Hey there guys, and welcome back to Un Jaded Jade.
I've got my tea.
I've got an empty room and I want to tell you a bit about my first few days here.
I'm sharing a room with two Brazilian girls
one of whom is Lara, who I lived with in Berlin.
She is wonderful. Such incredible energy.
And the guy Gabriel, who I lived with last semester, is now my neighbor.
Instead of having Gabriel, I have Gabi, Gabriela, who is also wonderful.
This is Gabi.
Hello.
Gabi, tell us about yourself.
I'm from Brazil.
I live near Lara. Whenever I have a way to hide I do it and it isn't there.
Anyway, it's a city called central Sao Paulo.
I grew up there most of my life.
I started dancing there, which is something that is very important to me.
Gabi is an amazing dancer.
Aww, yeah.
I tapped dancing since I'm eight years old.
I also love nature.
I love the ocean and I'm a beach girl here.
Sure. We have nicknames.
I'm a nature girl, you're a beach girl, Lara is city girl.
And through that, I also got involved in sustainable agriculture.
So I'm part of CSA when I'm back home,
which is a community project on agriculture.
It's amazing to being counted like earth and the things that you eat.
Yeah. And here in Seoul, we live nearby Namsan tower
and it shares a beautiful forest.
Yeah, and the park. And Gabi just has such a wonderful energy.
She is the mom.
She is a culinary goddess. Also the other day, I was on my period and she just comes
over with like this camomile herbal scrub, like a massage and a whole water bottle.
And she's just so warm.
And we have in the evenings, we do to like debriefs of our lives.
Yeah, it's amazing.
It creates a really nice energy in this room.
Yeah. Very lucky. I really, really love our room.
Everyone's like so hyped for everything.
And you're so great with words and making us feel like we're welcome
and like, beautiful. You're just like...
it's so natural. It's Gabriela.
Gabriela? Yeah, that's good.
Gabriela
Our resident's hall is named Itaewon in Seoul.
I don't know if you know Itaewon, but if you ever seen Itaewon class, which is
a K-Drama on Netflix, which I highly recommend, we live near there.
We live on a mountain.
We don't even live at the top. We lived like smack bang on the incline.
It's so hilly here. When I first came down the stairs from quarantine,
it was the most surreal experience for us.
You just see the sky and there around 10 of the students who
got out of quarantine that day.
And when you first get out quarantine, you're kind of at your safest because
you've had two COVID tests. you've been monitoring your temperature.
You know, you don't have COVID. You've got to hug people and touch people and see
people's faces in 3D for the first time.
And then this taxi journey felt like a dream.
There was this moment where we drove over the bridge from Incheon to Seoul,
and I feel like I'll always remember it.
The sky was like a hazy pink purple.
I don't know what it is about Seoul, but it feels like this city has a
constant Instagram filter on it.
Like some beautiful greeny softness probably due to like the haze and the
air quality, but it looks beautiful.
And in that car, I was leaning on these two students who I
hadn't seen in like a year.
And we just wanted to be so physically close to each other because we hadn't
been able to touch anyone in so long.
And we were just driving through, looking at these views and reading
all these signs that we couldn't understand. Such a surreal moment.
When I write it, I nearly cried because in my room, Gabriel, my
roommate from last year, he got out quarantine the day before me, and him and
his new roomate Gordon had planned this little surprise for me in the room.
He made me look side to side.
Welcome casual magic Jade, which is so cute
beause we did the casual magic habit all the time in our house.
And it's just cute. It's not moment alone.
It's suddenly felt like,
Wow!
This place is home now.
I've got good people here who can make it feel like home?
I got checked into the building.
I learned about the extensive COVID regulations here.
The building is so tech.
When you come in, you get your temperature monitored on a screen that
recognizes you even with your mask on. On my first day in Seoul, it snowed
which is so special.
I went to one of the big supermarket to get set up with food and
groceries and that kind of thing.
And the snow was just the most beautiful snow I've seen in my entire life.
It was so powdery and soft.
I set up my SIM card for my phone.
I set up a T-money card for the public transport system here.
More logistic things like filling in an alien residents
form for being a student here.
