Sunshine Adventuring!

Just thought I would pop you all a quick message from the land of Boerewors and Sunshine! We are in South Africa, for two weddings at the moment - and it's SO lovely to be home with all the friends and family! I have so many great snaps and stories to share with you all - am looking forward to a quiet moment to edit some pics to whack up here!

For a quick travel story - Warr and I (ON OUR FIRST INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT EVER) had four seats to ourselves on the plane - we basically airplane-spooned. We smashed half a sleeping tablet each and fell asleep with Warren behind me holding me on the chairs. At some point in the night, Warr must have loosened his grip on me, which meant I must have fallen right off the chairs - because in the morning he woke up with my feet in his face and I woke up with a very nasty bruise on my elbow. Although, we can't actually be too sure what happened because we don't remember any of it. In fact, I could have actually been sleeping on the floor for an hour or two - which must have been hilar for the air-hostesses to see. Epic.

Today we are off on the MOST exciting thing! But, I'll have to tell you all about it later!

To keep you busy while I'm off doing THE MOST EXCITING THINGS - check out some of this month's sponsors - Eye Heart Travel Blog, Femme Gypsy, Skype English Now and The Moss Letter Company.

Will fill you in soon! Can't wait!

x

Epic Birthday Adventure.

Here is the story of my Epic Birthday Adventure. This may also be alternatively titled "unashamed BOAST POST" of the most wonderful friends that I have :)

For a few days leading up to my birthday (which was on the 20th), I started receiving some cryptic notes at my front door. Like this:

After scrounging/substituting together some "necessary items" into my adventure bag, I was then finally instructed to meet at a Starbucks in Seoul at 1pm on the 19th July.
Waiting at the Starbucks was one of my friends Nicole, who then took me to a convenience store and bought three large cups of ice. (strange i know). Then the adventure began....

We met up with another lovely friend Dom and headed off to Ewha Women's University where they had packed a delicious picnic including some ice-chilled wine which we devoured on the most beautiful campus :)

Yes, that is wine in that fancy cup. Because all great days begin with a boozy lunch.
(Also this is me showing the girls the contents of my "adventure bag" and how i had collected/substituted all the items I needed for Adventure Day)

After lunch, I was assigned my first birthday adventure task:


It went down like this:



im good at stealth.
i win.
Next challenge.


Challenge Success.

The Time trial.

This challenge came with an envelope with a limited amount of money and I had to use to buy/bargain all these items including korean kimbap, earrings and an Ajuma Visor. You don't know what an Ajuma Visor is?
Do. not. panic. I'm about to show you:

yeah. that thing. that huge gigantic plastic pseudo-umbrella thing that you wear... on your FACE.

LOOK. AT. THIS. PICTURE.

You don't get much better than that.

we LOVE Ajuma Visor.

NEXT CHALLENGE: Find a Store Mannequin. Impersonate the Mannequin.
Lucky for me. Korea is so "inventive" with their store mannequins.

Don't worry, I also impersonated the lion and the clown-head for good measure.
Che = 3 points.

NEXT
The STARING CHALLENGE:

oh i love a good mental trickery. But alas, convincing people to stare up when they don't actually speak the same language as you... is more tricksy than it appears...


(Also, please note and appreciate the music in this video - im not too skilled with the iMovie and by mistake i imported my ENTIRE itunes library onto this movie and then I had to remove every song individually because i have no idea how else to do it. Result:

yeah. i probably should have googled that.)

Another Challenge:

So... THAT'S what my adventure bag was for! (good thing I substituted the safety pins with a peg which makes things infinitely more difficult.)
Et VOILA!

i changed in an "abandoned" stairwell, FYI.

Other challenges included -

getting a photograph with a random Korean, Taking a pic with the cutest stuffed animal I could find, smashing a brownie in my face, creating a comic scene using my friends as props and buying something fancy...

When all the challenges were finished the final one was -

We went to the MAC store and I had a mini make-up make-over and Nicole bought me some of the make-up to give to me for my birthday (MASSIVE HEARTS), then with my face all MAC-ed up, we went out to On the Border and met everyone for Mexican dinner and delicious Mojitos.

it was an absolutely incredible day! Thank you to my lovely friends!

(Oh... and let me also mention that after we got home well after midnight... Nicole stayed up to bake me Carrot cake muffins so that she could wake me up with them on my actual birthday - which is a whole new blog post. what. a. friend.)

