Saying Goodbye

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard"- Winnie the Pooh

I'm writing this as I'm sitting on the plane on my way to Korea. I still have 1 hour left before landing in Dubai for a layover. Can't wait to go to duty free although I probably won't buy anything now. This probably has been one of the longest flights in my life. Retail therapy is a must right now.

This goodbye today was probably one of the most difficult things I have done in my life. Leaving everything and all my loved one's behind and climbing on the plane is super crazy and brave and I think I might have underestimated the difficulty and bravery necessary to be able to do this. 

I've been in tears ever since I said goodbye to my dad and my mom. It's crazy how you can be strong the one moment and the next moment you cry so badly that you can't even speak. Words are lost and emotions are overflowing. It felt to me like I'm saying goodbye forever. But I know skype will help with that one once I land in Korea. 

What Skype might not help for is the lonely feeling and emptiness I currently experiencing. After dating my boyfriend for 4 years we decided that it will be good for both of us to take a recreational break to re-invent ourselves and follow our individual dreams and goals. But even though this might be extremely grown up and wise of us it really doesn't make it any easier. My heart feels restless and broken. This is going to take a while to heal to the point where I can function without seeing him in everything. 

I've been listening to music (Lady Antebellum and Taylor Swift) and it feels like every song speaks to me in a way. Every song makes me cry. It makes me think of one moment in our relationship and tears come rolling out again. (It ain't pretty) Every movie touches me more emotionally than ever before. It's like I can place myself in the head of the artist who wrote the song or the actress saying the words. 

One thing I know is that the hardest part is still coming. Sweet dreams turning into nightmares. Not to mention the resistance that must be forcefully exercised to avoid calling or texting or asking just for a opinion or even just sharing the days happenings. And the worst thing is that even though you have your girlfriends to speak to it doesn't give you the same satisfaction as you would've gotten from the one you love deeply. But I miss my girlfriends too and can't wait to show off a little when I land in Korea.

Anyway hopefully flight two to Korea will go better and less emotional. I think getting a sleeping pill might just do the trick in giving me a little emotional gap and some sleep as well. Other than being a little teary. I'm quite excited to get to the other side and have some fun. 

                                                     

My Little Crazy family.

Lost and Found

I mean this literally!

I need to take the bus in the mornings. There is two busses. Firstly the 61 bus and secondly the 092 bus.... And then the 092 bus takes me to a bus halt where I'm suppose to get off and walk to school. 

Yesterday morning I missed the 092 bus so I had to use my little letter and then this morning I got off way to soon after missing my lift at 8 am this morning at a church I still need to go find. When I saw cows eating I only realised I am completely lost. I tries to ask a little Korean lady the way to the school but she couldn't understand me and I didn't understand her. So I show her the letter again and she points me in a direction. I have no idea what direction it is but I assume she said get back on the bus. So I walked into the direction she showed me. I asked another only Korean speaking lady and she asked another little granny lady who can also only speak Korean. I showed the old lady the letter and she started speaking a lot of Korean to me. The more I say I don't understand the more she tries to explain. So she ended up calling the number on the page and hand it over to me like I'm suppose to know where the hell I am. And in the whole process the bus pitched up again and left before I could get on it.

I'm screwed I think to myself!!! I hand the phone back to the lady so that my co-teacher can find out where I am but obviously she didn't understand what was going on and closed the phone. She had a marshmallow pink flip flap phone with little lights everywhere. I asked her to call again and mimed to her to talk and eventually in Korean she told me to wait here his coming. 

I must say when something like this happens to you in the world we live today it's pretty damn scary. You feel so small, stupid and powerless. 

Korean Culture Part 1

So far what I have realised about this culture is that they are extremely friendly real people. Obviously I don't understand what they say in Korean but from what I have gathered they are real. And when they do laugh they really think something is funny and that a lot of the time. 

