I Left My Heart In Seoul

My most favorite Oppa (and only oppa lets be real) is getting married! I could not be more happy for him and his fiancee. The wedding looks like it will be in October of this year in SEOUL. While I was thinking about making a return trip to Korea next year, I certainly don't mind going sooner than that. I'm seriously too excited over the prospect of being in Korea in 6 months that I can't think of anything else. (But to be honest, I've got a lot of things to do this year w/friend's baby + bridal showers that I don't know if I can go to Korea this year < /3)

Thanksgiving 2013

It's been a few years since I've been able to celebrate Thanksgiving in a traditional way. When you live abroad, you just can't cook the way you do here in the states, and while that usually isn't a problem (and more often than not a benefit), when it gets to be the holidays you start craving the comforts of home. In Korea, generally speaking, Turkey is not generally found and that kinda puts a damper on your Thanksgiving plans if you're planning on celebrating it. The way my friends and I got around this issue was by having access to the U.S. military base in Seoul, which offers a basic Thanksgiving set from the lodge. It's so appreciated, but last Thanksgiving my friend Andrea and I definitely had to scramble to the convenient store downstairs to try and find something to make gravy out of (I think we used some canned soup and a hamburger meat + sauce meal that came in a packet, lol).

Thanksgiving 2012: Trying to open a bottle of wine + trying to make gravy. Seoul, South Korea.

So you can imagine that this year I was going to go all out with Thanksgiving (it's high ranking up there on my list of favorite holidays). Usually, I do a lot of the cooking, but this year I took it upon myself to cook everything.

• Turkey + Gravy
• Baked Ham
• Roasted Potatoes
• Corn
• Green Bean Casserole
• Sweet Potatoes
• Apple Stuffing
• Pumpkin Cheesecake

But then my mom decided last minute to make pasta and short ribs. It was a LOT of food, luckily it was more a long day of prep work and crossing things off one at a time than frantic cooking.

Woke up to a pink dawn :)

First casualty of the day. My knife skills are not what they used to be!

The beginnings of apple stuffing.

The beginnings of garlic rosemary roasted potatoes.

The end result of the baked ham.

Marshmellowssss

I tried to take pictures as I went along buy mostly I forgot kkkk and by the time I remembered everything was half eaten and looked like a group of wild savages had just destroyed everything and nobody wants to see pictures of that. I was just happy I was able to get everything done in a timely matter, and that, for the most part, everything tasted good. Or at least it did to me:) And more importantly, it was wonderful to spend the day with family and friends. Especially family. I hadn't seen some of my cousins since my sister's wedding last November, and even then, I was only in town for 3 days so I couldn't even spend quality time with them. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but they're all so grown up now and like, actual people. Bizarre.

And what better way to kick of the gift giving season than by Black Friday shopping? If I'm going to live the cliche, I might as well do it properly :)

To you and yours, wishing you a very happy Thanksgiving <3

Late Night Ramblings: Korea Blog

I recently went through the blog I kept during the two years I lived in Seoul, and I was struck by how lucky I am to have this time capsule of my time there. At the time, I knew I wanted to blog about Korea, and that I would someday be grateful that I took the time to try and document my life there. While I wasn't always the most faithful blogger, or the most creative, I did my best and as I went through my blog today I felt so happy that I had tried to capture my experiences there.

There were things that happened to me, or that I was a part of, that I had completely forgotten about. Little details, exchanges, that my brain had let slip through the cracks were all there. I found the videos I shot giving tours of my apartments, and suddenly those places were not longer just memories for me, but I was there, present in the moment and everything was exactly the way it was when I lived there.

That is such a special and wonderful thing to be able to do. I didn't realize just how much it would mean to me to have that blog to remind me, not only of the people and places I met and visited, but also of the person I used to be.

This blogging thing, it's not so bad.

And for the curious, my blog from Korea is heartmindnseoul.tumblr.com

the Low Down: Korean makeup/beauty products & my Holy Grail

Over the past few years it seems to me that Korean/ Asian makeup products have become more known and available in American markets. Undoubtedly this has to do with the hallyu wave and the K-dramas and K-pop groups that feature the flawless, perfect young things all sporting that poreless look achieved by that miracle product: BB cream. Americanized and Europeanized BB creams can now be found in any drugstore or high-end retailer under brands like Flower (Drew Barrymore's line for Walmart) and Dior.

But Asian makeup is so much more than BB cream.* In this post, I'll run down a few of my favorite Korean makeup houses and products therein.

