In the 1970s Seo in Ha (Jang Geun Suk) and Kim Yoon Hee (Yoona) meet at university and fall in love. However, countless obstacles separate them. Forty years later Seo In Ha’s son, Seo In Joon, falls in love with a young girl. Her name is Jung Ha Na and she is Kim Yoon Hee’s daughter. Will Seo in Joon and Im Yoon Ha be able to surmount all the problems surrounding their relationship or will they have to give under to their parents’ eternal love for each other?

The story line was relatively easy to follow. It was a calm story that advanced quite slowly.  Competing with Fashion King that aired in the same time slot, I think this was a huge weakness. Fashion King, which had a lot higher ratings, advanced very quickly so there was a lot of drama and action that Love Rain was missing. Although I personally liked the slow pace, I admit that I might have been more hooked if it had been faster, and hence more shocking, in the dramatic moments.

The story also had quite a bit of humour and generally it was a feel-good kind of story that made me happy to follow.

I admit that I started watching this drama because Jang Geun Suk plays the main character. Before watching it I was worried about Yoona’s acting ability as I had only seen her in Cinderella Man. However, Yoona positively surprised me. The chemistry between her and Jang Geun Suk was believable and I think that the cast was great and well chosen.

I do however think that Kim Si Hoo (who plays Lee Dong Wook and Lee Sun Ho) seemed quite awkward in a couple of scenes. But overall everyone did very well.

I felt like it was the sort of storyline that I had seen a hundred times before. That isn’t all a bad thing but it does take the element of surprise away from the story. Recently I have been surprised by the way k-dramas develop (take Fashion King and The King 2 Hearts as examples) but Love Rain was quite predictable. Yet Love Rain had something that I felt that Fashion King really missed: the characters changed over the course of the story, and what a pleasure it was to see them change.

I also think that the way in which the story was told was quite original and I was impressed with how well the scenes in the 70s were done. When watching the first couple of episodes I really did feel like I was in Korea in the 70s. This gave the drama a lot of believability.

If you are in the mood for a sweet and cute love story then I definitely recommend this drama!

Kang Young Gul (Yoo Ah In) is a designer in DongDaeMun Market with no real aspirations until he meets Ga Young (Shine Se Kyung) who has an incredible talent for fashion design.

Money problems leads Young Gul to seek out the help of Jung Jae Hyuk (Lee Jae Hoon), a second generation Chaebol. However When Jae Hyuk ignores his request Young Gul starts to have a grudge against him. Meanwhile Jung Jae Hyuk’s ex-girlfriend, Choi An Na (Yuri) is working for a famous designer in New York, but she doesn’t feel like living in the shadows of another designer anymore. The four characters are led together by a series of dramatic events.

Ga Young is in love with Young Gul who seems to have an interest in An Na who still likes her ex Jae Hyuk who in turn has a newfound interest in Ga Young. How will this love square end? And who will succeed in the fashion industry?

The storyline was fine and exciting at the beginning but very quickly it geared into a different direction and changed focus away from the fashion. What bothered me most about the story was that it often didn’t make sense. The characters never changed or learned from their mistakes and the decisions taken often didn’t fit their character. A lot of scenes were completely useless. (SPOILER For example: Kang Young Gul remembering meeting Ga Young as a child ended up being completely useless and didn’t contribute anything to the story. SPOILER END) A lot of characters were also abandoned midway through although bringing them back could have added both drama, conflict and more sense, this was never done.

Yoo Ah In did a great job portraying Kang Young Gul. I could only remember having seen him in ‘The Man Who Can’t Marry’ so I didn’t’ expect him to be able to convincingly portray Kang Young Gul, that for me was a very hateable character. I also think that Lee Jae Hoon was well chosen for the role of Jung Jae Hyuk. He was very convincing as the rich and pitiful director.

However, I wasn’t impressed with the rest of the acting.

