The beginning of the end

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place...like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and place, because you'll never be this way again." -Azar Nafisi

My fast-approaching departure from Korea is something I've been attempting to write about for quite some time now, but I haven't quite been able to finish. In many ways, it just feels impossible to articulate the huge range of emotions I feel. There's such a bitter sting that I feel whenever I think about leaving Korea that it makes me want to ignore it and pretend it's not really coming.

However, as much as I want to pretend it isn't happening, it is, and Thursday was the first real wake-up call I had, as I had my last day at one of my elementary schools. While I had a huge variety of work situations this year, most of which made me crazy, my Thursday school was the light of my week. It took me over an hour on the bus to get there, but the commute was always worth it. This school was so far out in the countryside that I always felt like I was going back to an older Korea--a Korea before K-pop, plastic surgery, and the neon city lights took over. It was peaceful and calm, and I spent most of my commutes there listening to music and looking out the windows at the jagged mountains and green rice fields. There could be worse ways to start the day.

Some of the views from today's drive. Unfortunately the camera on my phone is crap. Everything looks way more impressive in person!

This country charm was part of why I loved this school, but the main reason was of course the students. Whenever I arrived at school the students always greeted me with enthusiastic hellos and high-fives. Whenever they were in class they were excited to learn and worked hard. When I left they always seemed to notice and yelled out "Goodbye teacher!" from where ever they were, even if it meant sticking their heads out their classroom windows. It's pretty hard not to love kids like that.

I adored these children, even if communicating with them was sometimes difficult. The hardest part of Thursday was not being able to really communicate to them how I felt. All I could do was tell them the day I was going to America and that a new teacher was going to come soon. There is so much more I wanted to say to them, but as is often the problem in Korea, I felt so limited by language.

In an attempt to remember as many of these students as possible, I took pictures with each class. Since I din't have a co-teacher, I had to use the timer on my camera, and the results clearly show that ten seconds is far too long for kids to stay still. After I finished taking pictures with sixth grade, they started giving me pieces of paper and asking me to sign it. I was at first confused and asked if they meant they wanted me to sign my name, and yep...that was what they wanted. So that's how I finished my last class at this school--by giving my autograph to a group of five sixth graders.

3rd grade. This boy grabbed my arms and wouldn't let them go. So cute.

The boys couldn't seem to get the hang of standing still.

4th grade. Only two students in this class!

5th grade. I love these boys! They made me laugh every single week. I will miss them terribly!

6th grade. 6th grade is typically a difficult grade o teach, but I adore these kids. They are so sweet and enthusiastic about learning. I will miss them terribly.

After my last class it was time for lunch, and on my way down one of the teachers stopped to talk to me about how it was my last day, which resulted in me trying to fight back tears throughout my whole meal.

It was a weird moment for me because I had such a vivid flashback to when I was still brand new to Korea. I remember feeling so overwhelmed when I first started to teach at the high school, and one day in particular I couldn't figure out what my co-teacher expected of me. I felt so overwhelmed and so far from home, that I remember trying my very hardest not to burst into tears in the lunch room. On Thursday I couldn't help but think of how much has changed between these two occasions. I somehow became so comfortable here--so much so, that now I can barely stand the thought of leaving.

After lunch the principal said he wanted me to go see him because he had a present for me. He gave me a handmade ceramic cup, which I unfortunately could barely even say thank you for because by this point in the day I had pretty much lost my voice. I did my best to bow and smile and hoped that that alone could convey my gratitude.

The weird thing about thinking about leaving Korea is thinking of Korea as something that will be in the past, to think of this as a closed chapter in my life. It's especially difficult for me to think about leaving Korea and not being able to easily come back. After I graduated college I took a number of random trip out to that area just because I felt a certain nostalgia for that time in my life. Leaving Korea is completely different because I know that once I leave, I'm unlikely to come back for quite some time. On top of that, I'm not sure when I will see some of these friends again--many of them I will likely never see again since we live in so many different parts of the world.

I've said it before, but when you're living abroad your friends become everything. It's a different kind of friendship because your friends are not only just the people you drink with on weekends, they're your total support system, your family during the holidays, and the people you share incredible and sometimes strange experiences with. It's overwhelming to think about leaving all of that behind.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to see my friends and family back home, but that doesn't necessarily make it any easier to leave. I appreciate that everyone back home wants to ask how I feel about coming home and is curious about what I'll be doing next, but in complete honesty, it's not something I'm eager to talk about. Being asked how I feel or what I'm planning on doing next feels a bit like salt in the wound when I don't honestly know the answer myself. I can't completely describe how I feel about these past two years coming to an end, and as for what comes next, there's absolutely no way of knowing until once I'm back and able to apply for new jobs. My whole experience in Korea has been more than I ever could have imagined, and I can't put into words how much I will miss not only this place, but this period of my life in general.

This next month is going to be an emotionally exhausting one, but the adventures aren't quite over yet.

For those of you keeping tack....

I have 54 days left in my contract.

In that time I will:
--have two friends from home visit Korea.
--teach three (maybe four) English camps.
--visit the DMZ
--travel to Vietnam
--pack up the remainder of my apartment

There's a lot that's going to happen in these two months. Too many emotions to count.

MERS in Korea

Over the past month or so, there's been one thing on every Korean's mind. If you haven't heard yet, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) has infected 182 people in Korea since the end of May, and has killed 33 people.  This has induced widespread fear throughout the country, and has caused many people to avoid leaving their houses as much as possible.

