#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 12 - Friends

The hardest thing about doing this Happy Day Challenge is to choose which happy thing to write about. Often it comes down to which things I have photos of. 

Today I had a lovely lovely time with the English Club, then I had one of my favourite lunches with some of my favourite people. 

Then my friend and I went and joined me up to a library - imagine my big big smile :-).   Then we went to one of my favourite cafés and chatted over strawberry smoothies. 

Happy Day ^^

And when I came home I discovered that my street has sprouted Korean flags. No idea why ...

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 11 - Translation

This is my friend Monica - this week I have been helping her translate a scientific study for her work. It is about the effectiveness of an antibiotic for treating a skin disease in dogs. It was mildly interesting. What was much more fun was spending time with Monica discussing the study and just generally chatting. That made me happy. Finishing the project made me happy too. ^^

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 10 - Beautiful Words

One thing that makes me happy is reading a beautifully crafted piece of writing. 

Today I stumbled across this loveliness. 

It made me happy. ^^ 

I think it is what I try to do, to see the joy and the beauty in the small things of life. I feel like I'm such am ordinary person, but somehow I seem to have found myself living a life outside of the norm. I'm very blessed!

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 9 - Being Crafty

Today my friend helped me cover up the nasty ugly kitchen cupboards with nice almost plain sticker paper.  ^^

This makes me happy on so many levels, first there was the going and choosing the covering - any excuse to go shopping in the kitchen section :-). Then there was the actual craftiness of sitting together taking off the doors covering them putting on nice new door handles and rehanging the doors - I got to use my Swiss army hammer. ^^ 

And all the chatting while we worked. Love those long winding conversations that go everywhere. 

Finally there is the fact that from now on I get to look at pretty cupboards everyday and remember an awesome day with my friend. 

These things make me happy. 

So does the Swiss army hammer:

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 8 - Sleepovers and Movies

Last week of vacation and I'm enjoying a sleepover and movie night with my friends. 

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 7 - Friends

Today lots if things made me happy. 

1. The hotel where we stayed had a bathtub. I got up early this morning and enjoyed it to its fullest!!!! Bathtubs are very rare in Korea. (In fact in my current apartment the bathroom is so small I have to sit down on a plastic stool to take a shower.) 

2. Finding recycled art on 남이섬 - a tourist trap type island we visited today.  But even though it was tourist trappy it still had some cool stuff. 

Like this giant ant made from a recycled motorcycle. 

Or this toilet block - check out the reading material found in all the stalls. 

3. Another thing that made me happy was comparing childhood games between NZ, USA and Korea. Turns out we all have a version of hopscotch. 

This is my friend Sue hopping through the Korean hopscotch pattern. 

All up it was another happy day. 

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 6 - 노래방

노래방 is the Korean word for singing room. A place where you go with your friends to sing kareoke.  Today some of my Korean friends have kidnapped me and taken me away to a ski resort. We cooked dinner and then we went to a singing room, my first time. Finally I've discovered a country that actually sings the songs I know - ABBA, The Carpenters, etc and Christmas Carols. 

HAPPY ^^

Maybe tomorrow we'll actually touch the snow. 

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 5 - Serendipity

I love happy surprises. Today I went to a another friends graduation and discovered that it was also the graduation of another one of my friends. One I haven't seen for a couple of years. It was soooo lovely to go and surprise her and wish her well. 

And yesterday I had an even bigger moment of Serendipity. I was following my friend across her campus and into an elevator. Half way up the building the elevator stops the door slides open and in walks Sally, one of my students from 2 years ago. I couldn't stop staring at her, because I was so shocked - good shock. 

Plus I had a misquote running around iny head, "Of all the elevators, in all the world, and you had to walk into mine." 

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 4 - Achievement.

Today I went to my friend Mango's graduation. Here is a picture of her being rewarded for a year of hard work. 

It makes me happy to see my friends reach their goals. 

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 3 - Pictorial Aids

Here is an example of one of my student's spelling tests. 

He always insists on drawing a letter for each word - makes spelling tests very long. On the plus side I know from the picture if he really understands the word or not. I've always maintained you can draw anything in stickmen, he is proving me right. This makes me happy. ^^

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 2 - Finding A Source.

Can you guess what this is? It's not the way we westerners are used to finding these - well not in New Zealand anyway. Normally this would have long purplish stems and deep green leaves growing out of the top. And most definitely would not be wrapped up in plastic wrap. When I was a child I remember pulling smaller versions of this out of my mothers garden. 

I love their purple crunchy sweetness. They are good grated into salads, juiced with carrots or roasted or pickled or about 100 other ways. 

Here in Korea they have been a very hard to find commodity, I fact it is probably six months since I last had one. And now I have one sitting in my fridge. This makes me happy. Tomorrow it will make me happy again when I juice 1/4 of it. And I'll be happy for the next three days after that too. But, when it's all gone - I'll still be happy because I've discovered a source!!! 

Have you guessed what it is yet? 

It's the humble beetroot. ^^

The story of the source: 

Last night I decided it was time to discover eMart because apart from other things it is also the only reliable source of coconut cream that I know. I knew it was somewhere close so I jumped on a bus that I thought was going in the right direction. "EMart?" I asked the driver. He looked at me as if I was crazy pointed behind him frantically and said "여기요, 여기요" repeatedly. That's the Korean word for 'here' - hope I spelled it correctly. I thought he meant I had to get a bus in the other direction so I jumped off - and then crossing the road I discovered the eMart sign scarcely a block from where I stood ...

No wonder the bus driver looked at me like I was crazy. 

#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 1

I've decided to enter the '100HappyDays' Challenge. To find out more about it go here http://100happydays.com. What this means for you though is that everyday for the next 100 days I'll be posting a picture of something that made me happy here on my blog and telling you a wee story about it. Some days you'll get two posts because there is some other random stuff, and not so random stuff I've been meaning to post too. 

Today there were lots of things that made me happy. The one I decided to take a picture of is this 

A chopstick and spoon set with the most amusing pattern on the handle, curly ferns that look very similar to silver ferns from New Zealand and butterflies. Since the name of this blog is Butterfly Muzings they seemed quite appropriate. Not only did this make me happy today - happy enough to fork out w5500 ($5.50 approx) in fact - but this set will make me smile every time I use them. I predict this will be often. 

Here is a close up of the pattern. 

The thought of all my grammarly friends cringing as they read this also makes me smile, because I know I've got my singulars and plurals all mixed up. :-D 

ㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎ (That is Korean for laughing.)