KOREAN SPRING

What do you do if you have three large tubs of protein powder you ordered on impulse because it was Black Friday and you thought you'd need loads of it to "fuel yourself"? And worse, what if the taste isn't even what you'd expected, not as delicious and milkshakey like all the reviews claim? Do you get that weird nauseating feeling when you down your protein with just milk or water? *Raises hand* These pancakes are the best alternative, in my opinion. I have tried making protein waffles, protein shakes, proats, and protein cookies; but I find pancakes to be the most delicious and satisfying option of them all. They're soft, fluffy, naturally sweetened and flavored with the banana, and surprisingly filling! The best part is that they're so easy to make, and that's coming from someone who can barely cook! All you need is three ingredients: a scoop of protein powder, a banana (large), and an egg . For macro trackers, that amounts to about 25C, 7

Jade Garden is a European-themed botanical garden located in Chuncheon, more specifically at Gulbongsan Station (Gyeongchun line). Free shuttle buses are provided every hour to and from the garden, making this place an easily accessible destination for a short excursion on a weekend.

This weekend I went on a short trip to Jeonju with a few ex-coworkers. I found that two days make a perfect trip since the place is quite small - I also found that the Hanok (traditional Korean house) Village, what Jeonju is most famous for, is way too commercialized and therefore a bit overrated. There is not exactly a lot to see, and for most of the tourist attractions I can say for sure that you can find similar places closer to Seoul or in any other part of Korea, but with less hype and crowds. However, if you're a food enthusiast like I am, there are plenty of new and delicious snacks/treats you can taste in Jeonju; they're not exactly traditional Jeonju foods, but over the years the Hanok Village morphed into a weird modern fusion marketplace for street foods that older generation locals lament but younger generations thoroughly enjoy. This blog post will be mostly must-eats, with a few attractions here and there. It's a long one, so be prepared!

So with my brother and mom's birthdays coming up (they actually share the same birthday), my family and I went out for a special lunch at Stage 28, a steakhouse/barbecue grill restaurant located in a relatively remote area of Seoul. Luckily I had just quit my job and had a few weekdays to spare, since on weekends this place is so popular you need to make reservations weeks/months in advance!

I've been working out with a personal trainer for about two months now. After an InBody (body composition analyzer) checkup, I was genuinely shocked at how high my body fat percentage was, and how little muscle I had. I felt overweight (still do) and sluggish, and just weak all the time. I wanted some sort of positive change, and I thought spending a large sum of money might help me get my shit together and start actually doing something about my problem for a change.

If you've ever been to NYC, chances are you have tried The Halal Guys at 53rd and 6th, or anything similar from the many many food carts located around the city. That shit is like CRACK it's so addictive - it's super delicious, hearty, flavorful, savory, and affordable. It's a taste you just can't forget, even years after you move back to Korea.

Dates can be so much more than just dinner and a movie, and Seoul is one of the best cities to find different unique and fun activities to share with your significant other. While Navering (in Korea, Naver still outbeats Google) things to do around Hongdae, I came across Cafe Puzzle, which literally is a cafe with lots and lots of jigsaw puzzles! Located just 3 minutes from Hongdae subway station exit 9, this is a perfect way to spend a relaxing two hours with friends or dates - even better, you don't have to sit and try to make conversation, and it's completely okay to be silent and absorbed in the puzzle.

No seriously tho. I've never tasted it before but I have this massive inexplicable craving for coconut cream cake, and it's killing me. I first came across it when reading "The Reptile Room," the second book in A Series of Unfortunate Events... which I read when I was a kid, and didn't give much thought to. And then for some reason I got all nostalgic a couple of years ago and read the whole series again, and when I read about this coconut cream cake, I wanted to taste it so bad and I've been thinking about it ever since. I mean, if it's got coconut, and if it's creamy, and if it's cake, it's gotta be heavenly, right? THIS is the type I want. Source: http://slimpaley.com/entertaining/coconut-fever/

Recently I finished a series called "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman, recommended to me by my friend Evan who had said he considered this as good as Harry Potter; which, to me, means "fucking awesome" and "timeless classic". And since Evan seems to be the type to understand that you can't compare something to Harry Potter unless it's really really good, I figured it would be worth a try.