But as they can laugh I can laugh as well at some of the things they do which is so much different than the western culture. One of the first things I have learned was to take off your daily shoes and leave them outside or in the front door passage way. I thought to myself this is extremely weird and actually quite a hassle at first or actually I still think so. Everything later on smells like stinky feet and smelly shoes. It's only winter now so I wonder how it's going to be in the summer months.

The whole reason behind taking off your shoes and putting on another pair before entering a building is influenced by the Chinese culture. They believe by taking your shoes off and putting on another pair for inside wear only keep the dirt out. If you think about it it kind of does keep the dirt out but they also see dirt as the unseen dirt, dirt of the world or the human kind. So it's kind of quite a valid reason and really interesting.

So on my first day of school I got handed a pair of "slippers" but it's more like sandals which is really not nice and looks like it came from I don't know what age.... But anyway I had to wear it. If in Rome do as the Romans do except in this case like the Koreans do it.... Anyway here is a picture of my beautiful shoes that will soon be replaced by a decent pair of pump shoes or something nice.

Exploring my New Territory

Fun filled day 

I woke up this morning at 11am and after I got over the shock of almost sleeping for 12 hours and wasting my day away I kind of started to feel a little depressed because there is no one I could say good morning too. So I went to shower feeling all miffy and not in the mood for the day when I remembered making a date with Gezina aka. Christina (next door neightbour) to go and explore the outskirts of town.

And what fun it didn't turn out to be. Wow!! We walked all around the town for about 10km. To add on top of that it was an absolutely beautiful day today. I had to delayer myself twice because I heated up so quickly. I must say I'm going to be a little stiff tomorrow from all this walking but it's better than being sad and lonely. 

Korea love their parks. One thing I realised that differs between us in South Africa and Korea is the fact that Koreans absolutely love the outdoors. Needless to say that I would've loved it so much too if I stayed in a small apartment like most of them do. I saw some many families on a outing in the parks today and it's not only the primary school aged children with the family but the teenagers as well. This was quite a remarkable sight to see. 

We went to the Historic park in Jeon Gogeup (town I stay in). They have a very big museum in the park that you can visit so I will do that sooner or later. They also have all these statues of the ape man standing around or making a fire or hunting a mammoth. As I mentioned on facebook  they believe the cradle of the humankind lies within Korea. And as I assume they also still believe that man came from ape which I won't judge them on but seriously people need to get over that now. It's so not true. One really weird thing I saw was that they displayed rhino's which is quite funny considering they are one of the countries who buys ivory and get rhino's killed.

There is apparently a big festival happening in the park in May so I think I will go join that. Apparently they show the people of Korea how people lived in the Stone age by teaching people how to start a fire with stones and twigs. 

Another interesting thing I found out is that Korea only eat white dogs because they believe their meat is more pure than other hair coloured dogs. And this broke my heart because it's not like these people have black dogs or something but only white dogs and they eat them. And most of the dogs here is chained up. It's really sad. And I really hope that I will never come across a place that sells dog meat. I'm to much of a animal lover to think of eating dogs never mind the fact that I'm really trying to figure out why I'm eating meat in the first place... 

Anyway. When we got back into town I split from Gezina and went into town to do some exploring for myself. I must say their style of clothing is quite different but not to much different from the SA Chinese stores. The other thing I realised is that retail therapy is a thing and really does keep your mind occupied. I'm still a little on the scared side to spend money. Half of the things I wanted to buy today didn't have price tags on and when I ask the guy behind the till how much it is he answers me in Korean which I definitely don't understand. I didn't even understand when they gave me the price never mind everything else they said. I'll have to walk with a calculator so that they can show me on that.

And then of course which is probably one of the best things ever living here is that I met another foreign english teacher from the US who teaches at another school in the street on in my search for a restaurant to eat dinner at. It's quite great that it's so easy to point out who is foreign and who is not. And it's something we definitely don't get in South Africa. So we went for dinner and had a nice chat and now we might go out tonight to introduce me to some of the local beers in a local pub. I must say it's quite nice to just speak to people who actually understand you and who can communicate back.

