What's the Korean for "Happy New Year"?

Now that the year is coming to a close I'm looking back and can safely say that 2010 has been pretty good to me. Let's look at some of the highlights, shall we?

Well for one thing it was an Olympic year and everyone knows that Olympic years are the best of all years.

The summer games will be my favorite always and forever but I still love the winter ones and spent a nice chunk of February glued to the TV, convinced more than ever that Bob Costas will outlive us all.

I also got to spend February (and the weeks leading up to it) working as a juror and organizer of a college film festival. I saw some amazing shorts and some cringe-worthy ones. Oh student films.

Then in May I graduated, woo! College was very good to me and I was sorry to leave it behind but I'm happy with those four years of my life.

Also the best TV show ever to grace us with its presence came to a conclusion this year.

I know Jack, I cried too.

Probably the most fabulous thing to happen this year though was my boyfriend taking me for my first ever trip to Disney World!

I don't think I have ever had more fun in my life. I knew I wanted to go back before we'd even left. And the fact that we made a detour to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter made it that much better.

And of course I was waiting all year long for the release of The Deathly Hallows.

I think it might be my favorite in the series ♥

Naturally in terms of major life changes though, packing up and moving here to Korea takes the cake for the biggest thing to happen to me this year. I started considering it way back in the fall of '09, applied in April, interviewed three days after graduation in May, and after a long summer of trying to make it all happen and a short fall of waiting to take off, I'm here and some days still don't really believe it.

I don't particularly care for making resolutions because I find I always make them too specific and don't end up following through. So really for this year my aims are just to enjoy myself as much as possible while I'm in Korea and try to experience as many new things as I can. Whether that's attempting to cook a Korean dish or shopping in a new market or taking in some different form of entertainment I'd like to have incorporated something new or unfamiliar each week and so far I'm doing pretty good!

Tonight the plans seems to involve celebrating somewhere in Seoul so I'm hoping for a fun kick-off to 2011. Have a safe and happy New Year all!

Trivia of the Day:  Sijo (시조 pronounced "she Joe") is a Korean poetic form. Bucolic, metaphysical and cosmological themes are often explored. The three lines average 14-16 syllables, for a total of 44-46: theme (3, 4,4,4); elaboration (3,4,4,4); counter-theme (3,5) and completion (4,3). Sijo may be narrative or thematic and introduces a situation in line 1, development in line 2, and twist and conclusion in line 3. The first half of the final line employs a “twist”: a surprise of meaning, sound, or other device. Sijo is often more lyrical and personal than other East Asian poetic forms, and the final line can take a profound turn. Yet, “The conclusion of sijo is seldom epigrammatic or witty. A witty close to a sentence would have been foreign to the genius of stylized Korean diction in the great sijo periods.” Sijo, unlike some other East Asian poetic forms, frequently employs metaphors, symbols, puns, allusions and similar word play.