A girl's first bikini wax, let alone Brazilian, can be quite daunting. If you're well aware of the sensations from plucking your eyebrows, or have tried strip waxing on safer areas like the legs or arms, you would surely be intimidated by the mere thought of having that exact sharp and prickly pain brought upon your most intimate area, where the skin is much thinner and super sensitive. That being said, I have no idea what I was thinking when I went for the all-nude Brazilian wax instead of going for standard bikini on my first try. But anyhow, since I've got my first experience out of the way, it doesn't seem like such a big deal.

WOW. Two months have passed since my Beijing trip and I am finally writing the blog post for my last day. I honestly cannot say what made me procrastinate this much, but what can I say? Life happened, I was busy, blah blah blah. So sadly, my fifth day is not as fresh in my mind as it would have been if I weren't this lazy, but oh well. At least I'm still taking a moment out of my hectic life to document my last day.  

My fourth day in Beijing was another jampacked one. We started off rather late, actually, and headed over to a restaurant across the street for brunch at around noon. Again, Fangyin ordered more than necessary to make me try a bunch of things, the most exciting of which was zhajiangmian, which is supposed to be the origin of Korean jjajangmyeon. :D Restaurant name: 北平楼 Beipinglou

  Day 3 was one of my most anticipated days since I would finally be able to meet in person a friend I had met online for language exchange.  James lives in Beijing and we started talking last summer, when I had just started to learn Chinese. Obviously, back then I wasn't good enough to make conversation so we mostly spoke in English, thanks to which he says his speaking has noticeably improved! These days I can converse in Chinese a bit better, so he's reciprocating the favor superbly and I think my spoken Mandarin is slowly improving as well. Anyway, after nearly a year of texting and video chat, it seemed surreal that it would be the first time I met someone I already considered to be a rather close friend.

My second day in Beijing was on May 1st, Labor Day. It was a Sunday, so a day off for everyone nevertheless, but all the more reason for people to go out. Fangyin and I woke fairly early, and after a lazy morning left the apartment a little before ten. The subway station was quite clean, contrary to stories I'd heard about Beijing (later on I'd used several subway lines and not just Line 8, all of which were pretty similar to Seoul subway stations). We took the train to Shichahai station and walked down some old preserved street to visit a lake called Houhai (后海), which turned out to be a longer walk than I had expected.

Four agonizingly long months after I purchased my plane ticket, I finally landed at Beijing Capital Airport on the evening of April 30th. There was a two-hour delay to my flight and super long lines even after landing, so by the time I arrived at my friend Fangyin's apartment it was already dinnertime, a small disappointment as I had expected to have a whole afternoon free to explore. I was happy just to be with my friend, whom I hadn't seen since December when she moved back to Beijing after working with me in Seoul; so I didn't really mind that we weren't able to do much that day. First selfie in China! Fangyin prepared bottled drinks and a mask when she picked me up from the airport. So sweet of her! :D

Oh man, time for some major fangirling again. Last night I just finished watching a 15-episode web drama series from China, and now I have a super big crush on H u ang Jingyu (黃景瑜) , whose acting was spot on and quite sexy. Synopsis taken from Wikipedia: Ever since he was young, Bai Luo Yin (Xu Weizhou) has been living with his careless (but loving) father, Bai Han Qi, and his grandmother. When he turned 16 years old, his biological mother Jiang Yuan re-married. Her new husband is a high ranking military official, Gu Wei Ting. Because of his mother’s death, Gu Wei Ting’s son, Gu Hai (Huang Jingyu), has been harboring a deep grudge towards his father. Due to the random hand of fate, the two step-brothers with wildly conflicting emotional backgrounds have been placed in the same class at a Beijing high school, without knowing each other's background at first. With time, they slowly developed a special feeling, each in a different way. Their classmates, You Qi and Yang Meng, hav

