At first, I was good. Walking excessively in Busan wearing my tourist shoes meant that I had little care about what I was eating nor the amount. But as the weeks came and went, that little person inside of me that whispered eat, eat, eat managed to take over. So I gave in. I ate bread – a huge trigger food for me. I laid in bed, defeated, my stomach, bloated, and I didn’t know what to do. I hated the feeling of being full. If my stomach bulged out just a little from food I would go into full panic mode. When I was younger, this resulted in a kind of panic exercise induced black out. However, on this day, I had no where to go to exercise, so I fell back on something that I swore to my college self I would not do anymore.
When I was younger, I was obsessed with everything that wasn’t my immediate reality. Like most children, I dreamt of finding fairy circles deep in the woods, waking up one morning to find a letter on my desk inviting me to learn magic at some school far far away, or coming across a dragon egg while playing hide-and-seek on my friend’s ranch. I even redecorated and painted my room to look like the Gryffindor common room at one point so I could pretend just a little longer that I was living in an entirely different world far from the one of those around me
Perhaps most frustrating has been forgetting words completely. Because I use about half of the English I used to use before I moved, a lot of those bigger complicated SAT words have completely slipped from my mind. The other day I was trying to remember the word “conspire” and ended up blabbering through a definition of the word before a student corrected me. A lot of my Google searches these days look something like “the word that describes …” “synonyms of fun” etcetera. For an English major with a creative writing background, this has been my least favorite part of living here.
Dating is difficult, and dating in Korea is no different – especially as a foreigner. Considering the language and cultural barriers, there are still some things that you have to be on the lookout for in a potential partner.
Whether you’re looking for a new show to watch or are interested in delving into the often too dramatic and overly romanticized world of K-dramas, I have the list of the one’s worth wasting time on.
Some of these things can apply to other Asian countries, but of course, I’ve only ever lived in South Korea, so this is specific to my own experience. Most of these are things that I have yet to see any other article or blog mention, and I tried to highlight at least a few really important things to keep in mind, especially because most of these can affect your health.
It’s Wednesday morning; pouring outside – currently, has been, and will be the rest of the day. Despite this, I’m feeling oddly refreshed, a telling
Thinking about spending some time on vacation in Korea or deciding on whether you want to take the plunge, pack up, and move here? I’ve
There was a period of time where I was floating, drifting around in a space that felt neither tangible nor particularly empty. It was an in-between; a break in reality where a small piece of me managed to slip through into this place that was reminiscent of something more dream-like than anything else I’ve ever experienced: It was a Saturday morning on the patio of your favorite coffee shop, the smell of freshly made pastries wafting just under your nose, filling you up until you were warm, until your breathing was even and steady.
View More