Yuri seemed to always have the same facial expression, the same goes for Shin Se Kyung. I wish that I could praise these two girls because I actually started watching the drama because of them (as I love Shin Se Kyung’s dramas and like Girl’s Generation). Yet, I was very disappointed with their performance. But, actually, I think this is all very much because of the script and not so the much the actresses. Since the characters barely changed over the course of the drama it must have been difficult to show diversity in their acting.

The story line had quite a lot of originality and I’ll give it point for that. It had twists that I hadn’t imagined, especially in the beginning. But then the plot twists seemed to become the same old thing and quite predictable and since none of them were ever really followed up on I lost interest in the story quite quickly.

Even though it got better ratings than Love Rain, that aired at the same time, I looked more forward to see the next episode of Love Rain than the next episode of Fashion King. But even though there was a lot of drama, I felt like the characters never developed, they were always the same and a lot of the drama didn’t make sense. So many pointless things were thrown into the drama to make it more dramatic and then weren’t followed up on afterwards.

I wouldn’t recommend the drama but I guess if there is nothing better to watch it’s not a terrible watch just not particularly good.

SPOILER ALERT

I don’t think I can review Fashion King without talking about the ending.

In the last episode Young Gul looses everything and flees to his luxurious flat in New York. A month later no one in DongDaeMun had heard from him and Ga Young is heart broken and terribly sad about it, so she barely gets out of bed. Then Jung Jae Hyuk appears at Ga Young’s house and goes through her mail (great way to impress a girl) he sees a letter from Young Gul and reads it. In the letter Young Gul writes that he loves Ga Young and that he wants her to find him in New York. The letter even has a plane ticket.

Up until this point. Ok, fine, I can live with that, I guess it sort of makes sense, but from here on it gets very bad.

Jung Jae Hyuk, naturally, hides the letter and goes to see Ga Young. He asks her to come to New York and Ga Young happily goes along (and I thought she was sad about Young Gul leaving, but she doesn’t have a problem with going to New York with the guy Young Gul hates). Jung Jae Hyuk then tells her that Young Gul is in New York and asks her if she wants to meet him. But Ga Young refuses. In the mean-time Young Gul is miserable and alone in New York. He seems to miss Ga Young terribly. One day he hears news that Ga Young is in New York and goes to wait for her outside the Fashion school. That is when he sees her smilingly walking out of the building with Jung Jae Hyuk. Young Gul gets so sad that he gets drunk in his luxurious apartment and calls her. Ga Young takes the call, seemingly unaffected. Young Gul says that he misses her, but then a hitman kills him. Ga Young hears the shot and decides to let him go in peace so she answers: I miss you too.

What? Why? Argh I only have frustrations over this drama left.

I admit that I wanted Ga Young and Jung Jae Hyuk to be together from the beginning but this just seems so random and doesn’t fit in at all. It is as though they had planned to have five episodes more and then suddenly had to finish the drama quicker and cut out four episodes.

What a nonsense ending.

Modern South Korea is governed by a monarchy. Lee Jae Ha is the spoiled Crown Prince who falls in love with the North Korean special agent Kim Hang Ah. But their relationship is not welcomed by the influential leader of Club M, John Mayer, to whom a North and South Korean reconciliation would be a tragedy. Will Jae Ha and Hang Ah’s love be able to survive the threat of John Mayer?

The story was engaging and action filled. It was one of those drama where I tried to guess what was going to happen and even if I had guessed right I was still shocked. I usually know which characters in a drama are off limits, and will survive no matter what, so if something happens to them I don’t really feel like it’s a big threat as I know that they are going to survive. This drama made me worried for ALL of the characters. No one seemed to be off limits. At one point I was even worried that they were going to kill the main character Lee Jae Ha. The story also made sense and a lot of technical things seemed to have been researched. And even though the story was action filled it still had room to develop love lines and had a lot of humour in it. It didn’t feel like it was packed with things but looking back I realise that a lot happened in the drama.

