Hello 2016 || 2015 Recap & New Year's #Goals

IT'S 2016!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Yeah and that's about as far as the excitement goes.) 

Okay, really though, we've never really been 'big' on the whole New Year's hype thing, to us it's really just another day, but we do also thing it's a great reminder for all of us to look back and see how far we've come, appreciate the things that have been done for us and set ourselves goals for the future (not just the new year) based on the things we've learned~ so that's what we're going to do in this post :3 

~ 2015 Recap ~ 

Personal Experiences & Growth

2015 has been without a doubt, one of the craziest years of our lives, and we mean that in both the best and worst ways possible. Starting from the beginning, Christmas 2014 and New Year's Day 2015 where the first winter we've ever spend away from our family, at that's because we were on the other side of the world in South Korea on our year abroad. 

Our friends from Somang International Church in Korea

Though we fell seriously ill in early January and even had to leave Korea earlier than expected because of this, the time we spent in Korea ended up being the best 8 months of our lives, and those 4 months we were ill were actually the period of time we had the most fun. We went on an MT/OT 3-day 2-night trip with all our friends from the CNBU Global Forum 2015 and we made lots of friends we're sure will be waiting to welcome us when we return to Korea. 

This is also the time in which we traveled all over Korea and within Seoul, we tried on Hanbok for the first time, we met and fell in love with our friends from Somang International Church, we fulfilled our 8 year long dream of going to Japan (which was also our first holiday alone) and we met up with a friend we hadn't seen since 2010! We had so many new experiences and opportunities presented to us and it was also during this time that we finally confirmed our dream of wanting to live in South Korea, working full time as YouTubers in the future. 


<-- Wearing Hanbok with our CNBU friends

Baby Elijah with our beautiful cousin & her husband

On top of that, after coming back from Korea we changed universities and we even just got back from a massive family holiday to Dubai with our entire mother's side of the family. This holiday was a big deal for us because our family had been planning it for 2 years (and actually intended to go last year without us) but also because our mother turned 49 while her younger brother and his wife both hit 40! Not only that, a couple of weeks before the holiday our eldest cousin on our mother's side also gave birth to her first child, our very first Nephew, Elijah! 

Hanzel looking like a creeper amongst the pretty girls
in our class after learning traditional Korean drumming

From start to finish this year has been full of nothing but new experiences and milestones but of course, it wasn't all a walk in the park. We've been very ill for a large majority of this year, and it even got to the point where it affected our studies and forced us not only to leave Korea but to change universities if we wished to continue our study of the Korean language. Spring and Summer were a very hard time for us, we weren't depressed but we were miserable, we cried a lot and we were seriously scared that come September we wouldn't have a course or university to go back to. However, by God's grace we were able to secure a place in a school a lot closer to home meaning even if we did fall ill again, we were with family who could look after us. 

It wasn't always easy and at times we felt helpless, but 2015 has honestly been the best year of our lives so far. 

The Haniverse Successes & Experiences

2015 hasn't just been a great year for us personally either, but online too! The Haniverse has gone through a whirlwind of change and growth and we've been able to experience so much as 'The Han Siblings.'

Harmony with classmates at Seoul Fashion Week, some high
schoolers actually bought us these energy drinks!

Starting off with the most basic things, let's talk about numbers: 

• At the start of this year we had less than 3000 views total, but now we have over 34,000 views on our YouTube channel, and 360+ subscribers. And our most viewed YouTube videos have over 7,000 views each.
• We actually opened this blogger on New Year's day last year and since then we'll had over 8,000 individual hits, with our most popular post reaching almost 700 views! 
• Just a couple of days ago, we also opened our own official website, which has already had over 400 unique visitors! 
• Also, although we didn't take them on, we were offered 4 sponsorships this year via our YouTube channel and even contacted by a MCN

But numbers aside, our YouTube channel has allowed/driven us to experience so many things this year: 

• We not only attended but also did interviews (in Korean!) at Seoul Fashion Week 
• We were also featured on a couple of fashion blogs thanks to this too
• We also attended London Fashion Week after returning to England
• We went to a Korean Culture Festival in Central London and saw f(x) live and our vlog of the event had a great reaction from our Korean viewers
• Harmony met Shironuri Artist, Minori at a Japanese Culture Convention and made a great personal discovery about her style 

Not to mention we've stepped so far out of our comfort zone in terms of going out to record and vlogging in public while looking like a pair of absolutely weirdos; something we would have struggled with at the start of last year.

