Welcome! I'm Monica, originally from the U.S., now living in South Korea with my husband Junkyu and our cats, Penny and Beast.

I first had an interest in Asian culture in high school, when I began watching dramas and listening to lots of Japanese and Korean music. The summer before my senior year in high school, I went to Japan with a program called AFS to live with a host family and learn Japanese. I loved it so much, that I went back a year later with our sister city for two weeks, and then went to college with the intention of majoring in Japanese. I had to transfer schools to find the right program for me, but it allowed me to study abroad for a year in Kyoto, Japan at Ritsumeikan University. I mostly studied Japanese, but I also took Korean and thought about studying abroad there until I decided to graduate early.

After graduation, I went back to Japan on the JET Program and lived in Fukuoka Prefecture for two years. Towards the end of my first year, I met my husband Junkyu on a train ride to Nagasaki. He sat down next to me and we started talking, and the rest is history (which you can read about here and here). We were long distance for a year before he proposed, and after my contract in Japan ended, I moved to Korea. Since then, we've taken pre-wedding photos, gotten married in a traditional Korean ceremony, and adopted a cat (and another!) We also had an American wedding ceremony in the fall of 2017.

We now have a son who was born in 2019 so now I have experience raising a child in Korea as a foreign mom!

I started my blog as a way to write down my feelings about living abroad, and because I had a lot of free time at my desk in Japan. Now, I love sharing stories about love, life, books, and all the things in between. I love reading your comments, so don't be shy to leave me a note, and follow me on all the things!

Note: All of the pictures on this site are my property, unless otherwise stated. Do not take them without my permission.