I only felt that a couple of things were rash, but I am not going to mark it down because of this as everything else was so beyond my wildest expectations.

The Acting was great and very convincing. I hadn’t been very impressed with Ha Ji Won’s acting in Secret Garden, but I was amazed by her in this drama. She even had a perfect North Korean accent that took me a good two episodes to get my head around. Actually all the North Korean cast impressed me with their amazing accents. Lee Seung Gi also did a great job in portraying the Crown Prince and the changes that the character undergoes trough the story.

But I must admit that Jo Jung Suk who plays the royal guard Eun Shi Kyung was the actor that impressed me the most. I know him from What’s Up (where he played an aspiring musical actor with stage freight) and I was amazed at how well he managed to portray his character in this drama, that is very different from his character in What’s Up.

Generally there was a lot of good actors in the drama that I recognised, it really was a pleasure to see that many good actors together.

I was also surprised to see how many foreigners (mainly western people) acted in this drama. Usually I cringe when I see foreigners in Korean dramas because they usually aren’t very good actors. But in this drama they were all very well chosen and did a very good job. They had good English and most of them were very good actors.

The acting in this drama really made the characters come alive and as a result I was completely emerged in it.

Good casting The King 2 Hearts!

Even though the idea of having a ruling king in modern South Korea isn’t new (Goong) or even that of a North and South Korean falling in love (Love of North and South) the way that it was done was completely new and very refreshing.

It was also a very well executed drama, the accents of the North Korean cast, as I mentioned earlier, were unbelievable. And the sets in North Korea blew me away. I have previously seen a lot of documentaries about North Korea so the sets shown were placed that I had seen before in Documentaries. The sets looked so much like the real thing that I had to look it up online to see if it was possible that they really had filmed in North Korea. It was so well done that I was able to really immerge myself into it. I even heard that the sets look so much like North Korea that even North Koreans watching it were shocked. Below you can see a photo from the set of the drama (The train station in Pyongyang, North Korea) and below it a photo of how it really looks like.

I highly recommend this drama to everyone who likes a good action filled love story. If you liked IRIS chances are that you will like The King 2 Hearts as well. For me this definitely was the best drama in the Spring of 2012.

In the Joseon era the Crown Princess (Jung Yoo Mi) is killed. The Crown Prince (Micky Yoochun), together with his entourage Song Man-bo (Lee Min-ho), Woo Yong-sool (Jung Suk-won), and Do Chi-san (Choi Woo-shik), tries to find out who killed her. But in the process he is thrown 300 years into the future and ends up in Pak Ha’s (Han Ji Min) rooftop apartment. Here the Crown Prince soon sees a woman who looks exactly like his Crown Princess, and she is none other than Pak Ha’s step-sister. The Crown Prince decides that this much be the reason that he was thrown into the future: to recreate the scenario here and find out who killed the Crown Princess. But soon after he is mistaken for being his reincarnation Yong Tae Yong who has disappeared two years earlier…

The story was generally well structured and worked well. It was easy to understand for the most part, even though the intrigues eventually became very complicated. The story was exciting but more than anything it was funny.

Overall I think it was a good story that was well structured and I only have a few things to complain about.

About halfway through the drama a couple of characters are forgotten and don’t come back, it is a bit of a shame as I feel like those characters could have provided some extra laughs towards the end of the drama.

Towards the ending I also think that the characters didn’t act completely true to their characters though, especially TaeMu in the very last episode. But apart from that I don’t have any major complaints.

I thought that the acting was good and convincing especially Micky was very good in his double casting of the Crown Prince and Yong Tae Yong.

The idea traveling in time has been used so many times that I didn’t want to watch this drama at first. I often find that in stories that deal with time travel the storyline itself doesn’t really make much sense, or the issues of time travel aren’t explored enough. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that it worked very well in this drama and that the reason that he time travels is also part of the mystery. The drama also tackles the theme of reincarnation and does this quite well as it also becomes and obstacle for the Crown Prince to surmount.

