#life in korea
여기는 속초라는 도시의 아침 조명이다.
아침마다 이렇게 바다를 볼 수 있으니 좋다.
ALT지난 주말에 남편아랑 바다여행을 갔다왔다. 역시 바다 위 저녁하늘 만큼 아름다운 것은 없다. 내가 제일 좋아하는 연한 파스텔 색.
바닷가에서 산책하다가 바닷가 옆에 있는 카페에 가서 야경을 감상하면서 수많은 이야기도 나누고 맛좋은 커피도 마셨다. 주말마다 이렇게 자유롭게 시간을 보낼 수 있었으면 좋겠다.
my absolute favourite thing is decorating my kakaotalk profile every time i go somewhere and take pictures for all the memories
from last to first: osaka cherry blossoms + spring walks, jeonju blossoms + april showers, roses at the start of summer + roses from my grandmas garden when i was little, seoul illustration fair + the illustration @sxs_hyun did for me, autumn fireworks in buyeo + a video where they look like falling stars, flowers in manila + me looking at the mountains, more flowers at the top of taal volcano + me walking in paradise, flowers back in seoul + saying goodbye to the ocean in manila, yellow cosmo flowers at olympic park to celebrate the autumn + a bunny (do i need say anything else?)
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영국의 이런 크리스마스 전통을 많이 좋아해서 올해 한국에서 보낼 것은 조금 아쉬운데 한국에서도 크리스마스 기념할려고 해요. 다이소 가서 재료를 사고 이렇게 벽에다가 “트리” 만들었어요. 이번 크리스마스는 우리 가족이랑 보낼 수 없지만 제 한국 가족한테 크리스마스 전통을 소개해줄 수 있고 같이 보내서 좋을 것 같아요. 날씨가 추워도 마음은 따뜻하게 시간 같이 보낼 겁니다.
I love all these Christmas traditions, so it feels a little weird to be in Korea this year, but I intend on celebrating Christmas here as well. I bought lights and tinsel at Daiso to make this tree shape against the wall in my apartment. I won’t be with my family this year, but I look forward to spending Christmas with my Korean friends this year and introducing them to these traditions.
Read the blog post here to hear about it :)
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If you read my post last week, you’d know that Week 1 was okay but Week 2 was basically a disaster since I caught a bad cold. After all that, my only desire this week was to have a 100% perfectly filled in week and well:
I did it! Ah, it feels good :) And as you can see, Week 4 is already going pretty well too (I took this photo on Sunday afternoon that’s why haha).
This week’s challenge was basically combating my laziness. After having such a long rest from my cold, I kind of just wanted to continue existing in a blob of blankets watching TV.
But regardless, I had a lot of motivation so I pulled through. Granted, it wasn’t like I had motivation to do all the things on my calendar. I only had motivation to draw little green dots on my calendar but that counts, right? :P
Here’s to another perfect week next week.
포기하지 마세요! (Don’t give up!)
In a previous post, I talked about how I decided to start using a habit calendar to help me keep track of all the things I want to do, and to just start building better habits because I’ve gotten super lazy haha!
Here’s the progress so far for the first 2 weeks:
Well wow these two weeks were a super rough start. I mean, it actually started off great. For a couple days I did everything as planned! But then, just two days in, I caught a cold. And usually colds don’t faze me that much–I can still function pretty well. But this cold. Oh man. I almost died.
During the early stages of the cold when it wasn’t that bad, I managed to still do everything, as you can see under the “Daily” section of the calendar. But then it got to a point where all I could manage to do was lay in bed and sleep/wallow in my pain. I even had to stop working for about 3 days.
That’s when I just did the bare minimum of the “Daily” section. For me that was reading (in English and sometimes Korean) and meditating. On the 8th when I didn’t meditate, it was literally because I just forgot lol. I meditate right before bed at night but that day I just went to sleep.
Writing in English and Korean was too taxing on my brain. Needless to say, I also stopped working out. During Week Two, I did all those workouts toward the end of the week when I was feeling a bit better.
I’m sad that there are so many blank spaces on my calendar but what can you do? Life is unpredictable like that and honestly I’m glad I rested instead of pushing myself to complete everything for the sake of getting to draw a green dot on a piece of paper
As you can see, this past Saturday (the 10th) was when I finally felt well again! Even now, I’m still in the aftermath of the cold (coughing mainly) but I at least feel like I can do stuff again which is great.
Here’s to hoping I get back on track this week! It’s already looking good so far. Now that I’ve recovered from my cold, my goal is a completely entirely 100% filled in Week Three
화이팅!!!
So a couple weeks ago I had the worst–and then the best–experiences while teaching so far in Korea. Long story short: my students protested in my class because they wanted to watch a movie instead of having our normal English class. Needless to say, I wasn’t prepared for the chaos that ensued.
휴대폰 올려놓지 마세요
(분실사고 자주 발생)
Saw this warning sign in a public restroom, above some box on the wall that was perfect for placing a cell phone (and yes, I ignored the sign and put my phone there anyway haha)
- 휴대폰: cell phone (핸드폰 is also common)
- 올려놓다: put on (this is a kind of compound verb)
- -> 올리다: raise, put up, upload (as in “I uploaded/posted a photo to tumblr”)
- -> 놓다: place, lay
- ~지 마세요: attaches to a verb stem to express “don’t do ___”; dropping the “세요” makes it informal
- 분실: loss (as in a lost item)
- 사고: accident
- 자주: frequent(ly)
- 발생: occurence, incident
Don’t place your cell phone [here]. They frequently get lost.
This translation is a bit odd because I think English speakers would instead say something like “don’t forget your belongings”
Previously I posted about the Korean presidential election and included a photo of the official candidate posters.
