taejunous

[taejunous]

Everyone has memorable moments in life. If I had to choose one, I would say it would be 2018; when I was in The UK. In 2017, I shifted my major to English literature thinking that I could apply for any job I wanted. It didn't take long for me to realize that without interests, easy things can be very hard assignments. During the first semester, I took 18 credits including American poets, English novels and so on. Since I shifted to the third grade, in comparison to other students, I had no basic knowledge of analyzing poems and it took a lot of time to read the novels we were studying. It was fine because I could handle them when I spent more time on them. However, the worse thing was my listening and speaking. I needed to take classes by foreign professors. I couldn’t understand at all what they were saying. I found myself applying for a year's break and booking a flight to The UK.

Why did I choose to go to the UK? There were many reasons such as the accent, more chances to travel to other European countries (actually I went to 12 countries!) and also the fact that my favorite movie,Notting Hill, was based there. In fact, it was the first place I visited right after I got to the UK, and I even chose my english name as William; the same as the lead male.

Anyway, to learn authentic English, I signed up for a language school in Brighton. My first level was intermediate. As a person who is rather vain, I felt a bit disappointed. I thought, “Intermediate? No way! I will ask the manager if I can move my class level up after this speaking class.”

When I met a woman from Ukraine in that class, this thinking disappeared.

To practice, we needed to make a pair. I made a pair with this woman and started talking.

I said, “ Hi, where are you from?” And she answered, “ You Korean?”

Since she didn’t answer my question, it was bit strange but my understanding was that she wanted me to answer first. So I said, “Yes, I’m korean. What about you? Where are you from?"

And she answered again, “You Korean!”

Again, I said, “ Yes I’m from korea. Where are you from?” And we repeated this over 4 times.

We seemed very annoyed by each other. I felt like I need to speak slowly to make her understand clearly.

"Y E S, I ' M from K O R E A." I said as I pointed to myself. "W H E R E A R E YOU F R O M?" I asked again, hoping that she doesn’t answer, “You Korean?” again.

She answered very slowly

U K R A I N E.

Ukraine.

After that day, I never felt overconfident about speaking English and vowed to work hard at every moment. There is still a long way to go.

[taejunous]

France trip 1

I AGREE that France has some magical power.

Of course, not like this.

I’m talking about a magical power which makes people believe that France is a romantic country. As other people might do, if someone asked me what the most romantic city in the world is, I would say “Paris”. and I did!

My trip to Paris was quite memorable to me in lots of ways. This story is about what I remember about France, especially Paris. To begin with, it was even harder than other trips to get there.

When I got to Gatwick Airport, it was full of people. It was unusual since all the people were sitting on the floor calling, shouting, and sighing, even though there weren't any flights on at the airport. That was enough for me to realize that something had happened. After that, I found out that because someone activated drones on the Gatwick Airport runway, all scheduled flights were cancelled.

No sooner, a woman who works for the airline gave me two choices. One was to change the day of my flight and the other was to get a refund.

Since I had already booked all my hotels, Disney land, and so on, I couldn't postpone my trip by any further. I needed to get there, so I refunded and started to look for another way to go.

One way was using another airport, but it took over one hour from there and meant I had to pay more for things like transferring trains.

Even worse, my phone was about to die and I had no data, so I couldn’t contact my friends to tell them my situation, all while carrying a 20kg bag. Therefore, I went out and moved to the centre of London to look for another way.

An hour later, I found myself sitting on the chair in the Starbucks, charging the phone.

Whenever I found a hardship, I tried my best to think “what’s done is done and can’t be undone”, “it’s over, smile because it happened.”

But it was not easy to think like that, since it was not an extreme hardship, but still a hardship at the same time.

I learnt something from this experience: in any situation, there is a way. What I need to do is to take action.

And I bought a euro start ticket.

It was super expensive but it was less costly than booking a flight that day and I was curious about thinking that I could see under the sea.

The first thing I did when I finally got to Paris, was to visit Triumphal Arch because it was one of my bucket lists items to touch that wall.

Right after I touched it, there were people wearing yellow jackets who started rallying on the streets like they were waiting for me to touch that, destroying everything. All shops’ windows were destroyed and they were shouting at the people.

One thing that was the most memorable thing was the bread. Before visiting Paris, I was someone thought bread is bread. So, I rarely visited a bakery, even the ones that were really famous. But, second day, I was really hungry and found a review for a bakery saying it was like heaven’s bread and they knew why this bakery had sent bread to the palace before. And magically, that bakery was right in front of me.

I got in possessively and chose a cheap baguette.

After that day, all my Paris pictures were with this baguette.

Heavenly.

If I went to Paris again, it would be for this bread and the Vietnamese noodles and to touch the triumphal arch -- not for The Eiffel Tower!

Overall, it's true that it was very romantic. While walking the street, jazz sounded, and I felt like I was the main actor of cheesy romantic movie. When I look back on my Paris trip, it was not a smooth trip! Maybe because of that, every moment was more worthwhile and memorable.

 For all that has been, Thank you.

For all that is to come, Yes!

see you again, Paris 

France trip 2 is coming

[taejunous]

Switzerland Trip

“The hills are alive with the sound of music.” There’s no doubt that this iconic musical sticks out in the mind of most people when they think of Switzerland. Unless you are a bit of a music nerd, I don’t think many people would even consider coming to Switzerland other than to ski. In fact, I know that I definitely wouldn’t have travelled to a small town in the middle of Switzerland had I not been a little impulsive. I came to realize that sometimes you have to go off the beaten path in order to find true self-discovery.

I was in Switzerland to go skydiving. It had always been one of my dreams, and while in the UK, I decided for certain that my dreams could come true. It was during this time that I happened to pick up a book in a bookstore called “Heidi.” As I was flipping through the pages, I found the town it was based around called Maienfeld, and after finding out that it was only a short distance away, I decided on a whim that I had to visit Maienfeld. That day, I bought a train ticket to Maienfeld. It was only 40 minutes away. I thought to myself, why not?

After arriving in Maienfeld, while I was looking around I saw that there was no one there. No travelers, no foreigners, not even really any locals. I wandered around until I found a map of the town. There were a few key sites on this map that I decided I should see. There was Heidi’s town, Heidibrunnen (a monument), and of course a gift shop. After seeing these key places, I decided to explore the area. I walked around looking at various places. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I actually took my time. I didn’t rush to go anywhere. I didn’t look for the best place to take a picture that I could put on Instagram. I simply just enjoyed being outside in the freezing cold looking at this beautiful place which seemed like no one else wanted to visit.

 It was here that I realized that sometimes it is okay to be a little impulsive. It’s okay to stop and smell the roses as they say. I didn’t have to conform to the wants and needs of anyone else. All I needed was to enjoy what was around me. To live in the here and now of the world and its beauty around me. I was able to discover more about myself in that short trip to a deserted town than I ever thought I would. What started as an on the whim travel experience turned out to be exactly what I needed. To just realize that I could be myself regardless of what was going on around me. I guess the hills of Switzerland must have a little bit of magic left over in them.