It was a pleasure to watch and was very funny. I did however feel like the issues became a bit too dramatic towards the end, and hence anti-climatic. But I would definitely recommend this drama to someone who is looking for a fun, light yet still dramatic love story.

Most of my friends have also seen this drama and there has been A LOT of confusion about the last 10 minutes. So I will give you my explanation of what happened:

SPOILER ALERT

Pak Ha discovers the letter that the Crown Prince wrote to her (300 years ago) and she misses him so much that when the real Yong Tae Yong (who has woken up from his coma) comes into her shop she doesn’t even see him. But since Yong Tae Yong is the reincarnation of the Crown Prince, who said that he would love Pak Ha for 300 years, Yong Tae Yong loves her as soon as he sees her. And just like he did at the beginning of the drama, in New York, he draws her on the back of a postcard and asks her to meet him. Pak Ha is very shocked to see the drawing but knows right away that it is from Yong Tae Yong so she goes to meet him.

Yong Tae Yong finally arrives at the promised place and Pak Ha, who loves the Crown Prince so much, is so happy to see his reincarnation that she cries. When she looks at Yong Tae Yong she sees him as the Crown Prince because they are the same person (reincarnation). And so, because she loved the Crown Prince, she also loves Yong Tae Yong. Yong Tae Yong also cries, and although the reason for this isn’t as clear I think that it is because, he feels like he has missed Pak Ha for 300 years (and he really has).

So, at the end Pak Ha does not meet the Crown Prince but his reincarnation Yong Tae Yong, who has the same soul.

I must admit that even though my summer holiday has started I am not doing anything VERY exciting just yet. Nothing like last year. Actually I’m back home in France.

However, I do have a couple of short trips planned, so even though I’m not going to South Korea just yet, I think it’ll still be an interesting summer.

And I’ll get back to this blog and start posting more, as I’ve finally decided what to post about. I’m going to take a shot at Korean Drama reviews and K-Pop reviews.

I’ve watched SO many Korean dramas and listened to SO much K-pop over the past five years that I’ve come to know quite a lot about it, so this should be fun.

And all of this is starting next week! Exciting, exciting!

‘Just remember to chew it properly! If you take big piece and don’t chew it properly it can get stuck in your throat, and that’s the kind of thing you die from!’ was the only thing that my Korean friend told me about this. She was probably right; I tried a bigger piece and it got stuck on the inner side of my lip…

They really do their best to escape. We even had one running to it’s death while trying to escape but accidentally ending up in the soya sauce.

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14. How to get full marks on any karaoke machine.

This is all about continuing to sing, even if you can’t follow the lyrics, just sing whatever comes the mind. The trick is to be as loud as you can.

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13. How to drink from 7PM until 7AM with no breaks and no hangover.

I’ve never before been able to drink for this long with no breaks at all and no hangover the next day.

What’s the trick then?

Lots and lots of food. Almost no matter where you go to drink in Korea you can’t order a drink on it’s own, you have to get something to eat with it. That means that Koreans have a better foundation for their drinking, which explains the lack of hangover..?

Because it is certainly not because they drink any less, more like the opposite.

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12. Why aegyo is important in Korea.

First of all I probably have to explain what Aegyo is. Aegyo (애교 in Korean) means: acting like a baby = being cute.

Adjhussi’s  and Ajhumma’s (middle aged men and women) working in shops will often cut down the price for cute girls.

I am very bad at bargaining, but while being in Korea I often wouldn’t have to say anything I’d just put on a cute expression and they would suggest to cut down the price themselves. It did make life a lot easier (and clothes and shoes a lot cheaper).

(Plus, Korean guys seem to love girls with a lot of Aegyo).

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11. Why you should always act as a local.

When you live like a local you usually experience a lot of things that you wouldn’t have otherwise, and they are the kind of memories that you keep for life.

