Hello, gorgeous friends.
So, it is my second full day here.
I'm looking highly intellectual in my blue light glasses.
I'm a big fan of making sure I don't get too much blue light from a laptop.
And I normally have this thing called flux, but for Christmas, I received
these gorgeous blue light glasses.
So yaay!
Today, I attempted to do some work.
I really struggled to get out of bed this morning
I think I got out bed at like 9:30, or 10:00 which is
the middle of the night in Berlin.
So I was like, get yourself up Jade. Just do it.
I had a breakfast, there was cereal for once, which was a lovely surprise.
My stomach has still been growling most of this afternoon because
I clearly just eat a little more than they give me here.
I went into my porch stash and had a sad bowl of waterly porridge
but it's keeping me going.
I've used this one teabag today, like 10 times to the point where I was just
drinking hot water and calling it tea.
But I'm okay. I'm living my life. I'm vibing, working.
I did some exercise because I think it's the only thing that gives me
endorphins right now. I did a half hour Latin dance workout, and I remembered
how tragically uncoordinated I am.
Like, I'm a fan of myself.
I love myself, but I'm very realistic that I cannot dance.
It doesn't stop me doing it, but I just don't look great.
Then I did this writing project and I proudly wrote 2000 words
which is, I want to see say for a slumpy day like today, I'm pretty proud.
I first started learning Korean like six months ago, and then
I completely lost the habit.
Lost the motivation. I learned Hangul, which is the lettering.
I don't know if you know that much about the Korean language,
but I think it's one of the most
genius languages ever to exist.
It's so clever.
Just to give you a brief history. From what I remember, there was a King Sejong
I think in like 15th, 16th century or something like that,
at that time Korea didn't have a written system.
So people had to learn Chinese characters. And for poor communities
who never learned to read or write,
that was really difficult because Chinese characters are quite complex.
So the King went to his scholars and he's like, Hey, I need you to design
me a language that anyone can learn.
Like it needs to be a language that anyone can read or write really easily.
So the scholars went away and designed hangul Korean.
So even if the characters look complex, because you've never studied
Korean before, you could probably learn them in like one afternoon,
like they're very intuitive.
Yeah, so, because I started studying the language a while ago,
I feel like I have a very basic understanding of sentence structure
like how it works, but then I kind of lost it all. So I'm trying to get it back.
I'm using Talk To Me In Korean, which is a really good podcast.
And they have like PDFs on their website.
Today, I learned how to say I want, which is
[foreign word]
For example, if I want to say, I want to eat, I would say,
[foreign sentence]
Or I want to drink
[foreign Language]
And I have my little book of Korean where I just write
things down and try and test myself.
Am I going to be anywhere near fluent? Absolutely not.
Am I going to be anywhere near conversational? Probably not.
But when I was able to translate the shampoo bottle where it said syampu
and I could read the hangul,
that was a proud moment.
And now I've just spent the last two hours reading about North Korea.
I read an amazing book by Yeonmi Park.
I'm now reading this really interesting
article about elderly people in South Korea and how most
elderly people actually live in poverty, which is very surprising.
They have the worst senior poverty rate among all developed nations.
And I know when you think of South Korea, you think.
developed nation, technology forward thinking,
and yet they don't seem to support the elderly that much.
And then Confucianism, which is like a traditional Eastern philosophy
that's followed by a lot of Eastern countries.
Confucianism is big on family values and hierarchy based on age, but the
traditional Confucian traditions seem to be fading more in South Korea
as this article says.
I just received dinner. Should we have a look what it is?
While I'm eating my dinner, I'm going to watch this video about
black people in Korea.
I've been reading a lot of articles about the beauty industry here, the prominence
of the plastic surgery industry, how skin lightening is huge, how people really
want that white glossy skin look.
And so I'm really interested how that then plays into racism.
So yeah, I'm going to watch some videos.
Let's have a look what food I've got.
So I'm the only in houses, so I'm going to expose myself.
Oh, guess what?
So there's me trying to finally get off my phone, get social media.
Jade, c'mon. My phone buzzes at me after two hours.
I'm like government app is like, Are you still in quarantine?
Have you left the room because your phone has been inactive for two hours?
And I was like, wait, what?
I have to go on my phone every hour, just so they know I'm still in this room.
Woah!
Here we have, I think this is soup.
Ooh, a soup that doesn't look creamy or Milky.
I love that. That's amazing.
It's got like a cucumber in it.
So refreshing. I got rice, of course.
Um, Oh,
Perfect. Yaay!
Oh, fine, fascinating.
Is this like seaweed.
and cabbage or something. I don't know what it is.
And kimchi. Let's do our unboxing.
Well, what is this?
I do know what this is.
Pickled something.
I don't know what this is.
Some kind of cabbage. It looks good.
This is the star of the show.
Give me protein after my exercise.
This could be anything, could be anything, you know, we've got some greens.
I don't know what these lumps are going to be, but I'm very intrigued.
This is going to be an exciting meal, another good meal, cheers to food.
The highlight of the day.
Oh, also really quickly because I talked about this on Instagram
And I just think it's a worthy topic. In one of my moments of
procrastination today, I was watching back old videos of myself.
And normally I avoid those at all costs.
I just don't want to see it. We move on, we grow, but it was strangely inspiring
to me because I don't know, it was just kind of cute and ackward.
And I have come such a long way in terms of just personal confidence
when talking to a camera.
Just checking and I'm kind of more confident.
I look back and I'm like, Whoa, Jade,
your perspective back that on grades for example, you have come such a long way.
And that got me thinking, you know, being raised as a woman into this
world where you're kind of trained to have insecurities because industries
can profit off of those insecurities.
They can prey on them.
They can say, great, you're insecure and I've got a product that's going
to solve that and security, buy it.
And also how women are trained to be smaller and palatable
and pleasing and just nice.
I feel like I've spent so much of my life just trying to be nice and likable
and I still am like that, but I think I have come a way since that time,
in terms of being more unapologetic.
Slightly in being me.
And it also just really reminded me how much I love it when people are
just unapologetically themselves.
So this is just a reminder that I think you are cool exactly as you are.
And also that even if you haven't realized it, you probably have
grown and come such a long way in the last few years.
And because it's so intangible, you wouldn't have even noticed that you have.
That's what I want to say.
You're cool. We're cool.
All growing out here and yeah, now I'm starving.
So let's go eat.
Hi me again, I'm gone.
I am going down such a rabbit hole and I have never regrets.
I didn't watch BTS interviews.
These guys were amazing.
Coming on me.
I'm heading to sleep, but I'm sending you so much love.
If you are in lockdown or quarantine, I guess my challenge for you today is
to learn the language or to research a random culture in the world.
To pick somewhere and be like, I'm just going to learn about them today.
I just want to say, I know nothing. Everything I said in this video
is literally me like starting to scratch the surface of like
a culture and like issues here.
And I have so much to learn, but I find it really interesting.
And I'm also reading this book called The History of Bees, which is
just a random fiction book and makes me feel like I'm not just in a room.
I really miss reading fiction.
And just living in adventure.
Thank you so much for watching and I'm sending you love
wherever you are in the world.
Bye!