And the nominees are...

Before I write my post for the letter C in the A-Z Challenge, I needed/wanted to share this!

It appears that the lovely Katy at Just Pirouette and Carry On has nominated me for a Liebster Blog award!

Now, I'm not 100% sure how this works, but she's listed some questions that I need to answer, so here it goes:

1.  What was the first single or album you owned?
Well, this is both an excellent and a cringe "yes, I really bought that" story.  One day, many moons ago when I was maybe 15/16, I was in a shopping centre when I ended up being asked a question in front of the WHOLE shopping centres by a local radio personality.  It was a really simple question, literally "what did Little Miss Muffet eat?"  Well, (duh) "curds and whey" was my answer.  And, as a reward for turning a truly beautiful shade of scarlet, I received a voucher for HMV.  So, off I plodded, to the music store and purchased two CDs.  One was Bon Jovi Crossroads and the other was Meatloaf Bat out of Hell 2.  And, you know what, I loved them, still love them and think they were a fine choice.  In fact, it was after those that my musical taste deteriorated rather rapidly....

2. What do you have recurring dreams about?
Oh lordy.  I don't have any of those cool dreams, you know the ones where you're flying.  I also rarely have nightmares, phew!  I do, however, have recurring anxiety dreams whereby my teeth are either simply falling out or I am pulling them out.  The dreams are not hugely distressing, I think I have gotten used to them, but I do wake up checking all my teeth are still in their correct places...

3. What was your nickname at school, and why?
This links back to a post I did a while back, a "5 facts you don't know about me" post.  At school, certainly for the first 2-3 years of secondary school, I was that girl that the boys teased and then ran away from (all the while glancing over their shoulders to make sure I was chasing them).  What usually happened was that I caught up and then kicked their shins...  Yes, I have a brother.  Now, I had several nicknames during this period.  The ones I can remember are as follows; Terminator (I know), Lambo (as in Rambo, get it), Hamlet (I held up a skull in art class and there was a poster from the play, blah de blah...), Abigali (something to do with garlic somehow) and A-big-whale.  There were no doubt others.  My favourite nickname ever was the one my kindergarten children gave me when I was in Seoul, simply because they couldn't say Abigail.  They called me Alligator teacher and I loved them for it.

4. Have you ever had road rage?
The real answer to this is probably no.  Disappointing I know.  This is not to say that I have never gotten miffed at another driver, or even worse a cyclist, but I could never remember where my horn was.  So, usually, by the time I had figured that out (on the end of my indicator stick, how useless is that) and my car had made a pathetic attempt at a beep, all the fire had gone out of me and the offending driver would be long gone.  Highly unsatisfactory.  Now, road hysterics is another matter entirely...

5. What can't you leave the house without?
Gosh, I would have to say either my headphones for my ipod/Blackberry (new fangled phone means I can have music on it and carry one less item) or my camera.  Actually, the former is probably the more important at the moment.  I am a classic Walkman/Discman generation child, I cannot bear walking around without something to distract me from my surroundings.  I have that paranoid "everyone is looking at me, do I have something stuck to my face?"  feeling otherwise.  I am also a classic "walk really fast to loud music when angry" person.

6. What song can you sing from start to finish without checking the words?
Easy peasy.  "Someday I'll be Saturday night" by Bon Jovi.  I love this song, it is my theme tune, and it was my go to Noraebang (Karaoke) song in Seoul.  It is guaranteed to cheer me up and relax me.  I hasten to add, that I can't sing at all and it probably sounds atrocious, but in my head I'm a rock star.

7. Ever chatted up a stranger?  Dish!
This question is so you Katy!  Is it really sad that I can't think of a good situation where I made the first, bold move?  The only time I can think of resulted in a major mistake in the affairs of the heart.  I did, however, end up chatting with a guy for an hour or so, in the middle of the night on a train going to Scotland.  I was going on a field trip with my uni, our first, and we were making the mammoth journey from Cambridge to the Isle of Rum in the Inner Hebrides.  This guy came up to me, because he liked me hair, and we had this really random, and cute, conversation via notepad (as in pen and paper as this was 2003).  His name was Marc.  I actually ended up going to see him in Liverpool a few months later.  After he got off the train that night, must have been 2am or so, we kept in touch by email and then he disappeared.  Me being me, I got super annoyed at being ignored and sent a ranting email (yes, I do feel the shame) but it turns out he had been in Iceland with no internet?  Nothing came of it in the end, but it was all very daring and random at the time.