Oh, I've been trying to learn Korean for like six months maybe, on and off.
And I'm so happy that I can pretty much read every hangul thing I see
kind of quickly-ish now.
Hangul is the written language of Korean.
And even if I don't understand what it says, I can read it out loud,
which is pretty, you know, you feel good.
And it's crazy that even though I've just done level one,
have talked to me in Korean.
Every single thing in that level one, I think I've used in just
the few days I've been here.
Things like, there's this word isseoyo and eobs-i, which means like
to have, and to not have, but it also means with, and without
like, this exists, this does not exist.
Which is a very simple phrase, which can be used as a question and as a statement
in so many different scenarios like, igeo gogiebs-i, like, is this without meat?
Is this without chicken? Really useful.
So I'm motivated. I want to know more Korean.
I think it's a really cool, beautiful language, even
though it's hard to remember.
Oh, I live really near Namsan Tower,
which is the official Seoul tower that most people have seen, which was really cool.
And just a short hike up this mountain is Namsan park, which is a beautiful forest
that leads up to the tower.
Yesterday I went for a hike with some friends in nature.
It was just really beautiful,
and the first time I've gone to a forest in such a long time.
Hello, and welcome to a very rapid tour of the best room you will ever see.
This is Future Jade coming at you after this room has been, definitely lived
in for a little bit. And therefore it's not the tidiest.
I'm not going to over tidy it so you can get a full picture.
Here is the room.
This is my bed.
This is my storage unit clothes, hangers.
This is Gabi's bed.
Her map just fell out.
I'm going to pick it up, wait so you can see the full effect because
her wall looks really beautiful.
And she also has these really pretty fairy lights, which I'm gonna try and put on.
So you can again, appreciate this full effect.
So cute. And it's a little bit more basic, but still cute.
Here on my wall so that I can see them every day is some of
my most important values in life.
My mental and physical health, optimism-
I'm finding beauty in every day, growth and reflection and alone time, which is
something which was really hard to get here, especially having two roommates.
There's so much beauty in having roommates
from what you learn, and developing these almost like familial relationships, but
alone time is important.
Community, friends, and family, and sense of belonging and
then justice, helping others.
And then I have this cute thing that says, is there something in my life that
makes me forget time while I'm doing it? What is it?
Just as a reminder of passions and priorities?
I have these cute postcards, which if you've been with me in
Berlin, you've seen before.
They move when you move, which is cool.
Here, I have postcards and meaningful
photos and this beautiful drawing that my friend in Berlin did for me.
Shout out to you, Lynnea.
Here I have some clothes. I have drawer space. This is shared.
Normally this looks very artsy and beautiful, but today is laundry day.
So we've got a makeshift drying rack, We've got a map of Seoul so that we can
start to understand this massive city.
Lara is very artsy and brought this, which is very nice.
We moved all lockers recently hence we have extra space.
Those are suitcases.
We have this cozy area with our yoga mats.
And I normally bring my yoga mat every morning here and do some yoga.
These are my cute slippers from quarantine.
Here is Lara's bed.
Here is Lara's stuff.
Here's Gabi's stuff.
And that's pretty much my room.
We have a study area outside just in there where I take class from
and do most of my work.
I also have flatmates who I share this area with
this through them. They're wonderful.
It's a nice balance because there's three girls here, three guys there.
And this is my little home.
Thank you for coming to my tour.
And future Jade is also sorry that I am just doing work and trying to
focus on staying afloat and things and focus on my mental health
and just not uploading as much.
Okay. I have three classes tomorrow, so I spent most of the today just during work.
I had an essay due yesterday, so it was doing that essay, but I think my
casual magic of the day, I did a 14 minute yoga practice.
And it was a spine yoga practice, which just felt so nice after having
been on a laptop for many hours.
Have a beautiful day.
Bye
Hello from Future Jade.
This is a few days after I filmed that first video.
I could not post another video without going back and quickly discussing some of
the criticism, the comments, the feedback I've received from people,
I've reflected on this and just realizing that I have screwed up in so many respects.
I just really want to say, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to anyone who has
felt very disillusioned with decisions that I've made
or the way I've handled it.