It's super frustrating to try speak really simple english super slowly so that the Korean people can understand what you are asking or saying. But all in all the people of Korea is super friendly and really nice and they love laughing so it's actually nice being around these positive people. I just wish I understood them a little. But I'm teaching myself the alphabet on my cellphone and I'm translating words into english in order to understand. So eventually I'll be able to maybe communicate a little or maybe just understand their writing. 

The Health Check

What an unclear thing to do. The doctors don't speak english and I really don't understand Korean. Everything sounds the same to me for now. But in some way I got to get it done in 3 hours. From blood and urine tests to blood pressure (100/67 BOOM!!!) to eye sight tests, colour tests as well as hearing tests and x-rays of my lungs was all done in a mysterious way since I have no clue what they are saying. We went up and down, up and down the hospital to get it all done. From one doctor to another.

Luckily I had my Co-teacher with me to sort out the language barrier a little between the Doctor and myself. And it's quite funny how all woman apparently have a thing about men knowing their weight because I didn't say a word and then he commented and said "I'm not watching, don't worry" but he was clearly watching haha. I have no problem with that but it's just a funny observation I made today.

And now it's the wait for the blood and urine results. Hope it all looks good in the end.

A week later:

My health tests came back looking great expect for my liver toxicity levels being to high. It must have been the glass of red wine I had in Cape Town at the airport before I left. I really had to drink a little to give me some dutch courage and calm my nerves. But other than that everything looked good. So say hallo to the lady receiving her Korean ID soon.

My First Thoughts

Weird! Scared! Confused! HOMESICK!!!

I arrived on Wednesday night and after collecting my bags and being on my way out to meet with my lift I firstly had to change my Rand into Won. Their notes works in my thousands so 1000 = R10 and R10000 = R100 etc. It was quite interesting and it look me a little while to figure out how much it is in rand exactly. I got orders to meet my lift at the MacDonalds (very unique lol) but when I got there, there was no lift insight. I stood there for quite some time before somebody pitched up with my name on a little board. But it got sorted out. It took 2 hours to get to the town I'm living in. 

To describe the town it is a really small town and it's between a lot of farms. It looks like Johannesburg in the winter months at the moment so it's really ugly and cold. The place I stay in is quite nice. It's a studio apartment that's quite big and really close to a bus stop and grocery stores as well as some clothing stores and some restaurants. I arrived in the dark at this strange place and my first reaction was "Is this really where I'm staying?" It wasn't what I imagined. Nothing actually was what I imagined. It was scary. Everything was in Korean and I couldn't read anything on any board. The oven is completely Korean.... to the point where I couldn't figure it out at all.

The girl who stayed there before me left me a nice folder with a lot of tips and stories which I really appreciated. Although I would've liked to just have somebody explain to me it is quite an unusual thing to be able to understand Korean explanations. I made myself some two minute noodles but it was really bad and not what I expected. It had no flavour what so ever. I climbed in bed on Wednesday night super scared, alone and missing home so much. Homesick struck me hard to the point where I woke up at 4am in the morning and just started crying and I really could stop. I just wanted my mom with me. I stood up and the girl who stayed here before mentioned that there was a South African girl in the same complex as where I stayed. So being wide awake I stood up wrote "Hi" on a sticky note, went over to her room and stuck it. 

The following day at school I was still not in a really great place to communicate and interact with anyone. I really just wanted to be on my own and cry. I made a few Skype calls to my Friend in America (Maryke) to cheer me up a little but even that didn't really work that well. I had lunch with my co-teacher and at lunch I just thought of the people back home and started to get tears in my eyes. The co-teacher didn't know what was going on so I tried my best to explain. I went home at like 5pm and the first thing I did was to go see if this girl saw my sticky note and if she was there. I must say it took quite a lot of guts to actually just walk up to a complete stranger but I guess when you are in a completely different country you kind of have South Africa as a similarity and you grab onto them as you know them for years.

