Tasty Tuesday: Jjajangba

Ingredients: 300g of jinmichunjang, 300g potato, 300g onion, 150g carrot, 100g pumpkin, 1 spring onion, 250 gram of meat (either pork or beef), 5 tablespoons of oil, 4 cups of water , 3 tablespoons of starch flour.  But really you can add all the vegetables you want, I used 300 g onion, 400g pork, 350 g potato and 200 g carrot.
Preparation:

• Cut your meat and vegetables into bite sized pieces and fry them in 2 tablespoons of oil. (Cook your meat first, you really don’t want to eat undercooked meat, especially if you go for pork).
• Add your concentrated black bean paste (jinmichunjang in my case) and stir until you have everything covered.
• Add 3,5 cups of water and let it cook until done.
• Mix the starch flour with half a cup of water and add it. Let it cook for another 2 minutes or until your rice is done.

And there you have it, a perfect dish to keep you company on the day of the singles.  Mix it up and don’t care if you get dark spicks of the sauce all over your shirt and face – you don’t have a boyfriend who is going to judge you ^^

Enjoy, Wietske

Life: Motivational Monday – starting now

Although I really enjoyed listening and making my weekly music posts I want to try something new on my blog.

I feel like I need a bit of motivation and perhaps feedback on some of the projects I am currently involved in. I usually prefere to keep my projects for myself since I hate failure, and what is worse when I fail, people that know I failed. However keeping my projects a secret also helped me to not do things, but I think sometimes you just have to start! So, that’s what I am doing, starting now!

Today I will share three projects I am working on. The first one is still an early stage development, namely this blog. I’ve always wanted a succesfull blog. And by succesfull I don’t mean xiaxue famous. Succesfull to me means my own domain, my own designed webpage and a connection with people that visit my blog. I want to share what I know, while learning from others. I want to meet great new people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I am already well on my way and although I only seriously started with this blog for little over a month the amount of followers and commenters suprise me. And I am very greatfull and happy about it. Even if it takes years I would love to expand this blog into a website where I can help people achieve there dreams, encourage people to do what they want to do becuse that’s what I think is most important.

My goal is more involvement, I want to get to know everyone that even only looks at my blog, why do you return, or why do you stay away? I’d love to hear from you, even if it’s just a Hi every now and then. I also want to find a concept that I like, I am pretty close already but not quite there yet. But once I have that I think I will actually start with a design and getting my own domain.

The second thing I want to achieve is  I want to be more organized, I want to have a perfect daily schedule, I want to be on top of things and not forget people’s birthdays. I am currently trying to get organized and trying to get rid of anything that is not only clutterling my room but also cluttering my brains. Edit my life, so to say. I thinking of of getting myself a filofax – which has the most amazing planners ever – they are expensive but it seems worth it.  I just really want to be on top of things instead of constantly feeling like I am falling behind.

And last but not least, I really need to study more Korean. So starting from today I will study at least 15 minutes of Korean every day! No excuses, just do it!
I will keep you guys up to date one way or another and post things to motivate myself and you with your goals every monday starting from today.

So tell me, what are your goals for the future or near future?

Love Wietske

Life: How to deal with reverse homesickness.

Everyone knows the feeling of being homesick, longing for home, for a place where you feel comfortable and at ease. People feel sorry for you, try to comfort you and eventually send you home.

However reserve homesickness is something that gets laughed about. People keep on telling you that you just need another holiday while in fact you feel lost, not at home in a place other people tell you is your home. That combined with an extreme longing for in my case Korea cause me a serious depression.

A depression that would only go away when I was back in Korea and would come back as soon as I came back home.

However I finally feel that I have overcome this feeling of sadness, I still know and feel that I don’t belong here in the Netherlands but I can deal with it now. And here are 5 tips how you can too.

Go sightseeing; Yes, in your own town. Go on adventures, try new bars, new restaurants, new stores see your place not as a town where you return to your same old boring life, see it as a new adventure.

Get active; By exercising your body releases pheromones which make you feel happy, even if you hate exercising, find something you like, such as walking, dancing around the house, riding your bicycle.

Meet Friends; Whenever I feel extremely homesick I just want to sleep all day and cry in a corner. This is not a solution to the problem. Go out, meet your friends, take you friends to said new bars and talk about past memories. Laugh together and make plans for new adventures.

Be Sad;  There is nothing wrong with crying your eyes out every once in a while. There is nothing wrong with wanting to go back to that time and place where you are happiest. Just make sure you don’t get stuck in the moment and if you are really slowly rolling into a depression seek help!

Go back; That doesn’t mean you have to go back tomorrow. No, just make plans. Think about it; talk about it. Tell your family how you feel about it and your absolute need to go back. Ease your family and friends back into the idea of you going back for a longer and longer.

Korean resources - All about Hangeul

Last week while I was going through piles and piles of paper and notes of my time as a Korea studies mayor I found some quite useful information.

It was a piece of paper my Korean language teacher gave me with links to websites about  Korean alphabet or Hangeul. I’ve mentioned some websites to study Hangeul in my last Korean resources post, but here are 4 more!

The first one is all about the history of Hangeul and the Korean language in general. There are also great recordings of pronunciation of the Korean alphabet. Please note that with the pronunciation of the consonants they say the name of the letter and not just the pronunciation of the letter. However here is a quick tip for you; the way the name of the letter is pronounced reveals how the letter itself is pronounced at the beginning and the end of a syllable. For example the ㄹ or r/l it is pronounced as rieul or 리을 which means at the beginning of the word is pronounced as an R at the beginning of a syllable and at the end it is pronounced as an L.

