Living the Daydream: Month 3

Oh, October, how I absolutely love you. The weather is still warm with a little bit of a chill starting to seep into the air, I get to celebrate my birthday, Pumpkin spice GRACES all the coffee shops, fall activities ensue, the leaves change color, and everyone starts getting into the mindset of coziness. It’s definitely my favorite time of year, and I basically spent all of last month just counting down the days until fall hit South Korea. I have very high expectations for fall, and while I expected to be let down in some ways, fall here in Korea has definitely not disappointed! While initially I was so bummed to be missing the start of another holiday season in the United States (I felt the same way when I was living in Spain), Korea has really pulled through for me as far as creating a really fun Autumn goes.

Where I’ve been

Nothing crazy folks! this month I did 1 day in Nami Island, 1 day in Seoraksan National Park, and spent all the rest of the time exploring my own city! Sorry I’m not being more interesting — but also I can’t travel anywhere anyways because of the two week quarantine that’s still happening here if you didn’t happen to be vaxxed in Korea. I’m hoping to do more domestic travel in December when I get a little bit of a longer break off of school!

Highlights

• All the hiking! I knew that I wanted to become a more avid hiker when I moved to South Korea - it is the national past time after all! The people here take their hikes so seriously. I’ve really never seen anyone dressed for a hike the way they do here. Full hiking suits, hiking poles, intense backpacks, full cooking setups so they can cook lunch at the top, the whole shabang. Meanwhile, I have my leggings and running shoes, and I definitely feel underdressed, but that doesn’t stop me from still having a good time!

  This month, I did two pretty big hikes. I hiked Jangsan mountain here in Busan, (which is conveniently my metro stop, so I didn’t even have to take any public transportation!) as well as ticking off the mountain that was at the top of my South Korea bucket list: Ulsanbawi rock in Seoraksan national park! They were both very difficult hikes, but I truly do love the feeling of pushing my body as far as it can go - not to mention the epic views you get at the top and the satisfying meal you can treat yourself to once you come back down! The weather has been perfect this month for hiking.

  I have one or two more hikes planned that I need to do before the weather completely freezes Korea over - so stay tuned for some more fall foliage in next months Round-up!

• Meeting new friends! This month I had my 22nd birthday, and to celebrate, my one friend that I had made and I went out to a bar - where we ended up meeting another group of girls that we truly just clicked with. Now we do pretty much everything together, and It’s SO nice to finally feel as if I have a group chat that I can just text and make plans with for the weekends. I dragged them all on a weekend trip up to Seoraksan national park, and while I would’ve done it alone, they just made the trip 10x more fun. Feeling happy because I have friends:)

• Getting my Alien Registration Card! FINALLY OMG. Now I can start working on setting up a bank account, registering for Coupang (Korean amazon), setting up food delivery apps, getting a Korean phone number and plan — in other words this is the final thing I needed for my life here to come together, and I’m so so excited to finally have that last piece to the puzzle start sliding into place.

• For the first time in…ever, South Korea put out Pumpkin Spice Lattes at Starbucks:’) It feels as if they just ~knew~ that it would make me feel like home! Feeling very blessed that they decided this year was the year to finally just feed into the needs of the expat community here in Korea LOL!!

Lowlights

• honestly, this sounds so basic and boring but I’m truly just missing the fall season back home! I’ve been struggling a lot this month just feeling like I’m missing so many fall traditions and coziness back at home. I love having the company of family and my boyfriend, and I want to carve pumpkins with them and go apple picking and snuggle up by the fire! I think this is the first bout of homesickness that I’ve ever had. Like ever?? And it’s hitting me a little harder than I thought it would.

  While fall in Korea is gorgeous and still so much fun, it’s just not as big of a deal and nothing really compares to doing all the seasonal things there are to do in October with the people you love the most.

  Also I think the main culprit of the homesickness is me not having an oven - and I WISH I was joking. I keep seeing all these incredible delicious fall-y, pumpkin-y, chai-y recipes that I want to make so bad but Korean apartments just don’t have ovens! I really did not expect it to be this big of a deal for me HAHA.

