monday morning ear candy~ best of 2012

"Happy New Year friends!"

A new year full of promise and adventure is but a day away from us.

Tonight we'll be getting all dressed up and ringing it in out on the town with some special friends and raised glasses.

It will be with mixed emotions that I say goodbye to 2012, with all of it's swoops and dives, cautions thrown to the wind, chased dreams and surprises. 

All in all it's been a great year filled with many positive and forward-looking changes in my life and my relationship.

Now I'm looking forward to beginning 2013 with intention and just a tad more planning and caution.

Dallas and I have a bigger goal we are moving toward together after this final year spent in Korea and this year will be all about working together to make this dream of ours come true.

I hope you're all busy making your own special plans for both tonight and the clean slate ahead!

Here's a little round-up of my favorite tunes and artists found and re-played over and over from the last year. 

Press play and enjoy, friends!

Happy New Year!

                                          

On a side note: regarding my season of giving thread I was planning to run for each day of my winter vacation~ it turns out I was a little less organized than required to volunteer as a foreigner in Korea. Every organisation I have approached to volunteer with have been fully booked this week.

This makes my heart so happy to know that there is such a wealth of English teachers and ex-pats out here wanting to give back and do something to help wherever they can this winter.

This has absolutely not waned my desire to get involved with some charity organizations and campaign groups, I have just had to reserve my spots to attend a little further down the line.

Stay tuned for my reports on helping out at PLUR Korea and The House of Sharing. 

  

season of giving, day 2

This is a little montage of those babies of mine that keep me so busy every day.

Their little lives are so full of love, care and protection... dedicated teachers who take care of them for 7 hours a day until we bundle them up in their little jackets, mufflers and mittens and wave them off on a school bus which delivers each one of them into the warmth and love of their families apartments.

Beautiful children, lucky children, lucky like you or I who have had the privilege of growing up in a loving home, with money and parents and all the security and advantage that brings.

It was my intention to visit a Seoul orphanage during my vacation as part of this 'season of giving' thread I'm running but unfortunately for me, but good for the orphanages, there were no volunteer spots available at the short notice.

Although I am disappointed not to physically meet the kids it is also such a sweet pleasure to know that there are plenty of others out here like myself who wanted to reach out and give some time and help to the children less fortunate than those bundles of joy and energy I teach every day during this festive season. 

I still plan to volunteer in the future but for today I sufficed by making a donation to the Korean Kids and Orphanage Outreach System. A wonderful non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of the Korean orphans through outreach and education.

season of giving, day 1

The perks of an anomalous vacation time:

claiming the best comfy-seat corner in the coffee shop

warming snow-cold hands around a hot paper cup

time to be still and alone with my thoughts

art journaling

playing incognito: taping free smile papers on to unassuming walls

finding one has been taken only half an hour later

another half hour, two more have been spirited away

smiling and wondering where my paper smile is now~ 

 inside a pocket or a wallet?

Is someone looking at it right now with a smile playing the corners of their lips?

How would you react to a free paper smile from a stranger?

the season of giving

{{Quote by Theodore Roosevelt//Source}}

I remember it was Christmas 2008, before the tornado of backpacks and passport stamps and adventure came and carried me away from London for what seems like will be good.
 I was living in a flatshare in Spitalfields, East London, an area gloriously frozen in time.
My local pub the "Ten Bells" is infamous for being the bar that Jack the Ripper's victims drank in, street lamps light cobble stoned alleyways and dignified Georgian architectures crumble decadently. 
Petticoat Lane and Brick Lane markets, born in the 17th century, were my cold and foggy Sunday morning haunts. It's the place where the Indian sailors who jumped ship in the 19th Century introduced some of the first curry houses to London.
Spitalfields irresistibly attracts eccentrics, artists, hipsters, musicians, Rastafarians,  Bangladeshis, C-list celebrities and vintage-ware sellers like summer attracts fireflies.
Also, homeless people.
The homeless are another fixture of London as permanent as the Houses of Parliament.
Rough sleepers, drifters and beggars were ubiquitous in my area and that Christmas in 2008 I decided I wanted to help.
On Christmas day myself and a friend went to my local shelter and helped cook and serve Christmas dinner to over  a hundred local homeless.
It was a great opportunity to interact with these people who I would usually just walk straight past on my way to the Underground in the morning or even cross the street to avoid when walking home in the dark.
We met some colorful characters, old, young, some who wanted to talk and share, some who silently took their food and ate alone, some who seemed affected by our presence and expressed gratitude and others who didn't. I think it's the ones who didn't that I was there for in the end. I feel like they were the ones who needed it the most.
I didn't change the world, I served hot meals and maybe cheered a handful of people up before I went  home to my family and gifts and a table full of Christmas food and they went back out on to the streets.
That's the thing with charity, you always walk away with a feeling of un-finished business, like there's still so much more you could have done. But the act of helping, of leaving a smile and a belly full of food on someone less fortunate than yourself... the act is surely worth it, no matter how small.
I have read so many wonderfully selfless and inspiring posts lately about sharing joy and random acts of kindness  and they have inspired me to forfeit my Christmas vacation which I probably would have spent entirely indulging myself and my own projects/crafting/shopping/movie watching and see what there is out here in Korea that I can get involved with and help.
They say you should do charity silently or the charity is you but the only reason I am posting about this is to give myself the push to get off my butt and do it.
I feel like by publishing this on my blog I am further duty bound to keep this promise to myself and I will keep you posted on my endeavors when my one week vacation starts on December 25th.
Whether it's a small act of kindness, volunteer work or campaigning I will find a small way to give something back every day of my vacation.
It is after all the season of giving ^^