!!!) and then begin browsing for merch. My sister picks out a terribly overpriced NewJeans bunny keychain and my mom finds me an RJ doll on sale and I get a pair of RJ earrings since I’m the biggest ARMY in my family. We make the drive back to Pennsylvania, I get obsessed with Beyonce’s Love on Top, and we have an overall great Pennsylvania trip.
Now comes the…fun part. My sister comes up to me one of these days, and since we’re both bored out of our minds (in a good way), she suggests finally giving in and watching Boy’s Planet. I had initially resisted, having heard that it would break our hearts, but she won out in the end. So I end up watching the show, knowing who makes it in the end. It’s never a good idea to get attached to contestants, especially knowing that they don’t make it. Of course, I get attached to all of them. Jun Hyeon! Jay! Ollie! Wumuti! Kamden! Phanbin! Keita! Jongwoo! Haruto! Even Takuto and the Red and Blue House! How did we get here???? How did I immediately become absolutely obsessed with this show???? We binged this show so badly that we’ve almost finished it- last episode! For those that care about ZB1 (and you should definitely check them out), my bias list is as follows- Yujin, Jiwoong, Hanbin, and then the rest (in that order). My Boy’s Planet picks would have been Jun hyeon and Jay, but alas. But seriously, Boy’s Planet is definitely worth watching- it’s super funny and most of the performances are really good! I may post more in-depth about my thoughts on the show and why I love it.
Anyway, that was how my winter break went, but it was really just a lot of doing nothing. I hope you enjoyed me just talking about my favorite things!
-Ellie