This is obviously not based on science or proven through experiments of any sort. It's just that I tend to fall victim to the hiccups much more often than the average person for some bizarre reason. To be honest, I haven't really tried all the popular remedies like drinking water upside down or drinking sugar water or doing the elephant thing and spinning around (is this just a Korean thing?) or getting someone to scare you; because I learned once in middle school that hiccups are actually spasms of the diaphragm, the muscle we use to breathe. So just rest the diaphragm for a while, right? My mom's remedy was to just stop breathing for as long as possible, which seemed like the best option according to my layman theory. But rather than just simply not breathing, I usually held my nose and and blew with my mouth closed until my ears popped, the thing you do on airplanes, because I just thought that would work better - it didn't work all the time but it just became a habi

Just last week while I was chatting with a Chinese friend for language exchange, I came across the idea that maybe I could continue my undergrad education in China. It was a sudden stroke of inspiration that came about thanks to this friend's casual, almost-jokingly-mentioned suggestion, but the more I think about it the more it seems so right. The tuition is much less expensive, there are plenty of schools with linguistics programs (more than Korea anyway) and English-taught courses, admissions are relatively easier for international students, I could apply for scholarships more easily than NY, it's only about 2 hours away from Seoul by plane, and I could pick up Chinese a lot more quickly. I could finally fulfill my dream of completing my education, or at least continuing with it, something that would make me a lot happier than being stuck in an office all day (not that I actually hate my current job). Anyway, so I'm googling a bunch of schools in China, and looking thr

It's a peculiar thing, Monday... an innocent day like any other, but how it manages to grip your insides and fill you with dread as the weekend comes to a close is like a riddle that has no answer. I'd already written once about a particularly bad Monday morning, but I feel like today is sort of worthy of another post. So like last time, today my bad Monday started out with another ominous dream. In my dream, I had waken up in the middle of the night and for some reason couldn't fall back asleep. There was a faint light poking through the curtains, from which I wasn't sure whether it was the street lamps or the rising sun, but I figured it was probably morning anyway and decided I would just get ready for work early. On my way to the bathroom, I checked my phone for the time, which read 3:50. In the morning. Half annoyed, half elated at the prospect of three extra hours of sleep, I headed back into the covers. And as soon as my head hit my pillow, my actual alarm we

小朋友 你是否有很多问号    [xiǎo péng yǒu nǐ shì fǒu yǒu hěn duō wèn hào] 아이야, 넌 의문이 많지? 为什么 别人在那看漫画 [wèi shén me bié ren zài nà kàn màn huà] 왜 다른 친구들은 만화를 보는데 我却在学画画 对着钢琴说话 [wǒ què zài xué huà huà duì zhe gāng qín shuō huà] 나는 그림을 배우고, 피아노와 대화를 해야하는지 别人在玩游戏 [bié ren zài wán yóu xì] 다른 친구들은 게임을 하는데 我却靠在墙壁背我的ABC [wǒ què kào zài qiáng bì bèi wǒ de ABC] 나는 왜 벽에 기대어 ABC를 외워야 하는지 我说我要一台大大的飞机 [wǒ shuō wǒ yào yì tái dà dà de fēi jī] 난 큰 비행기를 갖고 싶다고 했는데 但却得到一台旧旧录音机 [dàn què dé dào yì tái jiù jiù lù yīn jī] 왜 내가 갖게된 것은 낡은 녹음기인지 为什么要听妈妈的话 [wèi shén me yào tīng mā ma de huà] 왜 엄마말을 들어야 하는지 长大后你就会开始懂了这段话 [zhǎng dà hòu nǐ jiù huì kāi shǐ dǒng le zhè duàn huà] 자라고 나면 이 말을 이해하게 될거야     长大后我开始明白 [zhǎng dà hòu wǒ kāi shǐ míng bai] 자라고 나서 나는 알게 되었어 为什么我 跑得比别人快 [wèi shén me wǒ pǎo de bǐ bié rén kuài] 왜 내가 다른 사람들보다 빨리 뛰고 飞得比别人高 [fēi de bǐ bié rén gāo] 다른 사람들보다 높이 나는지를 将来大家看的都是我画的漫画 [jiāng lái dà jiā kàn de