But that’s not the only reason…

Our Japanese friend wanted to buy a DVD so we went to one of the cheap DVD stands in town and started speaking Korean to the seller. But when our friend said something in Japanese to him he started speaking Japanese and the price of the DVD gained an extra zero.

There tend to be quite some prejudice against foreigners, but I’ve experienced a lot less of it in Korea than I thought I would, and a lot less than in other countries *CoughEnglandCough*, however they tend to tune up the prices especially for Japanese tourists.

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10. Why Koreans take Selcas (self-camera)

Selcas are VERY popular in Korea.

Koreans don’t really talk to people they don’t know. Don’t expect to be addressed by a stranger at a bus stop just because you are both waiting for the same bus, it happens in Europe, but it won’t happen in Korea.

So it’s quite unnatural for Koreans to ask strangers to take photos for them, and they do like their photos. Instead they take Selcas; they raise the camera in the air and take a picture of themselves.

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9. How to get backstage at concerts and award ceremonies.

In Korea there is always strict security at events like that. So how do you do it?

You speak English, pretend that you know nothing about the event and come up with an excuse such as: ‘I just want to go to the lobby’, or, ‘I just want to go over there’. The security will usually get insecure because of the English, and will let you pass. Easy.

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8. Why books in Korea are the best in the world.

They have picture in them, lots! Who doesn’t like picture books?

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7. How Musicals were invented.

I’m convinced they were invented by foreigners in Korea learning Korean as all we ever did in our spare time was singing Korean songs, modifying the lyrics to fit our situation.

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6. How to avoid getting wet feet in rainy weather as a girl (you could do this as boy, but I reckon you’d get some odd stares).

Act Korean: wear high heels, in crazy rain or snow. Yes, you most probably will fall while going down the steps to the metro, but, like the Korean girls, just get up on your feet straight away and keep going as though nothing happened.

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5. How to cook anything from noodles to homemade cheese/meat omelettes in a microwave.

Why don’t I have a microwave in England?

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4. Why I’ll never be a real fan-girl.

There is no way I’ll ever be able to scream like this:

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3. If I moved to Korea and taught English I would be rich in Korea, but only just be able to survive on the same pay in Europe.

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2. Koreans don’t flirt; how to get a boyfriend/girlfriend in Korea.

Two ways to do this:

Go on 소개팅, blind dates. Very popular in Korea. Most of the Korean girls that I know met their boyfriend or husband through blind dates.

Or go to special night-clubs. But watch out with this, the experience can be traumatising for people who don’t understand the culture. See my post on this here.

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1. Why I am incredibly fortunate to be young in Europe.

In Korea: the elders are ALWAYS right.

No matter what, if someone who is older than you said it, it is the truth that you have to live by; there is no arguing.

I’m not saying that it is only a bad thing, young people are often disrespectful to older people in Europe, but the problem is that with a hierarchy like the one in Korea people often don’t get to do what they want with their lives because their parents dictate them to become accomplished doctors or what not = a lot more freedom on that front in Europe.

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0. How addictive sugar is…

I have, as most girls, once had a dream of being a model. It lasted for about a year until I realised that I was too short to be a model and didn’t have a pretty enough face to be a petite model (as in a model whose height isn’t important). It came as a disappointment as most such discoveries do.

So, remembering that time I went out with my lovely camera and new gorilla tripod (they are very practical as you can set the up anywhere and tie them to almost anything).

I recently joined a site called lookbook, where various people around the world post photos of themselves wearing different kinds of clothes and labeling the clothes with brand names, and so on. So the mission of the day was to get one or two photos that I could post on lookbook. I’d say that it was a success.

I prepared two sets of clothes and headed out in the cold rainy day to look for locations. I walked up the hill to Calton Gardens and discovered an amazing view (as well as some good locations). Dolores, my landlord, had tipped me to go up there only a few days earlier, so I am glad that I finally went as it was worth it.