Anyway she was there and she took me on a tour in town. We had some dinner and it was really nice to eat food that I sort of know. I'm usually all in for trying new things and tasting new aromas but if you miss home and really just want mommy's food it helps a little to cure the pain with some food that you know. We also went to a coffee shop to have the most delicious cup of coffee and there after it was off to the Lotte supermarket to buy myself so nice breakfast and some snacks and stuff. So the night ended off with me walking around with my first Korean payslip of 39000Won = R400 for one little bag filled with goods. It's not that cheap after all.

I still miss home a lot and I'm still a little homesick but at least now I can communicate to someone in Afrikaans about stuff that bothers me or stuff I need to figure out. It's gives me some comfort in moving this far and not having any support system with me here. And to be honest it makes me a little bit more positive about moving so far away from home. 

I think so far what I have learned about myself again is the fact that I always choose one person to be close too. And if I think back on my school days and University days I've always done it that way and had one really really important friend which I cared about and loved and cherished. I have a lot of great and close friends and I love them to bits but it's a different type of friendship I guess. It's a relationship I guess... 

Travel Tips 101

The in's and out about travelling 

With every journey you learn certain new things that will make your travel so much easier if you knew this from the start. And this was exactly the case with me in the last few weeks. Although I have done a lot of traveling myself to a few places around the world I can honestly say that this past few days was quite a experience in itself. I never really organized the previous trips but I always knew what was going on behind the sense but obviously that didn't really help me.

Here is my tips:

1. I prefer a hard body suitcase above a material suitcase because it just seems a little stronger and I think it's also easier to force close.

2. Always have a big enough bag especially if you are planning on going for a year.

3. When you pack your bags roll your clothes up into little sausages and tightly as possible and pack them together as tightly as possible. Try to pack the bottom and top layer in the same direction.

4. Take your big bulky jackets in your hand as it won't be weighed and you save up some space in your suitcase.

5. Take an extra hand luggage bag with so that you can spread the weight of your luggage evenly and attempt to avoid overweight penalties.

6. Always pack an extra set of clothes into your hand luggage especially 2 extra panties/jockeys. Bags do get lost on long flights and you might end up waiting as long as a week for your luggage to catch up with you. So it's always night to have a pair of clothes on while you are washing the other set of clothes.

7. Pack your bags a day or 2 before the time to avoid having to live out of your bag for a week and giving yourself the time to still have a choice what to wear.

8. Make sure you don't exceed the liquid limit in you hand luggage and also pack all your liquid bottles into ziplock bags to avoid your clothes from getting washed and stained in the process of your flight. Air pressure is a real thing.

9. If you have a few stop over's in different countries before you reach your end destination send you luggage directly through to your end destination. This will save you some time and effort on the airport because you won't have to wait for your baggage at collections and then book it in again. This will give you some time for the duty free shops.

10. If you have a backpack take it with as it will make your daily traveling overseas so much easier.

11. Always have your documents with you or at least carry copies of the most important documents (passport) in your backpack while touring as you might just encounter a obstacle where you'll need it. Don't carry the originals for incase the backpack get stolen but copies in several different places will do you wonders when you need it most.

12. When it comes to having a contract in a foreign country try and receive the contract before applying for your visa. This might just save you a lot of time.

13. Don't book your flight ticket before you received your passport back from the embassy. This will save you money.

14. Call the embassy everyday just to make sure there is progression when it comes to issuing your visa. This doesn't count for the American and Dutch embassy in South Africa. I'm not sure about the leniency of the other embassies.

15. If you want to go travel a good idea for spending money will be to get a traveler's cheque (ABSA) because you can get dollars/Euro on it and then safe some banking fees whilst overseas. And you don't have to work in Rand.

