Approaching my One-Year Mark Stirs Up Some Thoughts

'When you live abroad, you realize that, no matter where you are, you will always be an ex-pat. There will always be a part of you that is far away from its home and is lying dormant until it can breathe and live in full color back in the country where it belongs. To live in a new place is a beautiful, thrilling thing, and it can show you that you can be whoever you want — on your own terms. It can give you the gift of freedom, of new beginnings, of curiosity and excitement. But to start over, to get on that plane, doesn’t come without a price. You cannot be in two places at once, and from now on, you will always lay awake on certain nights and think of all the things you’re missing out on back home'.

I took this from an article I found on Thought Catalogue. It really hit close to home. I'm almost at the one year mark!

You can see the full article here.

Andong Mask Festival

This Wednesday we were blessed with another mid-week "red day". It was National Foundation Day. The day is to celebrate the creation of the Gojoseon Dynasty. For me, this meant an extra day to explore this country. October is unofficially known as Festival Month in Korea. There are festivals going on year-round, but in October there is a whole bunch of them. It's really hard to decide what to see and do, luckily for me I can put some of them off until next October. This year I headed to the Andong Mask Festival.

Getting to Andong took about 3 hours by bus from Ulsan, and costs around $15 each way. We started our day at the Hahoe Village site. They have a Mask Museum there and it was probably one of the most interesting museums I have seen so far. They had masks from all over the world and there was even a display from Canada! I was really interested in the masks from Indonesia. There were many kinds of masks and all had a different purpose. There were some that were specifically for woman and represented fertility and family. Others were used to protect against bad spirits. After seeing the museum, we headed to the actual village. It was really nice and beautiful. There was a mask performance going on, but we couldn't see much because there were so many people there.

After seeing the village, we headed to the main festival site. It was full of food vendors and souvenirs. There were also a number of stages where performances were being held. We had a Turkish kebab, lemonade that was just lemon juice and cider and hella delicious. We also ate a Korean sweet bread stick called Curros (I think). We perused the stalls and I ended up buying some earrings and a hat. We wanted to see a performance, but found out that the tickets were sold out and the next show was after our bus would be leaving to go back to Ulsan. It was really too bad we couldn't see any performances, but I think I would like to return next year and plan out the performances I want to see.

Overall it was a fun day, but a little tiring with all the travelling.

Worth a Watch

I stumbled upon this view today and thought I was worthy of sharing on my little blog here.

It really spoke to me.

What if Money Were No Object?