Tuesday 25 March 2014

Reflection, Gratitude, Positivity

Be grateful, be positive and reflect often. These three things helped immensely on my path to happiness and I still make sure that at the end of every day I reflect on the day I've had by writing down the things that have made me happy in my journal. Whatever kind of day it's been, I focus on the good and I'm thankful for it and this helps me to go to sleep in a positive mindset ready to begin a new day.

It's particularly important that I do that tonight and this is what I'm focussing on as I go to sleep...


Obama and pals, you can come again!

Over the last two days The Hague has played host to all the most ‘important people’ in the world who have been here for the third Nuclear Security Summit. Now, I personally believe ‘Nuclear Security Summit’ is just code to hide the fact that what they’re actually doing is following yours truly around the world. Think about it, of the three summits there have been to date, two have been in cities around the world, on opposite sides, that I have lived in at that time: South Korea 2012 and now The Hague 2014. South Korea and The Hague of ALL the cities in the world? Come on. Coincidence? I think not. ;)

Anyway, despite the helicopters flying around till silly o’clock last night keeping me awake and the perceived hype and ridiculousness leading up to it over the past few weeks, it’s been quite a pleasant experience.  Having the summit here has meant, due to various factors such as road closures, that a lot of the children have been unable to come to school leaving us with very small class sizes; only half of the year group has been in school on both days. Yesterday we split all the children into two groups meaning the children got to work with new peers and meet up with friends they were grouped with last year. It also meant that each of the teachers in our year group got some free time to spend on planning and preparation which was great and meant I had a particularly productive start to the week. Today we kept the children from our own classes together meaning I had only 12 children to teach all day which was bliss! At one point I had only one child in my Letters and Sounds group - hilarious!


It’s been such a relaxed, quiet couple of days in which we’ve been able to give the children in our care some special focussed attention and really chat to them and get to know them. An aspect of the profession that often gets overlooked due to busy timetables and the constant pressure of levels and progress. So the past two days have been a nice reminder that beneath all that are the children - the individuals - who you became a teacher for.

A wonderful weekend :)

It’s Tuesday night so the weekend already seems a million miles away now but a lovely weekend was had nonetheless. After not feeling so well due to a cold throughout the week, it was the perfect combination of relaxation and activity, time with friends and quality alone time, yummy indulgent food and lots of much needed vitamin C packed fruit! Highlights of the weekend include:
  • a relaxing quiet Friday night and a VERY early bed time
  • a Saturday morning fry-up (the first here and on my own too which was also a first here!) at O’Casey’s Irish pub
  • a heavenly massage at The Soap Store with a few of the girls which was courtesy of school - a voucher given to us as our Christmas present from school
  • back to back episodes of The New Girl at Jen’s afterwards
  • a quiet night in with pizza, wine, Ben&Jerry’s Cookie Dough, The Voice UK and a Skype date with Melisa
  • Sunday afternoon shopping in The Hague
  • beach fun with my first experience of Dutch fish ‘n’ chips at the seaside - not bad!


Seven months of heaven!

Here is a quick summary of the things I have loved most about my first few months in this new country:

#1:  the school!
I’ve longed to work at a school like this since graduating in 2007. My class are incredible, the leadership is incredible and the people I work with are incredible and I’ve made some lovely new friends. I’m very lucky and so thankful to finally be at a school that makes me happy and in which I feel inspired and appreciated.

#2:  the distance to home and time difference
Holland is SO close to England and I love it! I’ve already been home three times and I’ve only been here a few months. Even though I’m living abroad again, it never feels like I’m that far away. The one hour time difference makes it easy to Skype with friends and family at home of an evening and I just love the thought of being able to hop on a plane and jet home for a weekend if I ever needed to. Amazing.

#3: all my visitors
This has been wonderful! I have been so lucky that so many of my friends have already been over to visit me and that my mum came here with me when I moved and has another trip booked for a few months time. Except my mum’s one visit in the two years I lived in Korea, it was never possible for anyone else to visit due to the distance and the cost. Seeing the people you love most when you’re so far away from home is like no other feeling in the world!

#4: exploring Holland and lots of Eurpoean adventures
Since moving to Korea in 2010, I developed a passion for travel and was lucky enough to explore a great proportion of Eastern Asia. My move to Holland has meant that I have a brand new country to explore and lots of surrounding countries to visit. So far in Holland I’ve explored Den Haag (where I live), Amsterdam, Delft, Den Bosch and Utrecht. Further afield I’ve already been lucky enough to travel to Bruges, Brussels, Paris, Disney Land and Dusseldorf. 

Life in The Netherlands V life in South Korea

I’ve been living in The Netherlands for almost seven months now and what a fantastic seven months it has been! Unlike my move to South Korea in 2010, my move here was fairly sudden and more ‘on a whim’ but just like my move to Korea, my move here has been one of the best moves I have ever made!

Before moving here I made the mistake of assuming that living abroad this time would be just like living abroad last time. I was wrong. And it didn’t take me long to discover that. The greatest things about my time in Korea (the freedom, all the time on my hands, the lack of responsibility, feeling like a student again, the way of life because it’s so cheap to live there, the ability to live life to the absolute max, the person I became) are things that either don’t exist here or are much harder to achieve/ maintain here (predominantly because the job I do here is what takes up most of my time...and energy!) But on the flipside, the things I liked least/found the most challenging during my time in Korea (the mind-numbing, uninspiring job, working for people of totally different and often clashing cultures, values and opinions, being so far away from home... and normal life!) are not a problem here because the opposite is true for each.


So, to conclude, both experiences are ENTIRELY different and shouldn’t be compared (although I still do more than I should).  All I know is that whilst I’m enjoying and appreciating the things I have here that I desperately longed for in Korea, I must MAKE time for all the things that made me happiest in Korea. And in some ways, being that girl here, in spite of the demands of a high pressure job, will be more of a challenge than the quest it took to find her in the first place. So I’m still that ‘Seoulsearching’ girl I was a couple of years ago just in a slightly different place and on a slightly different journey...