I am HD

This injection mold is the pain in my ass. I used compression mold at my previous job so I know how it works. Also, I know that setting up this mold is very difficult for a girl. See that silver square thing? I literally cannot carry it to its place. I can not even move it! That's how heavy it is. This machine is hot, heavy and dangerous.  Physically challenging.

School hours in Korea is different than in the Philippines. Students can stay in school until whenever they want and nobody will care. Some grad students even bring their folding bed to sleep on for overnight experiments. Hope it doesn't have to happen to me. Heh. 

Required lab hours is from 10am to 6pm. On busy days I stay in the lab until 9pm or until my professor goes home (cannot go home before him). I don't like doing my coursework in the lab so I go straight to the library until 12 midnight. 

This has been my pretty hectic life so far in the Land of the Morning Calm. 

More months to come! More stories to blog! Anyeong~ ^^ 

Koreans are very sensitive to age. Whenever I get introduced to Koreans, the first thing they ask is my age rather than my name. Because when someone is older than me, I have to use "jondaemal" (formal language) since it is a sign of respect. In Filipino ways, it is like using po and opo. 

By definition graduate students like me are higher than undergrad students but unfortunately, I am younger  than the two undergrad students in our laboratory. I call them unni and oppa "ate and kuya" because they are a year older than me but they feel weird having a grad student call an undergrad a senior. Because by degree, I'm the senior one. 

For many people like me, living in another country is always exciting at first. Many aspects of the local culture will appear strange at its best. We notice all the better things on this country than what we have at home. 

I've been in Korea for just two weeks so I'm still honeymoon-ing with this foreign land. But of course there are times when the reality that I'm in a far, far away country sinks in on me. I get frustrated when I can't find something and I remember that it was left in the Philippines. I self-pity when I want to eat a scrumptious meal but I don't know how to cook it; and I can't resolve on eating out because that will cost me a lot of money so I end up eating whatever cereals or bread I have in the apartment. I miss my family and friends everyday and all the emotional and physical comfort they have provided to me. 

So yes, my Instagram photos didn't get it all. I'm not here for a grand vacation and every day isn't rainbows and butterflies. My stay here is a combination of harsh wind, blessed sunlight, snow and spring breeze. 

I found a very helpful article below that will hopefully help me cope when Korea's charms wear off.

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Allow yourself to miss things: food, clothes, being able to communicate easily. Don’t allow yourself to miss: narrow thinking, getting bored, feeling trapped.

Learn the language but don’t get upset with yourself if it’s difficult and takes time to master. Enjoy the period where you can sit in coffee shops and restaurants and not have to block out inane chatter. It’s effortless when it’s all gibberish.

Get used to the problems of the country not really being your problems. You don’t have a say in them, so it’s easier if you just accept them as they are — out of your control. Don’t worry, it’s an easy feeling to get used to; it actually becomes comforting.

Use the Internet and watch it become even more amazing than it already is. Used together with a little improvisation, you can get almost anything you would be consuming back home — music, movies, books, food, clothes. Almost everything. Where I live the foreigners talk a lot about missing good avocados. You get over it.

If you have a phone, call your family every week. It helps keep you feeling normal. It also preempts them from sending you emails complaining about your absence.

Take comfort in knowing that once you got beyond your country’s borders you already began winning. If you can stay out for at least a year than there’s a very real chance you’ll be able to stay out in the world indefinitely. I spent my first two decades in America. That’s a quarter of a normal life in the same country. More than enough. Once you get the foreign-life inertia in motion, the longer you stay away the easier it is to keep going.

Know that most places in the world where you would end up living for any real period of time can get you to an airport in a day. From there you should be able get home in one more day. You can live on the other side of the world and if something requires you to get home you can probably get there in no more than two days.

Give up on where you’re from but don’t give up on the people. Your friends back home won’t forget about you. They will move on with their lives without you, and they might resent you, but they will still listen to your stories if your stories are good.

