Hannah Smith
I started this blog to keep my family and friends updated on my trip to Italy and Greece with my friend Melissa. I kept it going through my year of studying abroad in Uppsala, Sweden and the five months I worked in Melbourne, Australia. Now I'm off to Chungnam, South Korea to teach English at a middle school. This is where I will blather on about my daily life.Where in the world is Hannah
I have a serious case of wanderlust :)
-Hannah
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” - Robert Louis Stevenson
Travel Blog Posts
May 24th 2012
I've had this blog since 2008 and so I've been trying to work on a new blog (slightly) so head to my Matador blog to check out my new post on my "solo" travels through Vietnam and Hong Kong. I'll most likely keep posting on this blog though. It feels like home :) http://hannah.matadoru.com/2012/05/24/stranger-danger/... read more
May 10th 2012
It would probably surprise many people to know that my biggest dream used to be to become a photographer for National Geographic. I'm a really shit photographer, lots of animals scare me, and I decided early on in my Communications studies that I could never be a photojournalist because I don't have the ability to emotionally remove myself from situations and take photos of grief, violence, etc. I think the reason I was so drawn to this career was because in my mind travel and National Geographic were one. I wanted to have a job where I HAD to go to countries spread across the globe to take pictures of their beauty and culture. I can't remember when I figured out that I liked writing. It can't have been from my emo poetry that I wrote ... read more
May 3rd 2012
"I'm a freak bitch, baby." The purple and pink lights in the dark pulsated as the hands holding them pumped the air and the heads wearing them slammed up and down. The neon amoeba sang along with Lady Gaga's monotone statement from the song "Bad Romance". "I'M A FREAK BITCH, BABY!," wailed the crowd. Olympic Stadium was the most packed it has been since Michael Jackson performed there. We had paid around fifty dollars for our nosebleed seats, which were so high up that I felt almost removed from the glittering crowd below. Gaga and her dancers moved in unison around the stage in white, as she chanted "RA-RA-KO-REA-RA-RA-KO-REA". The crowd went wild, stomping and clapping along. The problem with our seats was that we couldn't actually see Gaga very well, just blurs of white courture ... read more
April 24th 2012
I first met Jess on the roof of her apartments during a barbeque. First impression? This chick is cool. She had tats, tight curls cut short, and I don't remember what she was wearing but if I go ahead and guess black, I can't be too far off. We had some crazy times dancing in bars and snowboarding together, but we didn't become good friends until we'd known each other about a year. That's when we started bitches be cookin' with the other girls in our town, a time once a week that we would spend drinking, cooking, crafting, listening to music, and talking shit. I came to see that Jess was brash, energetic, and suprisingly girly. She was also highly motivating and it was because of her that I started doing pilates, yoga, and other ... read more
it's all over now, baby blue.
Published: March 28th 2012Asia » South Korea » Chungcheongnam-do » Daejeon
March 28th 2012
I knew Margo before I even met her. That is, I had read her blog while sitting hunched over my laptop on a sunny day in California, trying to glean information about the town I would be moving to in South Korea. I read that she was from South Africa. She liked her little town of Geumsan, but loved her friends in the city of Daejeon. She enjoyed partying and expected people to keep up with her. In my imagination, she was a black girl. Obviously, I was ignorant on most everything related to South Africa. Nelson Mandela, Charlize Theron, wild animals, and Cape Town. That would be the extent of my knowledge. Now thanks to loquacious and patriotic Margo, I know about things like "lekker" and "robots" and the infamous "braais". I first met Margo ... read more
March 26th 2012
"We should never forget our birthdays or the birthdays of those who are close to us. Birthdays keep us childlike. They remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.”-Henry Nouwen Birthdays are my chance to plan something outlandish and my friends will have to do it. I absolutely love planning parties, dressing up, and doing something I've never done before and I use birthdays an an opportunity to do that. Year 20 was a trip to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where we acted like kids, and had a party back at the dorms. Year 21 was the H party where I introduced beer pong ... read more
that was then. and this is now.
Published: March 17th 2012Asia » South Korea » Chungcheongnam-do » DaejeonMarch 15th 2012
It's absolutely astounding to me how much the passing of time can change us as people. I've been in Korea for a year and a half, which in the grand scheme of things is a drop in the water, and yet when I look at pictures from when I arrived here or read my old blogs and personal scribblings, it's like peering at a stranger. I had an out of body experience today where I saw myself teaching my class and was pretty proud of how well I commanded the classroom. It was not so long ago that I nervously stood before a class, unsure of how to teach my students English. I didn't have the faintest clue how to connect with them or what to do when they got out of hand and tried to ... read more
March 5th 2012
http://hannah.matadoru.com/ Hello guys, I'm using a new blog for my writing. This is the link for it. It's called Following That Clever North Wind which is a reference to the movie Chocolat, one of my favorites and one I always identified with. I'll still be using this blog for random blogs I want to spit out, but the stuff I'm putting more work into will be on the squeaky clean new one! See you in cyberspace Hannah... read more
January 12th 2012
" I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you" In the movie Taken,Liam Neeson growls these words into the telephone when he finds out his daughter has been abducted in Paris by Albanian human traffickers. Obviously Liam isn't going to take this attack on his ... read more
December 20th 2011
Have you ever been crammed into a metal cage being driven by the hounds of hell? If you've ridden a bus in Korea, then yes, yes you have. It's extremely rare for foreigners in Korea to have cars so we are resigned to our fate that is the death trap of a Korean bus. No one likes them and yet everyone rides them. There is no point in trying to count the positives of the bus (there is only one. it's cheap) so let's immerse ourselves in all the ways that it's horrible. It's cold outside, I have no class, and I'm going to turn that bored and cold energy into hatred towards public transportation. So sue me. Reason For Sucking #1 The people. There are four kinds of people I encounter on a bus. There ... read more
Tot: 0.111s; Tpl: 0.003s; cc: 12; qc: 87; dbt: 0.0865s; 1; s:notus w:www (50.28.60.10); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.7mb