8. What's your Wu Tang name?
Okay, I need to click on the link you gave for this as I am at a loss!  Apparently it is Victorian Cow?

9. Have you ever danced on the tables?
No, I haven't lived!  I have danced rather "enthusiastically" to Beyonce "Crazy in Love" whilst grabbing on to a pole (fully clothed and a tad intoxicated).  Had it been a table it may have ended with more than just embarrassment the next day... 

10.  Where's your happy place?
Golly, that's a good one.  Right now, these last few weeks, all I have wanted to do is return to Germany and to an alpaca farm I worked on last May.  I went there with WorkAway and stayed for 3 weeks.  Everyday I cleaned out and fed alpacas, ate food, enjoyed sunshine and watched countless episodes of Friends on DVD.  The people were the friendliest and kindest you could ever hope to meet, the alpacas were cute and amusing and their pet dogs were gorgeous.  It was located near a small town about an hour from Frankfurt, among rolling hills and grapevines.  I long to go there now and clear my head, it was wonderful.

11. Can you do the Macarena?
In a word, no.  I think I know about half of the moves but then I get muddled with "Saturday night" by Whigfield...

I've run out of time for today, but I will post my list of nominations and random questions over the next day or so, going to get my thinking cap on...  Thank you so much Katy, I am loving reading your blog!

Okay, I am going to ask these lovely people some questions:
Tabetha at The Closet Intellectual
 Jenni at Story of my life
Casey at We took the road less travelled
The writer of Life on LeRoy
Elle at Cute in Korea

1.  What is your favourite snack when feeling peckish?
2.  What is your favourite season and why?
3.  What place is the top of your holiday wish list and why?
4.  Do you have a song that simply forces you to smile/tap your toes/get up and shake your thing, no matter what you may have been feeling before it came on?
5.  Describe one of the best, or most interesting, meals you ever had.

B is for...

Buddha's birthday.

In Korea, as in many countries in East Asia, Buddha's birthday is celebrated every year on the 8th day of the 4th month in the Chinese Lunar calender (click here for some more details).  Last year, and every year I believe, in Seoul they had a hoard of celebrations for Buddha's birthday, including their annual lantern festival.  Buddha's birthday is a great time, firstly you get some extra days off (it's a national holiday), secondly you get to see pretty lanterns and the such, and, thirdly, it is one of the rare times when you get to experience a really traditional celebration in Korea.  There is a wonderful atmosphere at this festival, helped by summer starting to arrive I'm sure.

I was in Seoul for Buddha's birthday in 2011, here are some of my favourite photos from the long weekend.

Parade preparation:

Stumbled upon people preparing for the parade and discovered this cute umbrella cart.

Lanterns ready to go.

People getting some children ready.

Testing, testing.... Yes, the smoke works!

Traditional band getting ready.

These old gals were getting their lanterns ready.

And the parade begins....

I loved seeing monks EVERYWHERE in Korea.

The floats were many and spectacular, alas my camera was not worthy.

Lady in a lotus flower.

The following day, my friends and I wandered back to the historic/tourist area of Insadong.  It was ram packed with foreigners and Koreans alike, all eager to soak up some culture and enjoy the festivities.

They really like to get foreigners to join in and learn about Korea.  My rosary is on my bedroom door handle back home.

Random child with people in traditional royal outfits.

Lanterns at a traditional temple.  They created ceilings out of lanterns, it was spectacular.

People crossing the Cheonggyecheon stream.

Same stream, further down.  It's one of my favourite parts of the city, the lanterns are all in honour of the festival.

A day later, I went hiking in a nearby mountain.  There was a buddhist temple covered in lanterns.

If you ever go to Seoul, go in the spring to see the blossom, and if you can, wait around and be there for Buddha's birthday.  Just looking at these photos brings back wonderful memories for me, I hope you enjoyed them.

A is for....

Welcome to my first post for the 2013 A-Z challenge.  My posts are going to be a mixture of things, mainly based on my travels (including a large proportion about things I learnt during a year in South Korea).