When I first heard about MERS from my students and co-workers I was naturally worried. However, once I learned more about the virus, I realized there wasn't quite such a need to panic. The spread of MERS has been contained to hospitals, medical workers, and friends and families who have had contact with the infected people.  MERS isn't airborne, and unless you're in close contact with an infected person, you're probably not going to become infected yourself. Out of the people who have died, nearly all of them were elderly or had pre-existing illnesses. Thousands of people have been quarantined in the aftermath of the outbreak, and legitimate questions about the hospital practices in Korea have surfaced.  The handling of the outbreak in the beginning was far from sufficient, which is why it spread as much as it did. People are angry, and rightfully so. 

However, although the World Health Organization has repeatedly said that life should continue as normal, people aren't really listening to this advice at all. Tourism has plummeted, which has done tremendous damage to the economy. Although, where the overall economy has taken a hit with the outbreak of MERS, the sales of face masks have gone through the roof.  Are the face masks really effective? I'm not really sure, but I think when people wear them they at least feel like they're doing something to prevent this virus.

Immediately following the initial outbreak, thousands of schools were closed, another measure which experts said wasn't necessary. Although school was still in session for us, every morning every person at school has to have their temperatures taken and recorded before doing anything else. There have also been other noticeable changes in school, such as the fact that there is now always soap in the bathrooms. Yes, believe it or not, before this outbreak there was often no soap in the bathrooms at school, which is quite gross when you think about it in any context, but especially so when you think about it in an elementary school, where kids are all over the place. Of course, the soap in the bathroom is almost always bar soap, which makes me crazy...because seriously, what good does that do? Let's all touch the same bar of soap after using the bathroom...that makes sense.  Regardless, it's progress I suppose, and there has also been an increase in hand sanitizer throughout the schools. I pretty much never saw hand sanitizer in Korea before MERS, but suddenly there is a bottle in every classroom. One of my schools even has a new machine which has a motion detector to dispense the hand sanitizer. 

While I welcome the handwashing and increased supply of hand sanitizer, MERS has also caused most school activities to be canceled. School field trips and sporting competitions have been cancelled because of MERS, and my teacher trip, which was scheduled for a few weekends ago, was also cancelled.  Most upsetting to me though was the fact that my scheduled tour to the DMZ was cancelled two weekends ago as well.  I really can't figure out why they cancelled this trip, given the fact that every health professional was saying life should go on as normal, but c'est la vie. 

The outbreak of MERS is clearly something we should be attentive to and proactive about preventing, but I can't tell you how many coworkers have asked me "Aren't your afraid because of MERS?"  My answer is no.  I'm not afraid of MERS.  The media has run with this story, and I feel people are going overboard just to for a false sense of being proactive.  Over 10 million people live in Seoul.  It's an incredibly dense city, yet even though it was the center of the outbreak, only 182 people in the ENTIRE country have been diagnosed since the end of May.  Call me crazy, but I think I'll be ok.

**I actually originally wrote this post well over a week ago, but have just gotten around to finishing it now. Over the past week things seem to have calmed down a bit, as there haven't been many new cases emerging. However, the daily temperature checks are still in place, and I'm pretty sure my coworkers would still freak out if I told them I went to Seoul (which I did this last weekend, but they don't need to know I went into "dangerous" MERS territory). This whole MERS outbreak has certainly made my last few months in Korea  a bit more unpredictable. 

A Trip to Boseong and Suncheon: Part II

We started our second day with some breakfast, then we made our first stop at Suncheon Bay Garden. This was the site of a world expo in 2013, which was meant to display different types of gardens from all around the world. This ended up being a much larger park than we had expected, and we spent a few hours walking around and seeing different kinds of gardens that were on display.

I love these flowers!

Our next stop was Suncheon Bay Ecological Park. These wetlands are covered with reeds, which at this time of year are green, but apparently turn red in the fall.  I wasn't necessarily expecting to be that impressed with the wetlands, but I was happily surprised at how amazingly beautiful it was.  The reeds were green as could be and went on and one as far as we could see. As the wind blew, the reeds swayed and created a sound as relaxing as the ocean coming up to shore.

There's just no way to capture the experience of standing in the midst of all this green for as far as the eye can see. 

/Beautiful mountains.

As we looked down at the ground, we also could see lots of little crabs and other critters in the mud below us.

This was an amazing place to walk around, but eventually we finished and by this point we were starving, so we knew we had to find food quickly.  We ended up driving back more towards the center of town, where we stopped and ate some more delicious food. I'm not sure why I didn't take any pictures of my lunch (maybe I was really just that hungry), but I had hands down the best naengmyeon (cold noodles) I've had yet.  

We all felt better after eating lunch, so we were on to our next and final stop, Seonamsa Temple. This temple was really quiet and peaceful, and we were lucky that there was almost no one else around.  Although I've seen a ton of temples in Korea by now, this one was a little different because the paint was really worn off.  I'm not sure if there's a reason why this temple isn't as restored as the others I've seen, but it was an interesting difference. 

By this point it was already around 6:00--another day that had seemed to fly by. We got on the road since we had a four hour drive back home. We got back around 10:00, at which point I scrambled to get myself ready for school the next day. I was completely exhausted on Monday, but it was worth it to see this beautiful part of Korea. I'm so thankful that Paul was able to drive, because there's no way we would have been able to see so many things in this short amount of time if we had had to rely on public transportation. Overall, another successful weekend in Korea with yet another thing checked off of the bucket list.