Soon after I took this photo and started to take my Selca’s (Self Camera, a Korean word that I have been an avid user of during the past year) it started to rain… It was still sunny, but it was raining. Then it stopped for five seconds and started again. I hid under the trees took of my shoes and went in to take my photo.

I didn’t suffer as much as I thought I would (having decided to take the photo barefooted yesterday evening). I reckon that the little suffering was well spent though, the photo came out nicely.

Setting the timer. Running out in the middle of the leaves. Posing. Remembering what was wrong with the last photo. Correcting my pose. Keeping Still. Running back to the camera. Checking the photo while standing on the top of my All Stars. Going in again. Forgetting the timer. Running back to the camera again.

And so it went on.

It was fun and I’ve already planned the clothes for my next small ‘photo-shoot’. I’m glad I bought this tripod.

Before I bought it I was walking around town and witnessed a scene that made me giggle. Three boys, probably around 14 years old, were standing outside a lingerie shop debating how they would be able to get into the shop without attracting too much attention. There it is, the undeniable fact: if you just open your eyes and ears to what is going on around you, you will find that there is always something funny or unusual going on. That’s why I love to walk around town, staring at people, listening in on conversations, give unknown faces names and jobs. People watching is a wonderful pass-time.

Before I bought my tripod yesterday something else happened (that pushed me to the decision of buying a tripod as I needed to cheer myself up). I went down to the sports centre in town that I intended to join and everything looked great. But then I asked the crucial question. The one about payment. It turns out that I can’t get a membership card with them because I don’t have an English bank account, oh joy. After that my enthusiasm of joining the centre has faded quite a lot. My ambition to do sports however hasn’t faded. So I’m currently considering what sports I can do, and after my walk in Calton garden, I think that I might give running another try, again, again. It might work and I might stick with it this time around. I also wanted to start my dancing again, so if I manage to pick these things up in the next 2 weeks then I think I should be ok. I f not I’ll have to reconsider.

I don’t feel like a lot has happened in the past two weeks, but that might be because I’ve been busy with homework and adjusting to my new life. I’ve met a Korean student from Ewha who is here for a year. She is very nice and we’ve met twice. We usually speak English even though we write together in Korean. When we go out Korean is a bit like our secret language that makes it possible to talk about the people sitting at the next table or about the outrageous prices in this or that shop without offending anyone.

To finish off: I only have one more thing to share (yes, I’m managing to make a rather short post for once, as in under 1000 words). I am doing a module this year called: ‘Making a Film’ where we learn some basic film practices and get our hands on the cameras and everything else. It’s lots of fun and last Monday we spent a couple of hours making a (very) short film from a script given to us. It’s was our first try at making a film. I was in charge of the clipboard and editing so I thought’s I’d share my edit. Here it is.

That’s it for now, see you again in November.

As we were in the air, the first time, and the pilot announced that the window in the cockpit was coming off so we had to turn around as quickly as possible I was surprised to find a calm atmosphere among most of the passengers. No one, was complaining (yet). Even when they announced that our plane would be at least 4 hours delayed everyone took in the information in a surprisingly calm manner. I reckon that the Southern French sun affects everyone, even the English.

I had been clever enough to decide that I wouldn’t need any books on my, normally, two hours flight, and would instead spend the time taking a small nap. But with nowhere comfortable to sit in the terminal and screaming children as well as loud people, there was too much noise and time to spend all my time napping. Luckily I had my adored Macbook pro (RIP Steve Jobs) at hand and found forth some videos of a favorite Korean TV show saved on it. I later passed time drawing the cast, although it was a complete failure, I had fun.

I was lucky enough to catch the last train to Bath (the place where I now reside) in the evening. I knocked on the door when the clock read ten past midnight. I had managed to get my two heavy luggages up the many steps with the help of a gentlemen that I had met on the train.

I quickly apologised to my tenant and host family for arriving late and, exhausted from the trip, headed straight to bed.