One of the main things people have said is just because you
can doesn't mean you should.
And I took a weekend trip to Switzerland in December.
And even though in my eyes that trip was done,
honestly as safely as I possibly could have done it.
I didn't even go grocery shopping in Switzerland.
It was only done in Germany.
We stayed in the middle of nowhere.
And also because I'm biased by the good memories I had there, people have made
such incredibly valid, good points about why that was really not a good decision.
How if everyone thought like that the world would not go back to normal
very quickly, because even if you think you're being safe and even if
you are taking all the precautions.
you don't know, even though I stayed in the middle of nowhere, what
if I met a random person from a rural community who is more vulnerable?
What if a second strain happened?
Like so many people have made very good points, which have
made me reconsider my life a lot.
I'm just sorry. I'm so sorry.
If you feel like I've made poor decisions, that's valid.
With regards to being here in Seoul, doing
study abroad right now with my university. I have a lot of South Korean
friends who have been really helpful in informing me how I should navigate
life here, how I should explore, if I should explore, how I can respect the
culture and the COVID regulations.
So, yeah, I spent most of my week in my study room, which is out here.
I'm not going to lie to you.
I have explored, I know my area quite well, but contrary to how I think
a lot of people have been painting me,
I really am trying to do this safely and carefully.
It is my farthest intention to firstly, disrespect this culture.
Like, I don't know if you can tell from the way I try learn about
cultures I go to, but I really don't want to be disrespectful.
I'm really doing my best
to live life here, to get to know the city, but also do it in an incredibly safe way.
Thank you to everyone who has been super informative and honest on how they
feel about my decisions and wanting me to learn from it and grow from it.
I think that's pretty constructive. To everyone else who has been blatantly
horrible, I invite you to remember that there are humans behind this
face, this screen.
You don't know what's going on in everyone's lives, even if it feels like
you have a grasp on their whole life.
Yeah, that's just a reminder.
We love kindness, more kindness in a pandemic.
Okay. How do I feel right now?
I feel quite homesick. Being away,
I'm sure a lot of you can relate if you study abroad or live away from home.
There are days where I really just want to
have help from my mom and chat with my mom, or do you know how tough it is
when so many of our loved ones back home are struggling and you can't be the same
level of support that you want to be.
You're overwhelmed here with the work and you're just trying to
make cope in your daily life.
And I really am struggling with academics, with work, with everything,
mental health. It's a lot.
And then the added layer of not being able to support the people in your life
as much as you'd like to. It's just tough.
I also often feel like I'm missing out on such key moments in my brother's life.
Like he just had 18.
There's so much about university being hard, whether it's a pandemic or not,
I'm just getting very much off topic and just rambling, but yeah, I'm in Seoul.
I'm slowly getting to know parts of the city in a safe way within regulations.
Thank you so much for watching.
If you're struggling with your mental health or anything right
now, I really just want to extend
my love to you because I felt it.
In the last few months, I really have struggled at times.
And it's so intangible and it's so hard when you feel like you
don't want to burden people, you don't want to reach out.
I'm a person. I like to handle stuff on my own, I don't tend to involve people
in the ongoings of my mind a lot, but I've started doing that more.
And it's been really helpful.
I'm going to leave a bunch of mental health charities below who are
wonderful, especially if you can't access something like therapy.
I suppose I'm finale. Just because on the surface someone's life looks great,
it doesn't mean that everything's great.
I had a conversation with my roommates at like 1:00 AM last night about
how the fact that we are here living this incredible life,
Incredible because we're here, we get to travel. And that's so privileged.
And so lucky.
How
we often don't let ourselves talk about the real struggles we face in trying
to juggle the workload and things like homesickness in all the hard parts,
because we know we're so lucky to be here.
And we don't want to complain, or we don't want to open up about mental
health struggles was because, Oh my God,
we're some of the luckiest students in the whole world, which we are.
Yeah, and also that nuance is something I've been juggling.
I know I'm really lucky to be here
but it doesn't change the fact that I often really just struggle.
Okay. That's me for today.
Thank you so much for being here and I'm excited to pour good
creative energy into the space.
I've missed it.
Okay, bye.