Seoul Comic Con 2017

October 18, 2017October 12, 2017Leave a comment

Hey guys as you know the first ever Korea Comic Con was held in Seoul in August. Since I love movies and games my husband and I along with my brother and our dear friend Jason set off on the weekend of 4 August to visit Comic Con.

Since it was the first one in Korea we didn’t really know what to expect. The turnout however was huge.

We also saw a few cos-players lining up before the event

It was only held in one hall in the Coex Expo centre but I believe that it was a great location as it was easy to go into the mall for coffee and food whenever we felt like it. We did however have lunch at the Marvelous Grill & Steak house inspired by the Avengers Movie

On the first day there were quite a lot of cos-players including me with Wolverine here 😀

On day 2 there were even more….

Out of the 3 day of comic con we only went for 2 days. It was a long and exhausting weekend but well worth the money and the time. Now I regret not going on the last day because I saw some pretty amazing costumes on instagram and I wish I saw them in person. Furthermore seeing as it was the first Comic Con it did pretty well although I hope that it will be much bigger next year.

Finally here are some pictures of us at Comic Con Seoul 2017 😛

My Brother and I

Jason and I

Just me 🙂

My husband and I with Bleach 😉

Getting our Korean Drivers Licenses

October 17, 2017October 12, 2017Leave a comment

We’ve been in Korea for a little over 2 years, and we’re not sure how long we’ll still be here. Since we’ve bought our motorcycles we decided that we should probably make the effort to get our Korean Drivers licenses. Getting the normal license was pretty easy. All we had to do was go to our embassy with our drivers licenses from our country of origin. The Embassy made a copy and gave it a stamp to authenticate it. Then we took our original license, the copy from the Embassy and our Alien registration Cards and 4 photo’s to our local licensing office. Our local office wasn’t as local though, since we live in a really small ‘rural’ city, we had to travel an hour and a half to Yesan where we exchanged our original driver’s licenses for a Korean license. Luckily the Koreans do everything ‘bali-bali’, which means fast-fast…. While we were applying for our license cards we quickly wrote a theory test… got our results immediately, then we waited 10 minutes for our drivers licenses to be printed. We didn’t even have to do a practical test.

The motorcycle license is another story all together. For this we had to do a practical test. They scheduled our test for the next Wednesday at 3 o’clock, but since we work during the week we had to change our date and went for the test in Seoul ( they do tests on Saturdays). Unfortunately the test is much harder than first anticipated. We watched a lot of Youtube videos on the test, since its said to be quite hard. We even painted some lines in a vacant parking lot and practised for 2 weeks before doing the practical test and we still failed. I don’t have a lot of motorcycle experience so its no wonder that I failed but my husband has been driving a motorcycle for more than 20 years and he also failed the test. 🙁 They do however give you a big cruiser bike that you can’t even take for a test drive before the test.

Therefore we decided to go through a Driving Academy in Seoul. They show you how to do the test and then you practice on the test course for 10 hours with the bike you’ll be using for the test.. you also get to do 3 hours theory to prepare you for driving in Korea. We’ve finished most of our hours and will be doing our licenses in the next 2 weeks… Wish us luck!!

Looking back

July 12, 2016July 12, 20162 Comments

January 2015

On the 2nd of January 2015 we arrived in Korea. The weeks leading up to that was very stressful. We were coming to a country where we didn’t speak the language. We didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t know if the school would like us or whether they would send us back home. When we arrived someone from the agency was supposed to bring us to Seosan ( a little rural city in Korea) but instead he met us at the airport and threw us on a bus. The bus driver didn’t speak any English so we couldn’t even ask him where we were supposed to get off. Luckily he told us once we arrived in Seosan.

Then our director was supposed to pick us up from the bus terminal but no one was waiting for us. Our phone didn’t want to make any calls and we couldn’t find a pay phone either. After about an hour a young girl came to help us and phoned our director to come and get us.

On the way to Korea

The first few months were quite terrible. It was cold. We couldn’t communicate. We got lost a LOT. And we missed home.

In addition during the first few months we got sick all the time. I had terrible breakouts on my skin and I was loosing hair. We were also living in a crappy apartment in the ‘red light district’ and people were screaming and shouting until 4 o’clock in the morning.

The first time we went to Seoul we had to research for days how to get around and where to go. We visited each area on a different visit so as to not confuse ourselves too much.

6 months later.

Six months later we have negotiated with our boss to move into a better area. My husband’s parents were coming to visit us soon and we have started collecting some things for our new home. We have also been visiting with my brother who is also living in Korea.

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Now

18 Months later I am glad to say that we are better able to navigate cities. We have even travelled to the other side of Korea with no help whatsoever. We are healthier and we can communicate with people even if we don’t speak Korean and they don’t speak English. We’ve been here for a little over 18 months and we’re planning to stay even longer. When we first left South Africa it was to create a better life for ourselves. The original plan didn’t work out as we hoped but we believe that we are here for a reason and that our path is already planned out for us.

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My Sex and the City club

June 20, 2016June 16, 2016Leave a comment

All women should have at least one good friend. I am lucky enough to have four very good friends. They have all played a major part in my life from time to time. Sometimes they are there constantly and sometimes they’re only there when we need each other most, but our friendships have remained strong through thick and thin.

I call them my Sex and the City club because each of them remind me somewhat of each of the characters in this series. I can’t say that each friend is a specific character but rather that those friends have characteristics similar to the four girls in Sex and the City. Sometimes they represent one character and other times they are a mixture of all 4. My friends are all level headed but also eccentric. They are funny and beautiful and bring out the best in me.

What Sex and the City taught us about friendship,

“They say nothing lasts forever …dreams change, trends come and go, but friendships never go out of style.” – Carrie

Here are the girls who has meant the most to me over the last decade.

Something I’m proud of in the last few days

June 16, 2016June 16, 2016Leave a comment

Today is day 9 of the Blogging babes challenge I’ve been doing with my friend from Polkadots&Popcorn. I had some real trouble thinking of something that made me proud the last few days. The thing is… in Korea there isn’t much to do on a day to day basis. Generally I wake up, spend some time online, get ready for work, leave for work, come home and go to bed. So there isn’t really time to do something worth being proud of.

This morning however I went to the gym. An actual gym with equipment, not our Park gym or home gym. I decided to greet my old friend ‘the electric scale’ and boy did she have some wonderful news for me. It seems like since I’ve been changing my eating habits a bit and trying to be more active I have managed to lose 3 kilograms in the past 2 months. I was pretty happy. Therefore I decided that this must be the thing that I’m most proud of in the last few days. It seems that changing a few things like buying less coffees and bread at work can make some changes even if it takes longer than one expects.