We know that in comparison to some of the big YouTubers out there (and even some of our friends with their own channels) our achievements may look minuscule, but to us they're little victories that we really cherish and appreciate; every like, every share, every comment means the world to us, and we hope that as we improve and expand, we never forget that. 

:: Goals For 2016 ::

As we've said before we're not very big on things like New Year's resolutions, but we do have a bunch of things we hope to achieve in 2016 and the near future. 

Since we've decided we want to make YouTube our full time career now, its a given that a majority of our aims are going to be centered around our channel and the rest of the Haniverse. 

First things first is our consistency: we know this is where we really fall short especially on our channel; our schedule is always changing, we're always falling ill, we're still students and sometimes, we're just plain lazy. We don't know if it'll be realistic for us to commit to a video a week just yet, especially since the year is starting of pretty busy already but we do want to try and hit a goal of 4-5 videos every months, which will be a whooping 48 videos in the next year! Not just that, we'll also do our best to put out at least 1 blog post a week and 3-5 diary entries on our website (depending on how eventful our week has been.) Hopefully by the end of the year, we'll have a consistent upload schedule set in place.

Also, in terms of content, we want to give a lot more variation! At the moment our channel is very Harmony-heavy and there's very little Hanzel on there, but we want to try and even things out as much as possible - this is for you, that 21% male following! Furthermore, we want our channel to have a lot more content revolving around fashion, DIY and more tutorials; reviews are great and all but we want to show you guys more than just our opinions. At the moment we have a schedule put together for January & February and we have a couple of series we want to start on our channel or revamp on our blog, so those are definitely things to look out for too! 

And of course, one of our biggest goals for the next year is you guys! We want to connect more with you and our website is the first step to us doing that, but we'd also like to grown The Han Clan and should fate allow it, even meet one or two of you at events and such~ 

The last wish we have is something we're a little apprehensive about saying just yet, but should funds and time allow it, we'd like to start selling our own apparel! And no, we don't mean mass produced T-shirt with our name and brand logo printed on it, but opening up a small web store with our own original, genuine designs that are handmade to order. This one is a bit of a far fetched dream at the moment considering we still have school and we're going into our final year by the end of this year, but its something we've got in mind that we'd at the very least like to start setting up for~ it's the kind of thing that takes years of planning so we may online start selling small handmade accessories and such by the end of the year, but we'll give you more details on that as time goes on! 

Whole class at Traditional Korean Drumming lessons

On a more personal level, one big we want to work on is our health. (Shocker!) No but really, one thing that's REALLY held us back this year and in recent years has been our constantly poor state of health, and we've started to realise that we can not go on like this: something needs to be done about it. A new public gym is opening up in our area very soon so we're going to try and make it a point to go there once or twice a month, as well as exercising at home and going for a run once every two weeks. We also want to make a change to our repetitive and un-nutritious diet, hopefully resulting in better health and the complete elimination of our IBS by the end of the year! 

And finally, we also plan to stay on top of our school work while keeping stress levels to a minimum. We're not too fond of university but we do love learning Korean so we want to put our all into this last year and a half. Hopefully this year will be a smooth transition into our final year and we can graduate without any problems in summer 2017! 

Taken around this time last year as we were walking down our local street in Korea... man, we miss this view every night

In short, we're not really hoping for anything 'new' so to speak in 2016, but that the things we have and are doing now will only continue to get better, and of course, we wish the same for you guys too. You might only hear us talk about numbers and views, but we do make it a point to remember there are people behind those figures and we do recognize names when you guys comment and share our stuff. You guys are the driving force that keeps us going and knowing there's people out there who connect with these two weirdos uploading content from their bedroom in London really does mean a lot to us; dare we say it, it's cliche but we love you guys <3

So here's to all of us and a 2016 that's full of better things to come! 

Happy New Year, it's gonna be a good one~ <3 

Lots of love, The Han Siblings. \(n_n)(^o^)/~ 


P.S. And also, to everyone who made 2015 the great year it was: Thank You <3