On those days when a really simple thing could be easily handled if you were back home, and you get frustrated, and you start really wishing you could go back home — maybe you should do it. Maybe you should go back home and stay there. Maybe you don’t belong overseas. The frustrations are what teach you the most. But if you’re too strong or proud or stubborn for that, then try and remember that every day you live in a foreign country you get better at it. Every day you live abroad you learn something — about yourself, about the country you live in, and about how there is always more than one way to look at something.

Date someone from the country you’re living in. Or don’t. There is no certain way to go about this. It has caused mixed outcomes in my fellow expats. Almost always the relationship improves their understanding of the country and their facility with the language. It also without fail is the cause of no small frustration and trouble. Go forth at your own risk.

Plan on making friends that will stick. Living together in a strange place together binds you. The only problem with the friends you make is that they, like you, have caught a full dose of the itinerant lifestyle, and it won’t be long before they’re off to somewhere else.

Try to keep your head. Another country might make you forget who you are and where you came from, and maybe that’s what some of you want. That’s a big part of it. But no one ever fully escapes where they came from, or who they are, and once you come to terms with that you’ll be able to really enjoy yourself. It’s a good, interesting life if you can handle it.

"You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em

Know when to walk away and know when to run

You never count your money when you're sitting at the table

There'll be time enough for counting when the dealing's done. 

Now every gambler knows that the secret to surviving

Is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep

Cause every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser

And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep"

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"Travel is awesome in that it shows you that *waiting* is the reward. Magic is in the transformation that accommodates each step. Every upset or obstacle unfolds a richer, more interesting story, where you've had to go deeper into yourself to sculpt the diamond resources in you.

When I return from a trip, I often find myself saying, "I need a vacation from my vacation". I hear other travelers saying it also. It's because when we travel, we know that time is precious, limited and so we try to live those moments to their fullest potential. We live intentionally.

Why then in our normal everyday lives, do we waste so many moments? Why are we rushing, continually looking for short cuts to hurdle all the steps in-between? Rather than experiencing the joy in the journey, we treat them like uncomfortable "accidents" that got in the way of our plans. Why do we live intentionally when we travel, but accidentally when we're home?"

-Grrrl Traveler

First post from the Land of the Morning Calm!

It’s been a week since I arrived in Korea and as far as first impressions can say, all is well in Korea.

1) Weather – It is now the start of spring so the weather ranges from 0 to 8 degrees every day. Pretty warm in Korea's stanard. Sometimes, the wind from the north gets pretty bad so it feels like friggin negative especially when I am out of the apartment at night.

2) Transportation – Anything better than Philippines’ transportation is good enough for me. But seriously Incheon International Airport is one of the world’s best. Bus system / Train / Subway system in the city is also impressive. And most importantly, no traffic.

3) Security – Generally, Korea is a safe country when mugging is the concern. At the airport, people just leave their luggage to go to the restroom, buy food, etc. People don’t normally lock their apartments. My lab mates leave their bag and other personal effects at the lab. No trust issues.

4) People - HUGE language barrier, goddamit. It’s like ME vs KOREA when it comes to communication. There is less barrier at school since most students can communicate in English (though not much), but it’s like a war when I get out. Ahjummas and ahjushis don’t know how to speak English. Honestly, if not for the language barrier, Korea is a good place to live in. My labmates are thoughtful and hospitable enough. Just don't know until when. Hehehe.

5) Support group - is GREAT. There are about more than twenty Filipino scholars around Cheonan area, nine of us are in one school together. All of the graduate students in KNU are from UST, and they are really supportive. They take care of our initial needs, accompanies us to groceries, church, and points us to cheap places for shopping. It's no joke to move in another country with higher cost of living and different language that's why I am so grateful for the support that I got here from my fellow Thomasian / KNU friends.

I know it's too early to say if I made the right decision or not. Along the way, I expect a lot of hard times with my colleagues and professors, loads of struggles when it comes to living away and alone, emotional stress, physical stress especially with the cold weather and what not. But all of these struggles will be charged to experience -- experience that I can never have had I not moved away. So yes, all is well.