the blog

The Best Seasons to Travel to South Korea: Part 1: Autumn

“Autumn, the year’s last, loveliest smile.” — William Cullen Bryant What’s the best time of year to travel to South Korea? Well, when it’s NOT monsooning (June-July), swampy tropical heat-ing (July-September), or unbearably freezing from the dry winds coming down from China (January-March). Which leaves spring (March-May), aka Cherry Blossom Season, and
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Life This Week in South Korea: November 25-December 1, 2024

Monday, Nov 25 Got up early-ish and headed by bus to a park in Gangnam that looked pretty on Instagram. The Bus. Sigh. When I put this park into NaverMaps (Korea’s GoogleMaps) it basically said there was no way to go by bus from my house to that park. Well, THAT can’t
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An Autumn Visit to Unhyeongung Palace in Seoul, South Korea

One November day when I was in the Jongno-gu area, I took a quick trip to Unhyeongung Palace. I’d heard it had some nice fall foliage – and I was on a mission to see and photograph all I could this fall! I’ve been to Gyeongbokgung Palace, which is overwhelmingly enormous, and
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Life This Week in South Korea: November 18-24, 2024

(get a snack, this is LONG) Monday, Nov 18 My weekend of not-studying really hit me this morning as I reviewed for the speaking test with the tutor. I actually contemplated not going to the final cuz…I’ve already failed…if I got a 100 on the speaking test I still wouldn’t pass the
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Life This Week in South Korea: November 11-17, 2024

Monday, Nov 11 Just a day. Tutoring, class, remote work, homework, studying, memorizing my presentation. The best part of the day was…every week the teacher “randomly” changes our seats, putting us next to different people with whom we do all our exercises. I say “randomly” because of the 10 weeks of class,
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Why & How I Moved to South Korea

I know to long-time readers that this will be redundant. But recently I’ve had people on social media ask me why and how I came to be living in South Korea…and rather than saying “read all my blog posts from April 2020 to August 2023,” I thought I would just consolidate the
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Life this Week in South Korea: November 4-10, 2024

Monday, Nov 4 A peaceful start to the week. I had the tutor in the morning so didn’t go out to chase leaves with my camera. My brain is overfull of Korean. You know how you do pour-over coffee? Like you have to pour sloowwllyy or the grounds just fill up and
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Where Bloggers Live: My Sleep Routine Z-Z-Z-Z-z-z-z

Welcome to this month’s edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes, interests, and lives? Every month a group of seven bloggers share their work-spaces, homes, towns, and thoughts, with posts based on
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Life This Week in South Korea: Oct 28-Nov 6, 2024

Monday, Oct 28 Was supposed to go have a ct-scan follow-up to my kidney procedure back in June, but I cancelled. Hey. If I’m not gonna leave my box to go see leaves, I’m certainly not going to leave it to spend three uncomfortable hours in a hospital. Stayed in bed a
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Life This Week in South Korea: Oct 21-27, 2024

Note: I have self-nominated this post as the post with the least interesting pictures ever. You’ve been warned. Monday, Oct 21 Here we go again. I thought I was going to have an exciting story to tell you about a DATE, but he got a little annoying at the last minute so I
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Life This Week in South Korea: October 14-20, 2024

Monday, Oct 14 Ahh. Today were the writing and listening portions of the midterm. I MIGHT have passed writing. I MIGHT have done okay. But I think maybe I just passed. Listening?? HA HA HA HA HA. No. The dialogues are SO FAST. I can’t keep up At All. But at least
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Life This Week in South Korea: Oct 7-13, 2024

Monday, Oct 7 Today I did not do A Thing I had planned to do in the morning and I’m very annoyed with myself. THEN I had a “try not to cry” day in class when I TOTALLY did not understand what was going on and the teacher was determined to MAKE
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Where Bloggers Live: A Very Special 5 Year Anniversary Edition

Welcome to this month’s edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes, interests, and lives? Every month a group of seven bloggers share their work-spaces, homes, towns, and thoughts, with posts based on
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Life This Week in South Korea: September 30-October 6, 2024

Okay, I’ll say it: OCTOBER! WHAAAAT?!? Okay, moving on. Monday, Sep 30 Other than Drone Show Saturday, I literally spent the entire weekend holed up in my room studying for a test and practicing a presentation: which the culmination of both were today. The test: HA HA HA HA HA funny not
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Life These Weeks in South Korea: September 16-30, 2024

The past few weeks have been sort of a blur of not feeling well and spending like 97.5% of my time studying. I’m at that point where I’m not keeping up, I know I will not pass, and yet I can’t just give up becuase I still have to go to class
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Where Bloggers Live: Recycling in South Korea is Next Level!

Welcome to this month’s edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes, interests, and lives? Every month a group of seven bloggers share their work-spaces, homes, towns, and thoughts, with posts based on
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Life This Week in South Korea: September 2-8, 2024

Monday, September 2 Quiet morning at home. Left around 1 for the psychiatrist. Got there an hour early cuz I’d written down the wrong time. Shocker. Fortunately the waiting room was cool and relatively comfortable. I thought it was interesting that there were two other patients waiting in the same room as
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Life This Week in South Korea: August 26-September 1, 2024

Monday, August 26 I took it easy today after my weekend of heavy bussing, walking, and sweating. In the morning I did laundry, got all my trash out, finished last week’s blog post, did my remote job work, and worked on vocabulary. Tuesday, August 27 Today I met up with most of
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Life This Week-and-a-Half in South Korea: August 16-25, 2024

Friday, Aug 16 Wow, my blog terms have gotten really wonky! It’s Day 2 of Vacation…and I’m still just piddling in my room. Which is fine. I have plenty of things planned for the next couple weeks. One sad thing: my longtime building friend Jacqueline will be leaving in two weeks. Her
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