I took these pictures as I left school today. The one on the right was my view as I walked out of the building. I'm not a fan of the fact that it's getting dark so early these days, but it's hard to be upset with a beautiful sunset and mountains in the distance.
Today was a little stressful, as many Mondays are for me because it's my first day with a new batch of lessons. I also started speaking tests for the second grade girls today, so I had to get everything ready for that as well. Of course my procrastinating self was still getting things together at the last minute (which is quite frankly pathetic because I had tons of deskwarming time last week).
Despite the somewhat hectic nature of Mondays, as I left school a group of boys yelled my name and told me to have a good night. I told them to have fun on their trip (1st grade students are going on a trip to Jeju Island for the rest of the week...needless to say, I'm jealous). Regardless, the boys asked why I wasn't coming and told me they would take lost of pictures and bring me back a present.
As I continued to walk down the hill I saw girls and talked to them briefly about the chilly weather.
I continued to walk further, and I couldn't help but think, "Man, I really love these kids."
They don't understand what I'm saying half the time (ok, maybe only a quarter of the time), but these kids are really some of the sweetest students I'll ever get to work with. I don't even know their names (for the most part), but I've been here long enough that I know their faces and their personalities. As cliche as it sounds, these kids make my days awesome and make me glad I'm in Korea.
Homesickness (but still not culture shock) has been hitting me in some ways recently. Not that I'm unhappy to be here, but I'm realizing that it will still be 9 months before I am home again. That's starting to feel like a long time. My time here has been great, but anyway you look at it, 9 months is a long time to go without seeing friends and family, dancing, driving my car, etc.
My life in America seems like it's in another dimension. I know I graduated, I know I taught all of last year, I know I have friends and family on the other side of the world, but none of that stuff feels real to me anymore, and I think that the strangest part of homesickness for me. All of the things that I identified with are still there, but I have no way of being anywhere near them. It also probably doesn't help that my nieces, best friend, and sister all have birthdays this week, so that's probably not helping with the whole "feeling really distant" thing.
The biggest realization I've come to is that I can miss home and still be happy. I always thought of homesickness as being that miserable point where you just want to pack your bags and get on the next plane home. What I've come to realize is that there's a difference. You can be miss home but simultaneously have no desire to move back home and go back to your former life.
And besides, if I ever need a reminder of why my life is so awesome right now all I have to do is take a walk through the hallway at school and I'll find plenty of "hellos" and smiling faces to remind me of why moving my life to the other side of the world was the best decision I ever made.
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