I had such a fabulous birthday adventure mission day!

* * * * * * * SIDE NOTE WARNING: LEAVE THIS BLOG NOW IF YOU ARE NOT INTO SOPPY THINGS * * * * * * *

Dear Colie and Dom

Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for making my birthday so special. I know how much time and effort went into organising such an amazing day of secret adventure missions! All the way from creeping into my apartment to drop off secret notes and making beautiful mission cards to stashing envelopes with money so that I could do crazy missions scaring off half of Korea-ville and taking a whole day off to spend laughing with at me. You know me so well and knew that it would be something that I would get a great kick out of and enjoy to the max. I really really did and I can't thank you enough for all the effort and detail that went into planning this epic day. You are truly friends in a million and I am so blessed to have had an opportunity to know you and call you my friends.

Thank you for your friendship and everything that you mean to me.
~ sarang-heyo x

* * * * * * * * * *

PS. 6 days left to enter Instant Camera Giveaway! :)

Pic credit for awesome Darth Vader on a Swing came from this blog - and you can also get the full scoop on what exactly an "Ajuma" is. haha :)

Im going on an ADVENTURE!

Over the past few days some very "interesting" little notes have been appearing on the front door of my apartment...






TODAY, I'm GOING ON A SECRET ADVENTURE MISSION!!
YAY ME and my POWER ANIMAL!!!

I can't wait :)

and I'm sorry for the shaky pics at the end - i get all nervous excited when i take pictures of these sorts of things ;)

White day

Korea is strange.
Awesome.
But strange.

Today we are celebrating "WHITE DAY".
White day happens one month after valentines day. Valentines day is where the girl supplies gifts and treats to the boy. White day, March 14, is when the boy buys gifts and treats for the girl.
Alas.

I had a Seoul date with two lovely ladies instead. The mish-mash photo-diary:


White day treats. Damn. They are everywhere.


Ring shopping. (not to do with white day or valentines day or any other form of love-day)


Ring buying.

Shop window display. Awesome. But Strange. (I told you)

Lunch. Mexican. Delicious.


Graffiti. Strange. Awesome.


Starbucks. Obviously.


A cafe with all three of my favorite things. Yes.


Cupcakes. More delicious.


Bernini. In Korea. What a find.


Stamps. Stamps. MORE stamps.


Art store. YES.


Korea. Shop display. Awesome/strange.


Alarm goes off. Flying thing flies through air and around room. Alarm will not stop until flying thing is returned to it's post.
The anti-snooze alarm. SMART. AWESOME.


Some wonderful things.


Wall art.


Me sitting next to the twiggy chair. (look closely)

It was a great White day!
Next month... April 14th... We celebrate BLACK DAY. (SINGLES ONLY).
(no, really. it's a thing. Strange/Awesome. i know.)

(ps. all pics taken with the instagram photo-app.)

happy LUUURVVE day

Happy Valentines day everyone! I had a lovely loveday yesterday....
inspired by some gorgeous photos i received in the mail of a Cape Town inspired date:

and the beautiful heart brooch made by laura

i got myself fancy and took myself on a che date :)

my favourite kind! :)

first some tv-series in bed, with a double whammy of cereal and yogurt.

then a gym session... where i saw the most epic thing. i would not even be able to do justice to what i witnessed today so i'm not even going to try. basically it was a Korean-couple gym session involving 12 hand-claps, front and back, Korean man yelling at Korean wife whilst doing supersonic-gyrating-pelvic thrusts side-by-side, followed by both of them lying on their backs, legs and arms in the air flailing about like a pair of frying ants.

i had a great workout. I hope they did too.

*then off to Seoul*

First stop, coffee shop with delicious (extra hot) cappuccino, a lemon tart and my sketch book :)

I had to dodge a few of these guys (i did hi-five the giant blue bunny):

did some Stationery shopping:

and then decided to see a movie. 

I have been wanting to see Black Swan, but at the good advice of not seeing it alone, i decided not to. (also, it wasn't showing.)

she let me buy a ticket :) 

the movie was good and i hadn't even heard of it until then so I didn't realise that Natalie Portman was in it - It was basically exactly like Black Swan.

I had a lovely loveDay  - i love che dates :) and my philosophical point of advice for the day is you might as well learn to love spending time with yourself, because from now until you die, you're always going to be in your own company- so make it fabulous :)

*hope everyone had a magical day*