(Makeup houses in Myeongdong, cr. visitkorea.or.kr)

But first, a few notes on the Korean makeup houses/brands. Anyone can tell you that makeup and beauty products are a serious business in Korea, and a single street can have anywhere from 5-10 makeup houses all lined up right next to one another. But Teacher, you ask me, which house/brand is the best? I don't think one house/brand is overall better than another. It basically comes down to packaging, brand loyalty, and standout products. Etude House, arguably, has the cutest packaging. People have their favorite brands and stick to them as to not have to deal with the intimidating task of venturing out and exploring all the other brands out there. And then there are the standout products. What I mean by this is that when you aren't loyal to a single brand, or maybe loyal or several brands, you shop around for the standout products of each house. For instance, I myself tend to stay loyal to a few brands, so I love the face products from TONY MOLY, the nail polishes from ETUDE HOUSE, BB cream from MISSHA, and face masks from OLIVE YOUNG.

For a breakdown of Cosme Road (Cosmetics Road) in Myeongdong, check out the feature on K-Beauty on visitkorea. And without further ado...

(A recent beauty haul courtesy of Erica, Julie, and Andrea)

My Korean Makeup / Beauty Product HG (Holy Grail):

1. Masks: MEDIHEAL Tea Tree Healing Solution Essential Mask

If you're even a tiny bit familiar with Asian beauty products, you've probably seen these somewhere before, or maybe you've even been gifted them by a good friend recently returned from Asia. Basically, these are sheets of cotton in the shape of a face, soaked in all sorts of wonderful face serums. After washing your face, you put the mask on, laugh at how monster-like you appear, and continue to do so for about 20 minutes. After peeling the mask off, pat the residual serum into your skin with clean fingers.

(Erica and I clearly having too much fun)

2. BB cream: MISSHA M Perfect Cover BB Cream (No. 23)

The BB in BB cream stands for Blemish Balm. Word is that BB creams were invented to help cover and treat severe scarring. Thus, BB creams are both makeup and a treatment cream. BB creams these days a packed with all sorts of promises: SPF, anti-wrinkle, whitening, anti-aging, moisturizing, oil control, etc. But the reason why I love BB cream so much is that it has medium coverage that feels weightless, and more importantly, looks like real skin. When I wear BB cream, I feel like my skin can still breathe. The finish isn’t cakey and I don’t need to layer it on think to get the coverage I need.

I had the opportunity to test out several BB creams when I was in Korea, and Missha’s is by far my favorite. A complaint about BB creams is that it only comes in one or two light shades. Missha has 5 shades to pick from—and if you get a shade too light for you, mix it with some foundation—but overall, I feel like Missha’s formula suits me and my body chemistry the best. I do have the Skin79 BB cream that everyone seems to adore, and while the Skin79 one is a good product, I still prefer my Missha BB cream.

One final note on BB creams. A lot of westernized BB creams are now widely available, but on the whole, Asian BB creams are really different from American BB creams. The American versions are more like tinted moisturizers (a la Laura Mercier). And now there’s CC creams popping up in stores where the CC stands for Color Correcting, and supposedly targets different issues than American BB creams. All of this sounds like a headache and I’ll just stick to my Asian BB creams that give me the best of all worlds, thank you very much.

3. Face mask ("Pack" in Korean): TONY MOLY Eggpore Tightening Pack

This pack is the second “step” in a 3 step-eggpore process. Everyone talks about the first step, the blackhead out oil gel, but I’ve found that I like the tightening pack better. I have yet to try the third product, the pore covering balm, but I’ve heard interesting and good things about it. Also, with all these eggpore products come in similar egg-shaped containers that contain plant seeds so that you can reuse the container as a pot to grow your plant in.

This pack is a clay mask that has egg whites and Camilla extracts to deeply cleanse pores. Now, there’s no way to make your pores shrink; there’s only reducing the appearance of them. When you use this pack you do concentrate the product on the skin near your nose (where people tend to have the most visible pores) for 20 minutes until the clay mask dries. Wash away with warm water.

You do feel a “tightening” sensation, but that is due more to the drying mask than your pores actually becoming smaller. Still, I think this is a good mask and I like that it’s a product specifically used to target cleaning the large pores on your face. My skin and pores feel extra squeaky clean after I finish using it.

4. Hand lotion: MISSHA Moist 24 Hand Cream 

(almost gone!)