So, A is for ANNYEONG-HASEYO  안녕하세요

This is the way you say hello in Korea, in Hangeul to be exact.  Hangeul is a fairly simple language, in that it is comprised of only 24 vowels and consonants.  Compared to other languages in Asia, Japanese, Cantonese etc, it is pretty easy to learn.  There are things to learn, like what sounds are produced when certain characters are put together or doubled etc, but all in all it's a clever system. Here's a glimpse of what the alphabet looks like;

Found on this blog, worth a look if you want to learn a bit of Hangul! http://josefwigren.com/hangul-in-20-minutes/

That said, after a year of living in Seoul I knew only a handful of words, but that was purely down to being lazy on my part.  I could sound things out, enough to read a menu or the name of a place.  Like many countries, Korea has a lot of words influenced by the West.  These words are referred to as Konglish, when an English word is written in Hangeul.  I would feel all excited and proud that I had figured out the word, only to realise it was English!  Classic words you see written in Konglish are simple things like camera or hamburger.

Oh, and if you are ever in Korea, they refer to mobiles/cell phones as hand phones... 

안녕히 가세요  Annyeong-hi gaseyo (Goodbye to a person when they are leaving but you are staying, meaning something like go in peace).

1K baby

1,000, that's ONE THOUSAND, page views!  I'm flabbergasted. Thank you for visiting/following/reading or even accidentally stumbling across my blog.  Although, if you visit/read regularly, or you follow, you get a massive virtual hug of a thank you.  Here's to many more blogging landmarks being achieved.

Taken with my webcam, hence shocking quality!

In case you can't read the other note...

The last few days in pictures...

Went for a run on Thursday, first one of the year (and in ages).

The "after" shot.

New favourite snack.

The first of the snow, isn't it meant to be Spring?

Breakfast in bed on Saturday.

Snow in the air.

Apple cake (and hot chocolate) in town with a friend.

Daffodils trying their hardest to hold on.

Finally tried out the local Korean restaurant, spicy pork and bibimbap.

The weekend cometh!

I don't know about you, but I am one happy girl!  Today is FRIDAY, which means the weekend is peeking it's beautiful head around the corner and beckoning me to join it.  You shouldn't wish your life away, but I will be happy when 3.30pm comes today (I luckily finish an hour early on a Friday).

Do you have any fun plans for this weekend?  I am seeing a whole host of friends for dinners, lunches and catch ups.  I am also painting eggs with my housemate on Sunday!  And, I hope to do some catching up on my blog reading, feeling horribly out of the loop with everyone, not good.  So I'm thinking, breakfast in bed with my laptop tomorrow?

On a side note, I just have to sing the praises of my housemate.  Our living in this lovely house together, with our on and off live in landlord, has been a real surprise and blessing for me.  She is lovely and the perfect housemate for me right now.  Yesterday, when I had gone down into the kitchen before leaving for work feeling all tired and woe is me, she was a positive and motivational breath of fresh air.  Thanks to her I went for a run after work yesterday, and what a difference it made to how I felt!  Like an instant happy patch.  I was so happy the rest of the evening, after a blurgh day at work, and got loads done.  So, I just had to say a big thank you to the cosmos for putting us in the same house at the same time, she rocks.

Ooh, I watched a fab film last night!  OK, so it's not a real, credible film, but I loved it.  It's called "Stick it" and it's about gymnastics.  My friend Anna and I are partners in crime when it comes to watching bad dance films together, so it may not surprise that I was loaned this film by her.  It was a feel good bit of cheese with some great gymnastics and a kick arse soundtrack (as in Blink 182 and Fall Out Boy).  I'll find you a trailer...

Have a great day everyone. x

Where for art thou sleep?

I'm tired.  Not just "I could do with an extra hour" tired.  The kind of tired where I would be a risk to everyone around me if I was put in charge of heavy machinery, even a toaster is challenging today. 

I'm a creature of habit, on week day mornings I eat a healthy porridge breakfast.  a) I like porridge, b) I like being healthy.  This morning it seemed an impossible task to complete, so I went for toast.  The first sign of a problem should have been that I had to force the thick end wedge of my loaf of bread into the toaster.  A few minutes later, can you believe it, it refused to come out again!  It was a "tired slap your face with the whole of your hand moment".  If I was a cartoon character I would have done just that, and as my hand slid down my face, it would have pulled my face down revealing the pink of my under eye lids and then it would all have sprung back into place.  I can't explain it well and youtube is not my friend today.

I hope you all slept better than me.  I want to do a post soon about my fabulous weekend.  Until then, here is a classic Donald Duck cartoon to keep you entertained...