16. For money exchange you need your passport, ID and flight confirmation to get the money.

17. When you exchange rand for dollars ask the bank to get small notes (5$ and 10$) and not only big notes (50$ or 100$) because when you buy something in a foreign country at a small coffee shop they don't have change for the big notes and thus you won't be able to buy it or if they do have change you will sit with their currency which is not necessarily the same currency as your end destination. Saving you money.

18. When you are actually on the plane high up in the air and your ears are getting sore because of the irregularities of cabin pressure ask the flight attendant for 2 plastic cups and put it over your ears. This will calibrate the cabin pressure and your ear channel pressure. This works wonders for screaming babies too. Oh this might also help you sleep in the plane if you know how to make a screaming baby quiet.

19. Walk around in the plane every 3 hours or so just to keep the blood flowing. Your legs and feet tend to swell a little because of water retention and the altitude.

20. On that note wear loose clothes on a plane. It's much more comfortable and it allows your legs and feet to swell a little and not cause you discomfort. Wearing a pair of jeans is a no go!! Unless its a short flight.

21. If it's a really long flight try and take a sleeping pill just to help you feel rested by the time you reach the other side.

22. Be sure to know in what time zone the airport falls in order to avoid missing your next flight after a lay over. This happened to my family and it delayed our trip by 4 hours which is not nice considering your journey becoming 24 hours long.

23. If you choose your plane seat it's better to take a aisle seat to avoid discomfort when you want to leave your seat and walk around or go to the bathroom.

24. If you travel alone for a very long time make a friend as quickly as possible.

This is all I can think of now.... If I get so learn some new tricks I'll post them here.

The Time is Now

Why wait?

Every year goes by in a blink of the eye. We normally start the new year with another goal in mind and with a positive outlook. And most years these "wishes" stay the same. I want to work harder this year or I want to get bigger and stronger in gym or I want to make more money or I want to spend money on [something]. But at the end of the year we normally look back at the year that just passed and we haven't really reach our goals. 

There is a big mistake that everybody makes. We all live every new years. We all make goals on new years. We take part in this race to reach our goals but in the end we miss the beauty of the journey to get there. We always have the end in mind and it causes us to loose sight of the little things that happens along the way. We are so concentrated on our own goals that we forget the goals of the people around us or even forget their needs. We are so rushed everyday that we forget to look at the beauty of nature. We are so busy to wish every week by just to chill on weekends that we end up wishing for our life to pass. 

Why don't we make new wishes every single day of the year? Why can we not work towards being happy even if it means that today's work won't be done by the end of today? Why not see the beauty of nature you are busy rushing by every single day? Why can't we stop and smile to a complete stranger. Why not talk to that guy that stand on the streets every single day looking for a job? Why don't we look up to the stars and see how many shooting stars we can count? Why don't we make more time to get to know the inner beauty of every person even those closest to you. We seems to miss all of these things. The things that actually matters. 

We also seem to say "maybe tomorrow" a lot and then we end up not doing what we really wanted to do. We end up just going through life not really gaining anything, not learning anything, not improving ourselves at all. We sometimes think to ourselves I really want to do this particular thing or even as crazy as I want to be with this person. We are to scared and always have some excuse to why something won't work or why you can't do something. It's so easy to think of excuses. I can think of a 100 reasons why I can't write this post right now but in the end writing one makes me happy. I let go of things I feel is important for others to know. I open myself up for criticism and remarks.But after it all I am happy by writing things down that's on my heart and by sharing it with people. Always worked for me. 

I'm also guilty of this absurd thing that all human are guilty of. It's absolutely ridiculous. 

So today I challenge you to take 5 minute in your day and just smile to somebody else or laugh at yourself or even if you want to call somebody you hardly ever speak to. Take that 5 minutes in a day and think to yourself how you are going to proceed in reaching your dreams. Do something that makes you happy. 

LIVE - LOVE - LAUGH

∞