Living the Daydream: Month 4
Happy Thanksgiving everyone:)
………… How have four entire months passed since I left home!? In just a few weeks, this will be the longest amount of time that I have ever spent away from home. It’s definitely interesting to notice that at this point during my semester studying abroad in Spain, with the holidays right around the corner and the weather getting colder, I could not wait to get home. Although I loved Spain, I was exhausted from all the weekend trips, 8 am classes, constantly speaking in another language, partying with my friends, and making the most of every second that I had left there.
When I got to South Korea, I knew that this was going to be a marathon, not a sprint! So even though I was counting down the days until I went home by this time when I was living in Spain, I’m surprisingly in a really good headspace at the moment.
In part, this is due to being completely set up, getting into a groove at school, and just finding my rhythm overall, but I’m really pleasantly surprised with how this month went. Obviously, I miss my family and friends with my WHOLE ENTIRE HEART but as far as my headspace goes, I’m doing much better than I anticipated.
Where I’ve Been:
Unfortunately, I didn’t really go anywhere this month! I am, however, hoping to do an extended Seoul trip over my winter break so I’m saving my money for that, and hopefully that goes according to plan.
Even though I didn’t go anywhere outside of Busan, I did a lot of really fun things around the city, like discovering new restaurants, eating at new cafes, trying new bars, doing all the touristy things, you know — (a little something I call “blog research”). I’m hoping to get some Busan travel guides out in the near future. I feel like I have enough information to put out a post with the top things to do in Busan, although I may continually update it as the year progresses. I need a little more time working my way through the restaurants (My friend Victoria and I are on a mission to find the best Korean bbq place in Busan, - so if you know of any places let me know!) and discovering new cafes, so those posts will have to wait a little while longer!
With a little luck, my Seoul city guide will be up at the end of next month as well:)
Highlights
This month has definitely gone much smoother than all the past months - Mainly because I’m basically (finally) all set up! I was able to get a bank account this month, which means my airfare got reimbursed, I can pay all my bills, my money gets dumped in there on payday - AKA It’s nice to see that you’re not as poor as you thought you were! I’ve been waiting on the airfare reimbursement for quite a while now so I’m feeling a little more comfortable now that it’s hit my bank account.
As far as a phone plan goes, I’ve just accepted the fact that it’s not going to happen for a price I’m willing to pay! I’ll stick with my little 30 dollars a month E-sim card and just not worry about Coupang or anything like that. It’s such a hassle to get a phone plan for anything less than a year or two, and with the language barrier that’s just not something I want to waste a weekend figuring out. I’m over it.
Museum DAH was one of my favorite things that I’ve done in Busan so far! for 18,000 won (like 16 dollars) you can enter this art exhibit, and although the museum itself is really small, it’s made entirely of floor to ceiling screens and mirrors, with the screens displaying moving graphics that cycled through a loop that lasted a little over an hour. Even the side rooms had their own loops of graphics, and we stayed there for well over an hour, soaking in all the gorgeous art, taking pictures, and making sure that we saw every bit of every loop that was going on.
The music was so relaxing, the graphics were gorgeous, and we sat down and had ourselves a relaxing evening! a welcome change from the previous weekend (keep reading to the lowlights to understand fully!).
Discovering new food! This month, I’ve actually tried a lot more traditional Korean food and feel much more confident going into Korean restaurants and ordering for myself. I’ve discovered something called Shabu Shabu, and although my initial experience with it literally made it into the lowlights section of this post, actual, well done shabu shabu was life changing. It’s this pot of hot broth, and you have lots of vegetables and raw meat that you cook with the boiling broth. You then put it all into sheet of rice paper and make little spring rolls with it! It’s so delicious and so fun, but definitely make sure to go to a good place so you’re not fishing your own frozen meat out of a freezer in the back room (……I wish I was kidding).
And although I’ve had my fair share of Korean barbecue, I had never been to a Samgyeopsal place until our Korean co-teachers took us out for dinner one day after school. Samgyeopsal is really thick pieces of pork on the same style of grill that Korean barbecue place use, and it’s literally so delicious. I personally think that bulgogi is better, but you definitely need to try samgyeopsal.
Victoria and I also managed to accidentally find a cafe that serves the BEST cake I’ve ever had…. and I’ve had a lot of cake. We’ve been back four times since and have graduated from getting a mini cake to split to getting a mini cake each - and we have absolutely no shame. Stay tuned for my Busan cafe roundup post to find out where 👀
I even found a Czech restaurant that sells authentic chimney cakes - and this cinnamon loving girl is absolutely obsessed with the way they remind me of my time in Budapest.
Anyways, there’s a lot of good food here, and I love being able to recommend places to other friends and have an arsenal of delicious, unique food places to take my friends and family if they’re ever able to visit! I think knowing where to eat is a good representation of how well you know the city, and I’m well on my way.
Fall foliage. Autumn in Busan and in Korea in general does NOT. COME. TO. PLAY. Fall anywhere is beautiful, but I’m convinced that this is one of the most beautiful falls that I’ve ever witnessed. The Ginkgo trees have been neon yellow for over a month with no signs of quitting, the maple leaves are bright orange, the hot pink Muhly grass, and all the beautiful colors mixed with the traditional Hanok style houses and temple architecture just makes for the most beautiful combination I’ve ever seen. I’m honestly just not ready for all the color to fall off the trees as we transition into winter - winter is NOT my season and I’m struggling to come up with good ideas of what to do here in Korea next season. If you have any thoughts or suggestions please let me know!
