Posted in Korea

My Story: Why

Hey!

So as I mentioned in my previous post, I have started a blog challenge, Blogging Abroad. The first step of this challenge is ‘Why’. So I will give you guys ‘My story: Why’!

Now, let’s rewind all the way back to 2012! I was in my 2nd year of my Journalism degree, in a class with my favourite lecturer. I remember it so clearly! My Journalism course was kind of small so we were combined with other degrees for our core subjects. Advertising, creative writing and sports journalism. Towards the end of the lecture, she told us about a trip that the university was arranging. A trip to South Korea. She encouraged us to put up our hands if we wanted to go and instantly I put mine up. I had never been to Asia before and I always had a love for travelling.

A few months down the line, I was on my way to the airport and when I landed, I instantly fell in love with Korea. I was only here for one month and it was the fastest month in my life. It honestly felt like just a few days.

I promised myself that I would come back to Korea as soon as possible.

A year later, I have finished university. Everybody thought that my love for Korea would have faded, but instead it got bigger and bigger. I met Korean people in London, I started picking up Korean, I worked for a Korean culture website, I started to make my Grandma watch Korean dramas and movies with me! The list is endless.

However, I wasn’t able to leave London for Korea yet. I finished university in April, got my degree in July, but I my graduation ceremony was in November. There are other reasons to why my journey was delayed too. (You will find out in a future post)

Me at graduation!
Me at graduation!

Let’s jump to February 2014.

I am on my way to Korea with my best friend. My plan is to teach English for a year and then possibly go back in university in Korea or become a journalist here. I have accomplished one of those things. Actually, I have surpassed that plan. Teaching English. Although I have not reached my dreams yet, I am not going to give up. I will become a journalist here one day (or some kind of entertainer).

While I am tired of teaching in Korea, my dreams of living here are not fading.

There you have it! Why I am in Korea.

This is me now!

I hope you guys enjoyed this! It was so exciting to actually write this. It made me remember how I felt before today. The excitement, sadness, fun times, struggles, everything! Maybe my writers block is slowly disappearing!

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Posted in Korea, Uncategorized

Why I am starting again.

Hello, guys!

Welcome back to British Eritrean Girl in Seoul.

As some of you know, or probably picked up from my blog name, I am living in South Korea. When I first moved here, I used to blog on Dina Daily. However, because I wanted to start fresh, I created this blog. This blog was more personal and about my experiences in Korea. I did gain a lot of followers but due to work, I wasn’t able to blog as much as I would like to. Whenever I did have time I would make a post saying that I was going to start blogging regularly again. I never stuck to it and I have finally realised that the reason was writers block.

On this blog, I gained most views and followers when I would post about my dating experience. As fun as it was, I am now in a serious relationship and I don’t really want people knowing my relationships deepest, darkest, secrets. The problem was I kept finding myself not knowing what to write about because I wasn’t going on dates and I kept focusing on getting views.

Thinking like that clouded my mind and I couldn’t think clearly about why I began blogging and what being a writer is about. I shouldn’t care so much about views. Instead I should be focusing on writing what I want to write about and improving my writing skills. If I gained a loyal group of followers along the way it would be a bonus!

I also realised that I was setting unrealistic goals for myself. Yes I wish I could blog 3 times a week, but that is what some full time bloggers do. Instead of comparing myself to others I should have thought about what is do-able for me. Juggling work, a relationship, maintaining friendships, a cat, blogging, time for myself to relax and sleeping, is not as easy as it may sound to some people. (I am a firm believer in sleeping for 12 hours if possible!) Although writing is my passion, blogging seemed like the easiest thing to push into a corner to collect dust. Ideally, I would quit my job, since it is the most time consuming, and take on blogging full time, but that is just not possible. (I have a spending problem so I am terrible at saving money.)

I want to change. I want to be able to blog about whatever I want to. I hope that my post will interest other people, but the amount of views I get is not going to be something I will focus on. I believe it will come in time.

So, back to my problem. Writers block. I thought about the last time I had writers block, my dissertation. What did I do? I stepped away from writing for a few hours or even a day and then went back to it. Obviously time away from blogging is not working out the same for me. So I looked for other ways to get past my writers block and I thought, a writing challenge!

I found a lot of blog challenges and I was kind of stuck for choice. But then one stood out to me, Blogging Abroad!

So I will start this blog challenge and hopefully get myself out of my writers block!

Stay tuned for my first blog challenge post!