Goodnight, Jeomchon.

This has been one of the craziest and most overwhelming weeks of my life. After I got back from Vietnam I got a job interview, then I got a job...then I changed my flight to an earlier date, finished packing my things, completed paperwork, and said goodbye to many important people and my life in Korea.

I am exhausted in every sense of the word.

It's time to leave Korea. I know it's time to move on, but that doesn't make it any easier to leave. My life will never be this way ever again, and that's something that sits heavily with me. There are no words to describe what these past two years have meant to me, or how much it breaks my heart to close this chapter.

I never predicted that life would take me here, but I'm so immensely thankful that it did.

"I am not the same having seen the moon on the other side of the world."--Mary Anne Radmacher

The Christmas Season

It's hard to believe that Christmas has already come and gone.  The holidays really snuck up on me this year and overall if just didn't quite feel all that Christmas-y for me this time around. Last year we had lots of Christmas movie nights in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and maybe we should have put in more of an effort to do the same this year, but I think it just got kind of crazy for all of us in town in the weeks before Christmas.

The weekend before Christmas we all had to spend the entire Saturday at the Mungyeong English play competition that all of our schools were competing in.  The whole English play ordeal was pretty much a terrible experience for me--mostly due to the fact that my coteacher dictated how I had to write the play, then did not help me whatsoever with ANYTHING after that point.  I did the entire thing by myself, which is in no way how it's supposed to be.  The whole thing was a big source of frustration for me because the kids and I put in a ton of time to practice, but because he basically didn't care, the end result was noticeably way worse than what the other schools did.  In a lot of ways, I felt like I was set up to fail with a lot of the things that went on, which not only made me upset for the time I wasted trying to work on the play, but also because the kids spent so much of their time practicing and trying to learn their lines, which is obviously not that easy for fifth and sixth graders to do in a language that isn't even their native language.

Anway, I was a judge the day of the competition, meaning that I had to be there not just for the plays the elementary school kids did, but also for the speeches that the high schoolers and middle schoolders did.  Needless to say, this was a VERY long day for me, and on Tuesday I had to go and judge the finals for the competition.  I was happy I got asked to judge because it meant I got to make a little extra money, but I was less impressed with the strong inclination I have that our scores didn't actually matter. I don't want to say too much, but in the end we had a suspicion that we were asked to judge to make it appear more fair.  The whole speech and play competition thing bothered me only many other levels as well, but I will spare you all with the details because I won't want to get to negative and rant-y.Overall I'm just happy that I won't ever have to do this whole thing again.

Thankfully, all of the play madness was over by Tuesday, which was a big relief for all of Jeomchon's NETs.  Wednesday was Christmas Eve day, which is pretty much just an ordinary day in Korea.  However, in the elementary schools it was the last day of the semester, meaning that classes finished by 12:30 and then all of the teachers went to a restaurant for lunch.  Once we got back to school we had a meeting and some time later teaches slowly started to leave school early.  Now, typically when teachers leave I wait for someone to tell me to go home because technically according to our contracts we are supposed to stay at school the whole time.  However, many times the principal or vice principal will tell us to go home and then it's ok.  Since I don't want to get in trouble and assume anything, I will usually just sit there and wait for someone to give me the okay.

Surely at my old school last year they would have told me to go home right away, so I guess this set my expectations a little too high.  Around 3:30 it was only me and the other Korean English teacher (who only comes to that school once a week) left in the teacher's room.  She looked at me and said "did everyone else go home?!"  At which point I replied by saying that I had no idea because I never have any idea of what's happening at that school.  She nodded in complete agreement and we continued to talk for some time, which was nice because I got some interesting insight about how this school compares to others she works at (the kids are way less motivated to learn) and about the play situation (my CT told her he had helped me the whole time....which made her feel bad because she would have helped me if she had known the reality of the situation).

Needless to say, we were both not too happy about being left in the dark and being the only ones left at school, so when 4:20 came around I was more than ready to get out of there.  It was Christmas Eve, but it didn't feel the least bit like Christmas.

Luckily, we had a party planned here in Jeomchon that night.  We were lucky to be joined by not just the people in Jeomchon, but also some friends from the neighboring towns of Sangju and Yeochon. It was similar to the secret Santa type thing we did last year--we all got assigned a person, bought a present for them,then after they opened their present they had to guess who their secret Santa was.  The night was absolutely lovely, and finally made it feel like Christmas for me.