Work honestly flew by this month, and with as hard as the last few months have been, I’ve been extremely encouraged. Day to day, managing 3-7 year olds is still a freaking TASK, and some of the kids seem hopeless as far as earning their respect goes, but I think I’ve just become much more used to it. I don’t let a mean comment from the kids get to me as bad, I can work in the midst of chaos, and I’m learning to roll with the punches and not stress a failed class. Hopefully this mindset will help me through the rest of my contract, because while I love it here in Korea, I’ve decided that working with kindergarteners is not for me. LOL.
Lowlights
The weekend from hell. Literally, EVERY. SINGLE. THING. that could go wrong this weekend? it went wrong. It all started when Victoria and I decided to go check out Texas Street in the daylight (locals will warn you of going there at night. It’s supposed to have lots of western restaurants and bars, but also a hotspot for the Russian Mafia? Anyways, we were intrigued). We got there and it was (maybe luckily for us) completely deserted. So we headed across the street to Chinatown, where we popped into a restaurant and proceeded to have THE sketchiest food experience I’ve ever had. it was Shabu Shabu gone COMPLETELY wrong, and we were fishing frozen meat out of an industrial freezer to get our own freaking meat to cook in the soup. And it didn’t even taste good.
So then, we decided to go looking for the iconic Harry Potter cafe in Seomyeon called Po Tid. We probably wandered around Seomyeon for an hour before we realized that it simply did not exist anymore, and had been replaced by another cafe (which, as it turns out, has the best cake I’ve ever had in my life. So it wasn’t a complete bust, although I was quite disappointed about it not being Harry Potter themed). A menu fell over onto my drink and spilled the entire thing everywhere, and it was just not our day.
We both went home, determined to regroup and have a good night, but I arrived to the bar an hour late thanks to no Taxis being available. And in line with the entire rest of the weekend, there were no taxis available at 1am when the night ended, so I hiked for 20 minutes straight up the mountain that I live on in a mini skirt and no jacket at 2 in the morning after holding out for a taxi for a whole hour.
I woke up the next morning determined to salvage the weekend and go looking for the pink muhly grass that Korea is so famous for in the fall. We all planned to meet at Daejon ecological park, which was about an hour and a half away from me. Once we had all assembled, we walked around a mildly sad excuse for a park, saw one pathetic patch of pink grass, and decided to cut our losses and head back for food. As we boarded the train that was taking us back, we caught a glimpse of a road - hot pink with the overwhelming amount of muhly grass that was growing beside it. We had come all that way, and completely missed it! Because it’s seasonal, I probably won’t get the chance to see it again, and it really just had me feeling like a failure.
To top it all off, we decided to redeem our crap-shoot of a weekend by going for pizza, but would you even be surprised if I told you the pizza place didn’t exist and we all just had a meltdown and made plans to leave the country in the middle of the night? Because that’s what happened.
While it was a truly awful weekend, It’s definitely a good laugh now, and at the very least we all bonded over it. The good news is, I’m not sure it’s possible to have a weekend that bad, so it’s only up from here?
Missing home. As I mentioned earlier, I’m in a much better headspace than I anticipated going into the holiday season, but when I think about how today is Thanksgiving back home, and my family is all cooking in the kitchen together, eating foods that I can’t get my hands on here (let alone cook, as I don’t even have an oven), watching Christmas movies and decorating the Christmas tree, going Christmas shopping and seeing the lights together downtown, it’s definitely enough to make me miss home! Add that on top of missing my boyfriend and his family as they celebrate thanksgiving with all their friends that I loved getting to know this summer and it makes for a very sad girl. I’m finishing this post up while I sit on the floor of my apartment all alone, waiting for my take-out burger to arrive, and a little piece of carrot cake in the fridge from the bakery next door - I can’t find anything pumpkin flavored anywhere. The holidays are just such a time to be with family and if I’m this sad on Thanksgiving, I’m sure that gearing up for my first Christmas so far away from home will definitely be a lot to handle.
LOLs
Finding Kanglish everywhere! Victoria introduced me to this, as I didn’t even know this was a thing as much as it is. Kanglish is when Koreans try to put English words and phrases on their shirts, mugs, hats, sweatshirts — you name it— and the delivery is less than perfect. It’s honestly become a scavenger hunt to find all the hilarious Kanglish everywhere and adds just a little more joy into each day as you find these easter eggs. Enjoy:
Fitness
Despite having to get used to the temperamental bus schedule, finding a new gym after my old one closed, and figuring out a new bus schedule, I’ve actually been doing okay with fitness this month! I’ve been making it to the gym around 2-3 times a week, with another 1 or 2 home workouts that I do when I miss the bus thrown in there as well. Eating healthy isn’t so hard, other than the fact that my body doesn’t ~love~ digesting the rice they give us for lunch every day. I have, thanks to all the cafes here and the sheer amount of cake that is literally everywhere, developed an addiction to sugar? I’ve always had an enormous sweet tooth, and I think I’ve been addicted to sugar a few times in my life, but I’m really struggling to kick the habit! I would love to be able to cut that out of my life and be able to lose a few pounds. If you have any tips for getting rid of a sugar addiction, let me know below lollllll
Blog
As far as the blog goes, I’m back up to consistent pinterest traffic, although it’s still not where I was hoping to be by this time of the year! I honestly feel like I’m in a rut, and at this point I just don’t know what to do other than be consistent, so that’s what I’m doing! I’m starting to feel burnt out because of the lack of anything to show for all my hard work, but at the end of the day it’s still a passion of mine, and it’s a place to document all of my adventures and store all of my photos so I’m going to keep going! Hopefully I’ll be able to figure out what my blog growth strategy is missing sometime soon.
In the meantime, feel free to click around my website! All the pageviews count, all the comments mean so much to me, and I even have a donation button in the sidebar if you feel so inclined to be the one to buy my thanksgiving slice of carrot cake this year!
That’s it for the Month 4 round-up! Drop a comment below and say hi:) What are your Thanksgiving plans? How was your November?