Hands down my favorite hand cream. It has manuka honey and sunflower extract to nourish and give nutrients to your skin and the formula is really long lasting (maybe not 24 hours though). I really love how the lotion feels on my skin. It has almost a gel-like consistency out of the tube that absorbs quickly and makes my skin feel soft and hydrated without feeling slimy, sticky, or filmy. And it’s scent is exactly how I like lotions to smell: nothing too strong or flower or sweet, but just a subtle scent of freshness that refreshes. When I started to run out of my tubes, I luckily had friends send some over from Korea to replenish my stock!

The next two products from Etude House have been all the rage lately and have a billion reviews online so I won’t go into too much detail.

5. Lipstick: ETUDE HOUSE My Blooming Lips Lipsticks

(love the detail. Shade is OR202)

These lipsticks have great pigmentation and a lovely scent. Although their staying power isn’t super long lasting, they don’t dry out your lips and apply so well because of their super creamy formula. They come in awesome colors in cute packaging.

6. Nail polish: ETUDE HOUSE Ice Cream Nails Nail polish

(in colors: Strawberry and Green apple)

I said that Etude House could quite possibly have the best/cutest packaging of all the makeup houses in Korea, and this just proves that fact. It’s nail polish that looks like ice cream cones. Again, it’s nail polish that looks like ice cream cones. ICE CREAM CONES.Fun colors in great opaque formulas that are good for summer and spring months. But seriously, I like to collect them just for the cuteness factor alone.

And there you have it, my Korean makeup products HG. There are a lot of other products that I enjoy, but haven't quite made it to my HG list yet. As I run through my residual products from Korea, and explore more products, I'll probably do an update sometime later. Also, if anyone has questions on brands or are curious about different products, feel free to ask! :) 

*Obviously, Asian makeup products are not merely comprised of Korean products, but since these are the products I know best, I'm writing about those.

We Meet Again: Hey Sister Seoul Sister

A wonderful consequence of living abroad is the simple fact that you meet people from all over, from so many walks of life. And if you're lucky, you meet those people with whom you just click and become fast and forever friends. I've been fortunate enough to be still be able to call the friends I met in Korea my dear friends even as I've moved back home, but all the distance doesn't allow for all of us to interact in the same way as we did before, obviously.

All that means that when we can reunite, we are bound for the best of times. One of my Seoul sisters, Erica, was recently in town and we picked up right where we left off and got to spend our days doing what we love best, being outdoors and under the sun!

Erica and I playing at Central Park, August 2013

Friendships like ours are just another reason why I am such a proponent of living abroad. Erica is also an advocate of an international lifestyle, and through our experiences, both shared together and retold, our collective understanding of life and humanity and the awesomeness of the world is enriched and compounded and made beautiful. When we were walking around nyc, I asked Erica if she felt weird being in the US (she's Brazilian-Italian and has lived in so many countries), and she responded so simply, saying that the more countries she visits and the more cultures she experiences meaningfully, the more she's able to see what makes us the same rather than different.

                                 

Erica and I on my last night in Seoul, March 2013 

Not to say that we should become one homogenous world, but its that desire to known our neighbors as our neighbors and not as something exotic that we aspire to. Each place has its own history and has something unique to offer to the world, and should be celebrated of course, but I think you can appreciate how a place is different from what you know without seeing it as other.

                                         

With some of our other Seoul sisters, Andrea and Julie, on what has become one of my favorite days in Korea, February 2013

I have so many friends who share my love of travel as our perspectives tend to run along similar lines, but in particular, it was so great to have one of my dearest friends from Seoul around for a few days. Because no matter how many stories you tell to others in order to explain what you've seen or how you lived, they remain mere stories and somethings can't be explained in words. With Erica, there was no need to explain anything because she lived through it with me, and reminded me of the who I was at a specific time of my life. As we swapped stories and memories, she was able to make Seoul come alive for me again in a way that nothing else has. For a few days, it was like I was able to visit Korea again.

NYC heatwave

It has been freaking hot.

Temperatures in the 90s with high ass humidity. Temperatures at night still in the 80s.

Simply put, it has been miserable.

And New York being what it is, there's quite often no central air. I've had to go without AC before, but I've never had to try to sleep without it. It makes sleeping at night nearly impossible to do.

I remember last summer in Korea, the AC unit in our classroom broke, and after break I came back to the classroom there was christmas music blasting, a youtube video of snowfall was playing on the projector, students were drawing snowscapes on the white board, and everyone was eating ice cream. It was all an attempt to get their minds thinking that it wasn't hot, that they were experiencing the cold of winter and not the oppressive heat of summer. I got free ice cream out of it and a great memory. That class in particular was a joy to teach.