One of our friends who left in August sent us presents.  Nice to know we aren't forgotten by those who left us!

America, Korea, South Africa, and Scotland

Jeomchon's finest ladies

Country count: 7 South Africans, 1 Australian, 2 Canadians, 5 Americans, 1 Englishman, 1 Scot, and 1 Korean.
So lucky to have so many friends from all around the world to be my family away from home.

 We really had a great night, but I tried not too stay out too late because the next morning we were having another gathering at my place.  I was lucky enough to catch a few friends on skype before I went to bed, but it did mean that I didn't get a ton of sleep before waking up for church in the morning.

It was tough to get out of bed in the morning, but I made it to church then quickly walked home after to get my place ready for Christmas lunch.  We had a small gathering Christmas day, but still ended up having a ton of really great food.

After we ate lunch, it was time for some movies.  We spent the afternoon and evening watching Christmas movies (and The Interview, of course), drinking wine, and relaxing.

Our celebration didn't last too late though because some of us had English camp the next day.  

The day after Christmas I had a full day of camp, meaning that I taught fifth and sixth grade for four periods, first and second grade for two periods, and third and fourth grade for two periods.  I love many things about Korea, but they really need to learn to celebrate Christmas for more than one day.  I won't lie, having a full day of camp right after Christmas was ROUGH, but I am lucky that I am done with my camps now.  A lot of people are stuck with weeks of camp this year, so I'm definitely quite lucky in that department.  

Now it's on to a few weeks of deskwarming before I leave on my vacation on January 12th!  

So there you have it, folks! That was how I spent my second and final Christmas in Korea.  Although I wish I could be home to celebrate with my family, I am again reminded of how amazingly lucky I am to have friends who feel like family here in Korea.  

God willing I will be back home for Christmas next year, but I will surely always remember my Korean Christmases fondly.  If I couldn't be with my family at home these past two years, there is no better group of people I could have asked for to be my family away from home.  

A second Korean Thanksgiving

 As you all know, this past Thursday was Thanksgiving.  While last year this was the first time I encountered real homesickness, this year was a pretty different experience.   It’s not that I didn't want to be home for Thanksgiving, because of course I did.  However, I remember last year I had a full day of classes on Thanksgiving Day.  In a number of those classes I was teaching my students about Thanksgiving, which pushed me to the brink of tears throughout the day. 

This year, I wanted to be home, but I was OK with being here.  This year just felt more like “Oh yeah, this is just how it goes.  Everyone at home will be filling facebook and Instagram with pictures of food that I can’t have…but that’s OK. That’s not my life right now.”

Other expats have told me it’s usually this way—your first time away from the holidays is the hardest.  While it’s never exactly the best part of living abroad, it does get easier.

My Thanksgiving Day, or just Thursday, as it’s called in Korea, was just another regular day.  Luckily, Thursdays are my favorite day of the week because I go to my VERY rural school where the classes are small (I teach a total of 15 kids between four classes), no CTs bother me, and I get to go home early.  Since I get to go home early and I knew I would be a little bummed about being away on Thanksgiving, I rewarded myself for completing the day by putting up my Christmas tree when I got home.  I've been itching to put up my Christmas tree for some time now, but I've made myself wait until Thanksgiving, even if my non-American friends think this is the strangest thing.  A Canadian teacher in town was telling me that in Canada once Halloween is over it’s officially Christmas season.  I guess this is kind of true in America too, but there are still plenty of people like myself who hold off on starting the Christmas season until after Thanksgiving.  Nonetheless, although it’s obvious, I guess it never occurred to me that the whole “Your Christmas tree cannot go up until after Thanksgiving” thing is totally an American concept.

After my tree was up, I went to run some errands around town when I bumped into one of my friends.  He decided to join me as I did the rest of my errands, and on our way to Homeplus, we ran into another friend.  Then, once in Homeplus we saw another friend….and then another.  Errands are always more exciting when you have friends there too. 

To cap the night off I had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner of….kimbap.  Ok, so this is nothing special, but that’s because the real Thanksgiving celebration was planned for the next day.  When you have a full day of work on Thursday and another full day of work on Friday, it’s a bit too much to have a big get together on actual Thanksgiving, so Friday it was!

