We Should, We Will

GRIP: Designer Intern at Fobworld in Seoul, South Korea

Cover photo: Pork Belly Rose Pasta

“We should try this restaurant.”
“We should go try this.”

For months before arriving in Seoul, South Korea, these phrases bounced endlessly between me and my friends. Seoul is an epicenter: a robust food scene, skincare around every corner, technology woven into daily life, and a nightlife that makes every outing feel like a memory in the making. Everyone’s experience here was going to be different. That was part of the appeal. And part of the problem.

Once I arrived, the sheer volume of options hit me like a wave. Elegant, towering palaces sat a subway stop away from rooftop bars with sweeping city views. Night markets spilled sound and color into streets that seemed designed to make you forget your itinerary entirely. Instead of diving in, I froze. Choice paralysis set in fast, and hours of my days dissolved into research spirals trying to optimize, to plan, to make sure I wasn’t missing out. All those “We Should” moments from home? They were staying exactly that.

Then something shifted. The friends I made through GRIP started approaching our running lists one place at a time. I’d come into this thinking I’d handle everything solo. I like solo adventures. But going with these people, I realized, wasn’t a compromise. It was what made the experience what it was. No longer was I alone trying to figure out the right answer. I had people to explore with, and more often than not, our bucket lists overlapped completely.

What once felt overwhelming became manageable with a simple approach: pick one place, then let the area surprise you. Two birds, one stone, and a lot more birds than you planned for.

The clearest example came when we finally locked in a reservation at a restaurant all of us had been eyeing for weeks. The walk in set the tone immediately. Music filled the air, a pebble path wound toward our table, and there was a sense that the meal was already being curated before we sat down. The food was exactly as good as we’d hoped, and the conversation matched it. Loud, easy, full of laughter.

We weren’t ready for the night to end. Without any plan, we wandered the surrounding streets and found a dessert spot tucked nearby. That’s where we tried bingsu for the first time, a traditional Korean shaved ice dessert made from finely shaved milk ice that dissolves the instant it hits your tongue. It wasn’t on any list. It was just what happened when we stopped optimizing and started walking.

That’s the thing about Seoul. It rewards presence over planning. The “We Should” list was never the problem — the list was full of great ideas. The problem was treating it like a checklist to execute perfectly, rather than a starting point to launch from.

Soon enough, “we should go hiking” and “we should check out the market” quietly disappeared, replaced one by one with “we will.”

That two-word shift meant something. It meant the abundance of options had stopped feeling like a burden and started feeling like what it actually was: an opportunity to try something new, to stumble into something unplanned, and to build an experience that was entirely, uniquely mine and ours.

Seoul never got smaller. But we got more comfortable inside of it.