• During science class a few weeks ago we were making dalgona cookies (the ones from Squid Games - ya know?) and my co-teacher dripped boiling sugar on my hand :’) So I’ve been dealing with a GNARLY burn for the majority of this month, and I think it’s going to leave a pretty hefty scar. Super random thing to mention, but it’s definitely been a big part of the month.

• The 9 hour days at work are really getting to me! Work is slowly starting to improve as I figure out how to manage the tougher classrooms, but 9 hours a day with kindergarteners is just taking its toll. It’s really just a one hour difference from home, but getting off at 6 instead of getting off at 5 makes such an enormous difference?? I don’t know why but that extra hour KILLS. Lots of people say they really started to see their job starting to improve after 4 or 5 months, so I’m hoping that I’m just still in my adjustment period. If you’re interested in teaching in Korea I have a post all about exactly how to do it! You can find it HERE.

LOLs

• The curfew here honestly just makes weekend nights out hilarious! Curfew due to COVID this month was 10 pm, (Although it’s recently just changed to midnight! Thank god) and it’s just very funny to see how everyone has adapted. Everyone here start at the bars very early, and when 10pm rolls around the party moves to the streets! The convenience stores here sell all sorts of beers, seltzers, and soju, but the real kicker is that drinking on the street is legal! especially in some of the other, more expat-dense areas of Busan, it’s just a horde of foreigners all hanging out in the street talking and making friends and trying to make the best of an overall crappy situation.

• Learning to surf! Where I live in Busan is a big surfer destination so I thought I’d try my hand before the weather completely cooled off. For SOME REASON I don’t know why but I thought I would be good at it? Let me just tell you, I was poorly mistaken. It was a really fun day of wipeouts, trying to figure out how to catch waves, and quickly realizing that I am, in fact, not a natural when it comes to surfing. Maybe I’ll be able to take advantage of where I’m living at the moment and really dive into surfing next summer? It’s something I desperately want to be good at but the amount of blisters we had on our literal toe knuckles from clutching onto the surfboard with whatever we could was comical. Hopefully we have better luck next time!

Fitness

• After me finally finding a gym and getting into a routine last month, the gym just so happened to close and I was back to square one with finding a gym and dealing with steep prices. I finally found one and paid, which will hopefully motivate me to go, but getting off of work at 6, running to change and catch the bus, and then walking to the gym (and the whole ordeal of catching the bus that brings me back as well) puts me at cooking dinner around 8pm, something that I’m not a huge fan of.

  Fitness is definitely hard for me here! Eating rice every day at school and being so far away from a reasonably priced gym is really difficult, but I’m doing my best to not buy any sweets and stay on track as well as staying away from afternoon snacks (sometimes you really just need sugar to get through a 9 hour day with kindergarteners though!!). I’m definitely starting to see the effects of all the carbs that asian diets have so I’m hoping to really buckle down next month and start making health and fitness more of a priority.

Blog

• My traffic is slowly starting to get back on track to where we used to be, although I’m still seeing red numbers! It’s definitely discouraging to see not a whole lot of payoff, even with posting every week, weekly emails, and promoting it on all forms of social media, but I’m still hopeful that this is mainly due to Corona Virus and people simply not searching for travel tips or vacation destinations nearly as much as usual. This month I definitely put in WORK to pick my Pinterest up off the ground, and at least that is paying off! growth is slow but steady, and I’ve discovered what I need to focus on there to continue to see growth.

  If there are any particular topics you want me to write about or suggestions you have for blog post ideas or things you want to know about life in Korea, feel free to leave a comment down below!! I would love to hear from you and really cater this platform to exactly what you all want to see. I know these particular posts are more about my life and not as useful information-wise, but I’m hoping that you all still enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them! It almost feels like you get to read my diary a little bit:)

What’s Next

• Next month I have absolutely no bank holidays or school breaks, so I’m not sure that I will have too many opportunities for travel or exploring new cities! Hopefully I can really dive into Busan and put together a list of all the best things to do, the top instagrammable cafes, most delicious restaurants or fun foreigner bars or some things like that. I’d love to do a little sneaky getaway with some girls for a weekend but we don’t have any plans quite yet!

  Fingers crossed that I will finally be able to settle in at work, finish setting up life here, plan some fun adventures for the long school holiday I have in December, and continue to fight off homesickness as the holiday season starts coming in hot.