However at my arrival things weren’t as I had thought they would be and, after having spent four happy months without worrying too much about anything, coming back to an unknown situation like the one I arrived in wasn’t what I had been hoping for.

After having spent four years living with students I’ve gotten tired of the never clean kitchens the noise at 4am, that never fails to wake me up, the out-of-control parties and the same old problems. That is why I decided to move in with a host family this year. The couple that I live with is a nice middle aged couple that are very talkative and take good care of me. However I didn’t know anything about them when I first moved in, and the process wasn’t without worries.

When I first arrived “my” room was their daughter’s room, who moved out year ago. All of her old things were still inside the room decorated with photos of her and her smiling friends. The unfamiliar faces all looked down at me and I felt as though I was staying at friend-whom-I’d-never-met’s house. In case you’re in doubt it wasn’t a nice feeling. Her things, still on the desk, on top of the drawers, as well as in the drawers, made me worry not only about not feeling at home but also about the lack of space for my own things, accumulated over my previous year at university.

I have no photos of how the room looked when I arrived. The memory is bad enough, and although it’s all in past already, it seemed to much to overcome on my own at the time.

I started unpacking the next day and told Dolores (my landlord and host mother) that I didn’t think that there was enough space in my room for all of my things, let alone my clothes. She came up to look at it immediately (and I have to add that teling her that took me ages and was quite a worry) and said that she would clear all of the drawers for me and make room in one of the wardrobes for my clothes. I thanked her and carefully added that it wasn’t just my clothes that I was worried about not fitting. I announced that I would pick up the rest of my things the following day and asked if we could look at it further then. She agreed.

She came up later the same day and cleared the drawers, as she got started she asked me if I wanted the desk cleared as well. I said yes and she cleared it. She equally cleared the top of the drawers and the space under bed, even though we had discussed neither.

The following day I moved my things. Unfortunately I had the moving man move it out in front of the wrong house, only realising this mistake after he had left.  All my heavy boxes were piled up on the small path above our house. I think that was the day that I really realised how a nice a lady Dolores is. I told her that I would move it bit by bit and that it would fine, but she rushed up to my things and grabbed a box, helping me move it into the house. Everything was moved into the living room and she told me to unpack slowly saying that it didn’t disturb her.

As I started taking out one box after the other and contemplated how to ask her to take down the photos on the wall Dolores came up to my room and asked me if I wanted the things on wall down as well. I smiled, nodded, and it all came down in mere minutes.

By the evening I had unpacked everything (more or less) and only needed to find a place for my big mirror. The mirror came up the following day and I’ve been decorating the walls since, greatly regretting having left a big stack of posters in France.

So now I will open my door and let you into my room.

Anna (their daughter) now has her room next to mine (hers on the right) all her things that were in my room are now piled up in there, in storage, until, some day, she comes and picks it up.

So Welcome in to my space.

Call it room 412, call it room B705, but call it home.

One of the first things that people notice when they see pictures of it is the awful shell at top of the room with a mess of things. Although I notice it on pictures as well I don’t notice it every day because it’s above my  usual viewpoint. I reckon that’s yet another advantage of being short in terms of height, the world looks different from down here. Dolores told me that although she would like to move it the house is too small so there is no place to put it, I don’t mind it.

I’m missing posters, but it already has that cozy ‘me’ feel. My music is on 24/7 as usual. The room thankfully has good acoustic feel so the music sounds loudly in my room but can’t be heard in the rest of the house. It saves me a lot of worrying.

Dolores commented on my newly put-up posters yesterday and, interested, asked me who they all were. She is a curious lady.

My bulletin board above the desk is filled with photos of celebrities, concert tickets, plane tickets, and other memories from Korea.

Another blank wall, I will have to bring some posters with me to England next time, but at least my SHINee calendar is decorating one of the other walls. My luggage is still in my room as I go through my things and slowly pack the things that I don’t need, I’ll put it in the attic by the end of the week, until Christmas.

