Netherlands

Naast deze birthday message wil ik graag een mededeling doen voor m'n Nederlandse matties, een mededeling die van behoorlijk fundamentele aard is, in zoverre zelfs dat het m'n leven eigenlijk een compleet andere kant op gooit;

Ik ga volgend jaar voor een jaar naar Korea om daar werk te zoeken, en na dit jaar besluit ik of ik in Korea blijf wonen, of terug naar Nederland ga.

De reden?
Zoals (de meeste van?) jullie al weten ben ik in Korea verliefd geworden op een van de Koreaanse medevrijwilligers. Het hele verhaal is nogal lang en gespekt met drama en intrige, maar in het kort had ze aanvankelijk een vriend, werd ze toch verliefd op mij en eindigden we samen.
Normaal horen 'vakantieliefdes' achtergelaten te worden waar je ze vond, zo hoorde ik, maar ik zie een toekomst voor ons en ik wil er dan ook alles aan doen om te zien of dit kan werken.
Vandaar dat ik volgend jaar Engels les ga geven in de hoofdstad, Seoul, en uiteindelijk moeten we dan beslissen of ik daar blijf of zij (omdat niet al onze internationale kennissen van ons af weten gebruik ik nog even haar naam niet) naar Nederland komt. Ze komt halverwege Augustus voor 3 maanden hierheen om te zien hoe het hier is.

Ik snap dat ik hiermee m'n studie eigenlijk weggooi en m'n droom van de rechterlijke macht moet opgeven, maar door naar Korea te gaan (het eerste wat ik ooit echt voor mezelf gedaan heb) heb ik geleerd dat gelukkig zijn belangrijker is dan je uitgestippelde pad volgen en dat onzekerheid ook best leuk kan zijn.

En omdat ik het van m'n prachtige vriendin voor m'n verjaardag kreeg, is hier een introductie video:

Been back in the Netherlands for a few hours now.
My time in Korea feels so far away, like a dream that's constantly slowly but surely disappearing. All I have left now is a ton of pictures, 22kg of stuff and a heart twice broken. I don't feel at home in my own country, and I miss every single thing about Korea.
And I miss you, my love.

Today I finially managed to stuff everything I wanted to take into..well..something.

I now have: one Carry-on that weighs 9.8kg (allowed weight: 10kg) that has clothes for about 4 days in it and some documents I will be needing plus my camera; one check-in suitcase weighing in at 19.9kg (allowed weight: 20kg) which has the rest of my clothes in it and another pair of shoes (praise goes to Ghislaine for providing this suitcase, because if it weren't for her I'd be stuck with my extremely awesome but also extremely heavy manly suitcase that wouldn't have been able to fit all this stuff in and still weigh under 20kg); one laptop bag housing a laptop, mouse, adapter, 2.5" external harddrive, most of my chargers and a Nintendo DS I hope no one will bitch about and one Amazon.com XL box that holds all the books I need for teaching (paper is fucking heavy so there was simply no way to bring it in my suitcase) plus some winter clothes, weighing 9.9kg (weight for the €58,30 class: 5-10kg. Anything over 10kg will make shipping cost €105).

So in the end I didn't have to leave anything behind, but it did take quite a lot of relocating, weighing, relocating again, taking out of packaging, etc. Hopefully I can leave a bunch of stuff behind when I leave (I'm definitely leaving the books for the kids, Sojung (the coordinator at IWO) told me they have their own little library, so it'd be cool to have my books in there so they can pick them up and look at the pretty pictures after I'm long gone) because I'm planning on buying a lot of useless shit when I have the chance (would you expect anything less of me?).

Anyway, I'm currently sitting here in front of my computer contemplating the time at which I'm going to bed. I should go to bed early so I can wake up early and get sleepy early tomorrow so I can sleep on the plane, but if I wake up early, what am I going to do until I leave?
Stress the fuck out, that's what.
But I guess I'll just watch some Family Outing and head off.

Next post will be from Korean soil!

Okay, so pretty much everything is sorted out.

I took a bunch of pictures of my town and its surroundings over the past few days, and while I was doing that, I already kind of felt a little homesick. Even though Den Haag is trying as hard as it can to shit it up, we really do live in a pretty cool country, you know?

I used to be homesick a lot, to the point when I couldn't even go on a 3 day school trip without crying every two hours. Of course I was very young back then, but still I feel like I may get a little homesick this time when I'm so far away for such a long time.
On the other hand, I really hope I won't be, because I want to enjoy my time in Korea and Japan to the fullest since this is pretty much a dream come true.

On a related note, in order to not get extremely lost the first few days, I decided I should learn some Korean.
And, well, it's actually as easy as people say it is!
When you see Hangul, it certainly looks like it's really hard to figure out, but it's quite logical and you can seriously learn it in a few days. It took me 4, but you could do it in 2 if you spend some more time on it.
The program I used, ReadWrite Korean by Declan Software, works so much better than your Ancient Greek workbook it's not even funny. It shows you what the letter looks like, gives you a few examples of what it sounds like, teaches you to write it and then quizzes you, while at the same time teaching you the meaning of the words you just read. It works like a charm and the pronunciation help is a great addition.

In not so happy news...I have too much luggage.
Too much luggage to stick into a giant-ass monster suitcase and wheel it to the airport because it'll be too heavy:

And too much luggage to split it up into the carry-on and the lightweight suitcase Ghislaine has generously (not to mention awesomely!) provided, because it simply won't fit.
So it looks like I'll end up sending my dryer, winter coats and my sweater to Korea and hoping the package won't get lost.
Also, yes, I know it's retarded to bring my own blow dryer. But good blow dryers cost a lot of money, you know? Money I could be spending on buying SNSD and T-Ara stuff!

Speaking of kpop, I've mapped out the locations of the offices of SM Entertainment (SNSD), MNet Entertainment (T-Ara) and DSP Media (KARA) so I can go visit them while I'm in Seoul and ask about possibilities to see them perform at some point.

Couldn't hurt to try, right?