My Thanksgiving dinner. I do love kimbap!

For our Thanksgiving celebration, we invited over everyone in Jeomchon, as well as some of our friends from the next town over.  The dinner was held at my place since I have a larger apartment then almost everyone else in town.  I had some serious doubts about how we were going to fit everyone as all of the “maybe” people began to confirm that they were in fact coming, but it ended up working wonderfully.  We moved my kitchen table into my bedroom to be the food table and everyone brought over their Korean floor tables for us to sit at. 

My bedroom became the food room.

And we all squished into my living room!

We even had pumpkin pie!

It was a lovely night, that truly had that warm holiday feel to it.  Our food wasn't the most traditional, but we did have some of the essentials—stuffing, mashed potatoes, rolls, and even apple and pumpkin pie. 

This was the first time that we've had such a big get-together in town since all of the farewell parties in August.  Things have been really different in Jeomchon since so many people left, but it was really comforting to have everyone together again. 

Of course, Thanksgiving is always a time of reflection, and I couldn't help but think about just how lucky I am.  These past 15 months have been filled with unbelievable memories. Although life in Korea can seem so normal at times (especially when my alarm clock goes off in the morning), when I step back I am amazed that this is actually my life—that I've actually been working in Asia for the past 15 months, working and teaching students who don’t even speak the same language as I do.  I've seen and done so many things, with only more to come.  I never would have imagined that life would have brought me here, but I’m so glad it did.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was a combination of 8 Americans, 3 South Africans, 1 Canadian, 1 Irish woman (is that the right way to say that?), 1 Scot,1 Englishman, and 3 Koreans.  That means the total number Americans was less than the number of people from other countries—I highly doubt I’ll ever spend my Thanksgiving this way again. Although I will be excited to be home for Thanksgiving again next year, a part of me will we be missing this eclectic Korea family when I return home. 

Thanks to everyone who has loved and supported me through my time in Korea.  I couldn't be more in awe of your unwavering love through this crazy adventure I’m having.

XO

Sunday evening sunset

Sometimes it's great to travel on the weekends. Other times, it's nice just to stay home and enjoy a beautiful view right from home.

It's Election Season!

It's election season here in Korea.  Local elections will be held in the beginning of June, which means that there are of course the occasional campaign billboards around the city, but by and large the most frequent method of campaigning I've seen has come from these little cards.  Candidates and their supporters can be spotted around town handing out cards at any given time. Here are the cards I've collected over the past few days:

I got the majority of these cards yesterday morning when I went to church.  Every Sunday for the past month or so, the people running for office have been camped outside of the church.  I'm not sure why they think I can vote, but I guess I appreciate the consideration?

I'm interested to see just how big this collection will get by election day.  If only I could understand more Korean, I'd really love to know what kind of campaign promises these people are making...my inner political junkie wants to be able to follow this all better.  I mean after all, those pictures are pretty inspiring, don't you think?

A hidden gem in Jeomchon

Despite the fact that I've been living in Jeomchon for 8 months now, I'm constantly amazed by how much I still don't know.  For example, I had no idea we had places to hike only ten minutes away from our apartment building, but sure enough, we do.  My friend Jen was nice enough to show me the way to a mountain in our neighborhood this morning.

The entrance to Dondal Mountain(돈달산)  is less than ten minutes away from our place, and although it's not the largest mountain, the whole way to the top is pretty much just all stairs.  It's a short hike, but certainly enough to wake your legs up and make you realize that you're pretty out of shape.  Not that I'm out of shape at all.....  ;)

At the top is a great view of Jeomchon. Although it was cloudy this morning, we still had a beautiful sight to see. 

Panoramic view

On our way down we stopped by a temple that is at about the halfway point of the mountain.  There were people in the temple, and we could hear some of the Buddhist chants in progress.  Pretty interesting to hear, and definitely something that you don't typically stumble across when you're hiking back in the US.

On our walk back to our apartment we stopped to look at some of the flowers that are in bloom all over the place.  I absolutely love the fact that there are so many beautiful flowers EVERYWHERE right now, and I especially love that so many of these flowers are purple! Just fantastic.