Well, local elections are coming up on Wednesday (early voting has already started) and that means it is once again election season! Already for the past week or so, campaign staffers & candidates themselves have been standing around in subway stations and on street corners, greeting everyone who walks by and passing out business cards so you remember who to vote for.
We’ve still got the official candidate posters, in order by party (and this time different based on area, since this election covers city & district-specific positions), but my last post left out the campaign banners:
These can be seen around basically every major intersection & subway station. The presidential election only had so many candidates, so the same banners were everywhere. Now we’ve got diversity! The major parties still have the most candidates running for various positions, so the numbers 1, 2, and 3 are still the most noticeable.
But my last post also left out the most infamous part of election campaigns here: The Campaign Truck
These trucks drive around blasting the candidate’s little “theme song” (usually 99% the person’s name + #, like the above 1번 1번 정진술!) and sometimes the candidate/someone stands in the back and gives a speech. I encounter at least one outside every subway station I go through.
They are highly annoying but I also find them kinda fun. I live back in some alleys that are too small for them to drive down, so I don’t have to worry about them circling around my house in the morning, though.
윤석열 winning the election is not the news I wanted to wake up to this morning. But here’s hoping that he’s prevented from carrying out his campaign promises (like abolishing the Ministry of Women & Family, the 52-hour workweek, and minimum wage…)
On twitter last night, 재외국민 (overseas Korean nationals) was trending because their votes came in at like 60% for 이재명 and most of the tweets were thanking/cheering for them.
But in the final tally, 77% of eligible voters voted and Yoon won by like 1%.
Today was election day aka 제20대 대통령 선거!
The polls closed at 7:30pm and basically every news station is now covering the results. There are a bunch of livestreams on youtube (such as this SBS one), and Korean election coverage is actually kinda fun because they use silly visual aids when showing the current results like the candidates doing a MadMax style car race and dancing to kpop…
Most channels seem to be saying 윤석열 of 국민의힘 (People Power Party) is currently in the lead, but it’s very very close.
He’s #2 (as shown on these official posters in my neighborhood; there were initially 14 candidates total) because he’s the candidate from the main opposition party.
#1 is 이재명 of the current ruling party 더블어민주당 aka 민주당 (Democratic Party). Despite how many candidates there were, it’s really just down to the first two.
심상정 of 정의당 (#3, Justice Party) will get maybe 2% of the vote and 안철수 of 국민의당 (#4, People Party) dropped out a few days ago to endorse 윤석열.
No one else was really even talked about that much in comparison, unless it was something like how annoying 허경영 (#6, 국가혁명배당금당/National Revolutionary Dividends Party & cult leader) was with his never ending campaign phone calls.
A lot of people stated they were voting for the “least worst”, so I’m sure there’ll be lots of complaints no matter who wins. But I hope the new president manages to do a good job regardless.
Okay I have not kept up with posting like I’d planned because I was having a chaotic time trying to get a job and change my visa…
But that’s finally all sorted! I’m officially an F2-7 visa holder!
Anyway, this week is the presidential election (대통령 선거), which is a “red day” aka national holiday and none of the candidates are especially popular so I’m curious to see how it will turn out. As a foreign resident, I can’t vote, but my friends still ask what I think and who I would vote for. It’s definitely a different vibe than the last election but hopefully the new president does a good job…
어제 첫번째 헌혈했다~!
I donated blood for the first time yesterday! Got some gifts in return: juice, crackers, chocopie, a rubix cube & cute pin (for 1st time donors), and 2 movie tickets (you get to choose from various coupons)~
There are quite a few requirements, so check that you’re eligible before going :) The process was pretty simple: show up, fill out an online survey about some medical history, then meet with a nurse to answer some more questions, test your blood type, and take your blood pressure (mine was too high so I had to wait a few minutes and try again). The computer survey is available in English but the nurse did my interview in Korean and all the instructions during the actual donating were in Korean, so you should check with the specific center ahead of time if you need translation. Apparently they don’t allow friends/family to translate, only official translators/staff.
Once they were ready for me, they showed me to a big reclining chair, gave me some info about potential after-effects to be aware of, stuck my arm with the needle, and then I just chilled there until the machine beeped that I was done. At one point it started beeping because my blood flow was too weak (?) and the nurse came over and gave me a stress ball to squeeze because I wasn’t flexing my hand enough. Overall I’d say it was uncomfortable, but not really painful. When I was done, a nurse put a velcro strap around my bandage for pressure and set a timer for a few minutes. Once that timer was done, the strap was loosened and I was given this basket of goodies, another timer for 10min, and told to go wait in the lobby waiting area. There’s a staff member there to make sure you drink some water before you leave. When the timer goes off, you’re free to go~ I went around 2:30pm and there were a few other people, but everyone is in & out pretty quickly. In total, it took me about 40min from start to finish with the actual donation taking about 15-20min. The only side effect I had is a sore arm and a headache, but that could’ve been from caffeine withdrawals since I didn’t drink coffee yesterday…
Registering my volunteer hours was super simple too! I just logged in on the VMS site, went to the blood donation page, and my info was already there so all I had to do was click “register”.
Sorry ive been so inactive, ive been in korea for 6 months. But I’m coming back to canada today (tonight) and i have tons of stories about my experience! So stay tuned.
Happy new year everyone!!!! sorry i’ve been gone for so long. i wanna start posting again but i’ll be busy preparing for …. wait for it… MOVING TO KOREA !!!!!
yes you read right i’ll be moving to korea for at least a year as an english teacher so hopefully i can put my limited Korean knowledge to work lol.
i may post a little here or there but i probably wont get on an actual posting schedule till i get settled in korea which won’t be for a few months
please be patient i’ll be back soon !