Thoughts from CA: A Feeling of Home

I've written at length at how worried I had been about coming home from Korea to find that my hometown no longer felt like my hometown. It might have been born out of necessity, but in the weeks and months leading up to my final departure from the ROK, I was so looking forward to coming home and experiencing all that was good and comforting about my hometown. I was eager to celebrate everything that was different from Korea and Seoul. And I wanted that elusive but intimate feeling of belonging. I mean, I was about to turn in everything I had going for me in Korea and travel thousands of miles away... there had to be something to make it worth my while. I did try, I swear I did, to temper my enthusiasm so I wouldn't feel too disappointed when the romanticized idea of my triumphant return didn't pan out to be what I wanted it to be. But as with everything, hope survives.

And so it should come as no surprise to anyone that the reality of my homecoming was slightly different that my expectations. My biggest worry--that I would not actually feel that sense of belonging--came true and I felt strange and awkward in my hometown. I felt too big, too fast, too loud, and the city too small, too quiet, too slow. I was out of sorts.

I didn't want to move to New York. That wasn't the plan. I wanted to sink my heels in California and start to build my life there. So I wasn't thrilled to come to New York, but I am so so glad I did. As with all travels, you often discover the most about yourself through the unexpected and the unplanned, and sometimes you end up being in the place you didn't know you most needed to be.

It was a couple days into my week in California, during the rehearsal dinner for wedding #2, and the bride-to-be's father and the groom-to-be were giving short speeches to all the family and friends that had gathered in the big room of a local restaurant. That intimate warmth of family and friends--of belonging, of happiness and joy, of home--permeated the atmosphere that made smiles and laughter contagious among all our faces. It hit me then, so profoundly and so assuredly, the feeling of belonging that had eluded me until then. It wasn't my family that I was surrounded by, but in a very real way, I was. These were people to whom I had a lifetime of connections with, people who rooted me to San Diego and made the place come alive. No matter where my travels took me, they gave me a reason to always come back home, they kept my feet grounded in a place that was real; they didn't let me float aimlessly forever. Finally, finally, and I was overcome with gratitude that I still had a place here. That I still belonged.

I also realized that I'm grateful to New York. As much as I felt out of sorts in San Diego, I felt nearly at home in New York. People are often surprised that I am not head over heels in love with New York, or that I am not, at the very least, amazed or impressed by the city. I am, frequently and often, impressed by New York. New York is a very impressive place. But for me, New York has served as a transition city and has been instrumental in my reacclimatization. It's a big enough city to make me feel small again, and gives me all the luxuries I had grown used to in living in Seoul, and yet, it is still in the US. I don't think there's another city in the US that could have helped my with my reverse-cultural shock in the way that New York has. I credit me returning to equilibrium as quickly as I have to being in this city. As I said, it was exactly where I needed to be.

That being said, I am so in love with California. This time around, I was really able to take in everything about my hometown and feel immensely attached to it. As many times as I've boarded planes at the San Diego International Airport to leave it all behind, I have to say that stepping through security this last time to come back to New York was one of the hardest trips I've had to do. I wasn't ready to go; I didn't want to leave. I had just reclaimed my love for CA and been claimed by it, and I honestly toyed with the idea of just not getting on the plane.

So where does that leave me? I feel like now, everything is geared towards finding my way back in California. It's the place I so desperately want to be.

Homesickness

Recently I've been really conflicted about being here in New York -- not that I was ever really comfortable with the idea in the first place. Somedays I feel happy and lucky to be out here knowing that nothing like this could come to me back home. Other days I feel so out of place and out of sorts -- everything and everyone is just so unfamiliar -- that all I want to do is pack up and leave. Sometimes I indulge this fantasy of going back to Korea, my second home, where everything is more simple and secure and I can almost feel my happiness. On the worst of these days, when I'm missing people and not necessarily a place, it is hard to ignore that longing and I count the weeks before I'm home again.

It has been a long time since I've felt this deep a loneliness. I think I tend to do very well on my own, sometimes even preferring my solitude over socializing, and I am more often than not alone as I go about my days. It is so odd to suddenly find myself lonely. Not in Korea -- never in Korea -- did I feel this lonely, as surprising as that may be.

I know that I haven't even been here 3 weeks, and that I'm still settling in, but I'm hoping to find my niche soon because New York is big and isolating and I don't want to get overwhelmed and lost in it.