2013 Goals

2012 was an exciting year for me and I hope that 2013 will hold as many surprises and adventures.

To start with, at the beginning of 2012 I stupidly decided to set myself 52 goals to achieve rather than give myself resolutions. Unsurprisingly, I didn't achieve them all, but I managed to do over half, by which time I'd totally forgotten about these 52 things I was supposed to be doing, and did them without thinking.

Some of the goals included:

- Learn to eat with chopsticks  Something I was completely hopeless at before I came to Korea, but I definitely threw myself in at the deep end. The first day at school in Korea, less than 12 hours after I'd landed in my new home, we we were served lunch. I was feeling a bit lost, and starting to think maybe I had made a mistake, and when I saw that there were only chopsticks supplied to eat with, I could feel a lump in my throat. I eventually managed to get what I presumed was pasta in tomato sauce into my mouth with these two metal sticks, only to realise that it wasn't warm pasta as I had presumed, but cold, spicy cabbage, also known as KIMCHI! I have my ups and downs with chopsticks, and still suffer from performance anxiety, when I know a Korean's watching me in awe as they don't believe any foreigner can actually use chopsticks, that's when I'm most likely to cross my sticks and send my rice flying across the table, but I've come a long way from not even being able to pick up a massive lump of chicken.

- Run an 8 minute mile  that probably sounds easy peasy to lots of people, but I'm not a natural born sports person, so doing this was a challenge. 2011 was the year I did the roller marathon, so lots of running was done before hand to train for that, by the end of the year I was doing it in just under 9 minutes. But once the marathon was over, I lost the motivational goal and the running petered out, especially once I came to Korea and running 'out of season' is seen as really bizarre by the Koreans. Unfortunately this is one that's being shelved for when I get home and can train without being gawped at and can give myself a goal to aim for.

- Try something new every week  although every week I may not have consciously tried something new, I know that since March last year I have definitely experienced hundreds of new things. Food, places, situations and people. Trying to speak Korean, paragliding, mountain climbing, banana boating and eating pig neck are just a few new things that I tried this year.

And the list goes on and on and on...

So I decided to reign it in a little this year and here is my goal list for 2013:

1. Learn how to shuffle a deck of cards well...rather than flicking them all over the floor.

2.Try the 30 day challenge, inspired by this TED talk. Try something new everyday for 30 days. I decided to try and start this week with Italian language lessons, not handy for my current situation, but I hope it will prove useful when I'm back in Europe!

3. Eat Less Sugar the only thing I can think to compare Korea's consumption of sugar to is Buddy in Elf. Everything is made super sweet here and I'm worried I'm going to go home having developed extreme diabetes and have rotten teeth, so I'm trying to resist temptation, although I had a brownie yesterday so not going too well so far...

Not the most exciting list, but perhaps alot more attainable than the 52 goals I had last time, so wish me luck!