I share the bathroom with them, but that works very nicely as well as their routines are similar yet different from mine. There isn’t space enough for my beauty products in the bathroom, but this doesn’t disturb me, there wasn’t enough space for it all when I had my own bathroom either, I’ve dedicated a large drawer and two boxes on top of my drawers for it all instead.

My room is the warmest as the window looks out to our small garden (on the second picture above) and there is sun the entire day, well at least when sky isn’t being too sad and cloudy like today.

Let’s move on to the rest of the house.

My room is on the top floor so this very English living room is downstairs for me.

Before seeing this place I had never seen such an English home before, it was almost a caricature of what Englishness means to me. Thankfully, I’ve grown fond of it during the past two weeks.

The living room has a beautiful view of Bath. I’ve often stood in front of the window and talked/gossiped with Dolores in the late mornings and afternoons.

Continuing on from the living room we arrive in the dining room. The display of photos and small things on the chest of drawers on the right combined with the choice of lamps, again, spells out English for me.

The kitchen fits my needs perfectly. My knifes, glasses, plates, frying pans and other kitchen things from last year are nicely put in together with their things. Everything fits.

This radio (or the TV) is constantly on and accompanies me throughout the day. My lack of phone in the last couple of weeks has made me realise just how dependent on technology we all are today. We can barely do anything without it. Everything becomes a drag. I’ve been living on wi-fi for the past couple of weeks. And I’m surviving fine without a phone, if people are desperate to talk to me they can Facebook or skype me, I’m always on. But without wi-fi I would be lost. The same goes for music, my life seems incomplete without it.

But as you might be able to imagine my past two weeks have not only included moving in but also included the beginning of term and the beginning of my second year in University.

I have now had at least one lesson in all of my modules so here is my report: I love 50% of my subjects… I hate the other half.

The good news in this is that I actually like half of my subjects from the very beginning, as for the others there is a chance that they might get better as the year advances, and if they really don’t then I can just lean on the subjects that I do like. Things will work out.

I’ve tried finding a solution on my own, try to figure out what to do with this blog now, for the next eight months before summer comes and I have something exciting to write every night again.

Oh goodness, if you have some ideas, please share them!

This far I have come up with the following, yet I don’t know wether any of them would do:

- Occasionally write my blog like I have written it in the past three months (not so much for this one though, I think I need some change now)

- Post random artworks that I’m doing

- Putting up my some of my Creative Writing (put I don’t know wether that will create copyright conflicts if I ever want to make those ideas into something bigger)

Oh ideas, please!

It all still seems unreal, I still feel like I am in Korea, I keep dreaming about what I am going to do in Seoul the following day. So, when I wake up, opening my eyes and looking up at the ceiling, I realise that something is off and I have a couple of moments of doubt, unsure of where I am, until I realise that I am in my room in France. Every morning starts with doubt. Doubting everything. Doubting that I am in Europe. Doubting whether I really lived in South Korea for three months or not. Trying to figure out how much of it was just as a dream and how much of it was reality. It takes a while. Every morning.

I go over it all in my head again. I repeat it every morning, as to not forget, and as to believe. Because: “every time a child says: ‘I don’t believe a fairies’ a fairy somewhere falls down dead!” as Peter Pan so truly says. That’s why I have to believe; I’m not killing anymore fairies.

It has already been over a week since I left Seoul.

Over a week since I had my last meal in South Korea; Samgyetang at a restaurant close to City hall.

Over a week since I said my last goodbyes to my friends in Korea at a certain bus stop in Seoul as they helped me carry my luggage.

And over a week since I left Seoul on my last bus ride.

But even though there has been  a lot of lasts, this past week has only had firsts.

I’ve brushed my teeth with my new super-cool frog toothbrush for the first time, seen our new swimming pool for the first time and  read a manga in French for the first time this summer.

I still have two weeks to get my feet back on the ground before I head up to England to start yet another year of University Wish me luck.