Beautiful purple flowers everywhere!

I love these trees! Kind of similar looking to the cherry blossoms, but the flowers are different. 

Love these flowers!

Just look at those colors!

Flowers like these are everywhere right now.  I love the way they grow between the rocks.


Overall, I had a great start to my day.  I'll definitely be returning to this mountain again--perhaps with a book on a sunnier and warmer day.  Jeomchon may be small, but I still am discovering new wonderful things all the time. 

The week of the cherry blossoms

Spring announces its arrival in a bold and beautiful way in Korea.  In case the warm temperatures weren't enough to clue you in that spring was here, the cherry blossoms burst onto the scene in way that no one can miss.  Korea's cherry blossoms are famous--you don't have to look far on any tourist information page to see pictures of these flowering trees.  Since I had already seen so many pictures of the cherry blossoms, I had been anxiously awaiting their arrival since the day I stepped off the plane.

When we got back from our trip to Jindo last weekend the blossoms had at last opened.  After a grey, bland winter, the blossoms were a sight for sore eyes. Over the course of this week, I enjoyed picturesque views as I walked around town.  The river right behind my apartment building is lined with cherry blossoms, conveniently making it what is probably the best place in Jeomchon to see the blossoms.  Unfortunately, the river has been torn up for the past few months as the town is redesigning it before it hosts the Wold Military Games in 2015.  I was really hoping that they would finish before the cherry blossoms bloomed, but that wasn't the case.  Although the trees were still beautiful, I'm sure they would have been even better if instead of brown dirt we had green grass and flowing water as a backdrop.

The view from the roof of my apartment building.  The cherry blossoms line the river on both sides. 

The sad state of our river.  Imagine how beautiful it would have been without all that dirt!

My view as I walked to school.  It definitely made the killer hill more enjoyable.

School!

Wednesday afternoon my school attended the small Cherry Blossom festival by the river.  I think I spent the entire two hours taking pictures--especially with students.  It was a fun afternoon, although it did cut into some of my planning time, which I actually desparately needed this week because  I had to write the midterm questions and submit the plan for my summer camp (yes, the summer camp that isn't until JULY!)  But I guess sometimes you just have to forget about work and seize the opportunity to enjoy a beautiful spring day.

Some of the third grade girls. They were my absolutely fantastic second graders last year.  I unfortunately don't get to see them much these days now that they're in third grade!

My second grade boys found my friend on her way home from school and insisted she be in our picture.

Two of my co-teachers!

One of the third grade girls.

My wonderful first grade girls!

Second grade boys

Thursday was the first night I had my night class....and man, I forgot how brutal it is to teach night classes.  As I was sitting at my desk, one of my friends kakaoed me and told me that it was raining, and that with rain and wind the cherry blossoms were going to pass.  I was immediately struck with panic.  They were going to pass already?!  I felt like they had just bloomed.  Although I knew they wouldn't last long, I thought they were going to last longer than that! I hadn't even taken any pictures with my nice camera yet!

I got home from my night class around 9:30 and immediately set out to capture some photos of the blossoms at night.  It actually was quite nice because although the rain had stopped, it was still chilly, and most people stayed in for the night, making it a lot easier to take pictures.

Not a bad view to have literally in your backyard.

I woke up early Friday morning to take some more pictures because I didn't want to worry about all the petals falling off during the day.  I'm actually glad I did because when I went back by the river in the afternoon the blossoms had lost a lot of their petals.

Just beautiful.

As I was walking around town today, I noticed that most of the trees now have green leaves poking out.  The cherry blossoms were really beautiful, but I am saddened by the fact that they didn't last longer.  Although, I suppose that it the way with many of the truly beautiful experiences in life--they never last long, and in many ways it's what makes us appreciate them more.

As I approach my 8 month mark in Korea, the short presence of the cherry blossoms reminded me that my time here is also fleeting.  Even if I stay another year, many of the people who have made this year what it is won't be here.  I'll have a different job, and so many aspects of this experience will be different.  I'm trying to stay present-minded, but I don't want to lose sight of the fact that my life here won't last forever.  This is truly a unique and limited period in my life, and although at times I wish it could last forever, time will eventually bring it to an end.

Until then, I sure have a lot to do. The best is yet to come.

XOXO