The next two websites are both have great explanation of how each letter fits in a syllable with the only difference that one has audio that explains the pronunciation and the other has not.

Last but not least for the people who thrive by someone explaining it in a clear manner in a classroom like situation here are 2 videos for you . The first  explains the principle of creation of Korean alphabet and its historical background and vowels and consonants and their phonetic value.  The second video explains ending consonants and its phonetic value and write and read syllables.  The videos are a bit on the long side but defiantly worth watching for someone who really wants to learn Korean.

I hope you find this information useful, if you have other great websites explaining Hangeul. Feel free to share in the comment section below.

Love, Wietske

Life: Create an amazing breakfast.

One thing that makes getting up in the early morning easier for me is the thought of having an amazing breakfast. Something that gets me going and is delicious. Unfortunately I don’t have time to cook up perfect French toast every day. Luckily with a few tweaks,  even the most simple toast can look absolutely amazing! Fear not you don’t have to be a foodstylist to do so. Rather not actually, because do you really want to spay perfectly edible food with hairspray?



I am a fan of eating some fruit with my breakfast and instead of just grabbing it whole why not cut it up and arrange is in a colorful way, put it in a little bowl or arrange it on top of your yoghurt.  Even simple things such as cutting your sandwiches diagonally make your them look more pleasing for the eye and thus more tasty!

Even just switching up your cups can give you the feeling of eating in a fancy eatery. I am used to drink my milk and water out of old cups and mugs, even just pouring it in a regular long drink glass makes it more appetizing for me and makes me want to drink it! Try eating from your fancy plates, drink your juice from a wine glass, pull out the expensive cutlery, make yourself feel special by simply eating in style.

Tell me, how do you serve your breakfast?

Love, Wietske

Life: How traveling alone changed me.

This week I have been posting a lot of pictures and music that remind me of Mongolia. Mongolia will always have a special place in my heart, since it was the first country I traveled to alone.

I stayed in a Mongolian family for 3 weeks and traveled around the country with a Mongolian family 2 Italian guys and an Irish girls for a week. This was only made possible because of the Lions organization, which is a kind of rotary club that organize camps and homestays in countries all over the world to encourage dialogue between people from different countries and to create cultural understanding.

I was a very shy girl and very attached to my “friends” who treated me very badly now I look back at it. I have never traveled without my parents, outside of Europe or flown in my life. I was scared, I was afraid I would have a hard time communicating, that I would be lonely and homesick.

Thank god I had the best time of my life, I made awesome new friends, I realized my so-called-friends were not my friends and discovered who my real friends were. I became more confident and way more talkative. If you want a relatively cheap and save way to see a new country and you are within the age range of 15 and 21 I totally would recommend you to check out the Lions organization youth exchange program!

However, it wasn’t until 2 years later, the summer after my high school graduation that I really got to know myself and became the person I wanted to be instead of being the person that people thought I was.

I finally went to the country I always wanted to go to – Korea! I made a plan, calculated how much money I would spend and then started convincing my parents. My dad was easy-peasy, he really encourages me and my sisters to follow our dreams, my mom however was a different story.

North-Korea just sunk a South-Korean warship, my mom was scared and just rather had me stay at home. Luckily I was able to convince her and could start booking tickets and hostels. And then finally I spend an amazing 3 weeks in Korea.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. I was shitting bricks however from the moment I stepped out of the airplane I fell absolutely in love with the country and it’s amazing people.

But most important I learned a lot about myself. I learned that it is okay to make my own decisions, that it is okay to have fun, that it is okay to be myself and people would still like me.

I became a happier, more confident version of myself. Korea still has this effect on me and that is probably one of the reasons why I like to be there so much even though I am in general a very happy and confident person nowadays.

After traveling alone I finally realized I shouldn’t take shit from people and stand my ground, that I have the right be happy and should be, because I am amazing and wonderful.

And so are you! and if you haven’t realized that yet I recommend you to travel alone, meet new people and do all the things you want to do and be happy, because you deserve it!

So I challenge you, within a year from now, travel somewhere, it can be far away, or really close by. Go alone, stay alone and enjoy and be amazed about all the things you can do!

Tell me, where would you go and what crazy things would you do if you were travelling alone?

Love, Wietske

Life: 20 things I want to accomplish this year.

I do have a bucket list of 50 things I want to do before I die. And although I’ve accomplished quite a lot of things already some of them are defiantly goals I don’t even want to accomplish just yet (get married, have a baby). However I feel like I need to push myself more to accomplish something this year. So here I present you with a list of things of 20 things I want to accomplish before this year ends.

1. Get accepted into Hanyang University
2. Loose 10 KG
3. Get one of my posts to Freshly Pressed page
4. Sell a painting.
5. Get some of my photography published.
6. be able to run 5K
7. Get  to Topik level 6
8. Save 10,000 Euro
9. Get straight A’s in my classes.
10. Be able to do 20 push-ups
11. Go camping with my friends in the backyard
12. Create a monthly budget and stick with it.
13. Keep writing daily post
14. Throw an epic party, with no reason and invite everyone I want and don’t worry about how they mingle.
15. Make a weekly schedule and stick with it!
16. Get something to remind me of birthdays and ALWAYS send a card
17. Make my own birthday cards
18. Take a day every week where I am not connected.
19. Talk more with my mom.
20. Be a better sister.

I am going to work hard to accomplish those goals, although some are probably a bitter harder then others.

What are the things you want to accomplish before 2014?

Love, Wietske