Leaving Korea

Today, after a delightful Thursday farewell early evening of frisbee game, dinner with some of our favorite people, and a Long Island Ice Tea for the road, we packed up our lives (again). Of course, there were the usual speed-bumps to the moving out process.

For example, yesterday, John and I went to the post office to ship our first box of stuff home. The two of  us carried the box together, and then I left John to fill out the forms and pay. Turns out the box was too heavy. It wasn't until John had carried the box by himself all the way home, and did the conversion from grams to pounds, that he realized we were less than a pound over. Argggg...

So today we went back to the post office (with a few less pounds in the box) only to be told by a different employee that the box we had was too big. Arggg...Thankfully, we bought two smaller boxes, donated the too big box back to the post office, and proceeded to bring 5 more small boxes to the post office over the course of the day. We're shipping our belongings via boat, so we'll likely be seeing our stuff again in 2-3 months. Cross your fingers! I did have to clarify with the employee that "United States" means USA, not United Kingdom.

So tonight is our last night in Korea. Tomorrow we catch the 6:30 AM train to Seoul, and then fly from Seoul to Bangkok, Thailand to begin our 6 week, "second honeymoon". We like to call this year our "extended working honeymoon." We're super excited to meet up with our friends Greg and Cristin who we'll be traveling with in Thailand, and then we'll continue on to Laos and Vietnam. I'll do my best to update the blog along the way, but no promises.

My co-worker Christina and my last lunch.

John packing up.

Our last home cooked dinner. Leftovers! Mashed potato/brown rice/parsley/onion "burgers" and popcorn. 

One Year Ago

One year ago we were leaving the Bay Area to come to South Korea. As our time here winds down we are trying to be present for everything here (last trip to a certain neighborhood, last Sunday ultimate pick-up, last school lunch). There are absolutely things that I will miss but it also feels like the right time to leave. We are both looking forward to *hopefully returning to school in the fall and as our time winds down here, I'm beginning to day dream more about that (and our 6 week vacation). I'll start to hear back from schools in March. No word yet for me.

Sometimes, living here, it has easy to get bogged down in the small difficulties of navigating life in a foreign country. For example, just this week, getting our visa extended for 9 days involved 2 days, 3 hours of waiting, and about 3 hours total on public transit, buying what I presumed were plain sesame seeds only to discover they are mixed with dried fish, or transferring money home when your computer was just wiped clean.

However, it has been fun looking through all our photos, remembering the trips, the friends, and the adventures.  Thankfully, these last couple of weeks we've also managed to squeeze in a few more fun things before leaving. Here are a few photos.

January 28 we had our 1 year wedding anniversary. Here we are in our apartment holding a photo of us taken on our wedding day. Thanks Pinterest for the idea!

To celebrate our anniversary we took a short evening cruise around the beach.

Busan from the ocean, a view we had not seen before.

Going underneath the bridge.

The bridge.

It's snowed a handful of times. This was one of the less dramatic times, but one of the times we had a camera.

There was one mountain on our "to climb list", so we went last weekend, but took a wrong turn. We went halfway up, and then promptly, came back down. Oh well. I still think it counts.

A sign demonstrating ways forest fires can start.

But of course there were the obligatory exercise parks sprinkled along the base of the mountain, and the trail.

A year ago today.

One year ago.

2012

Happy New Year everyone. Every day it seems John and I are remarking that we have no idea what next year will bring. Where will we be living? Will we be in school? Will we be working? Who knows. I think what's even weirder though is knowing that by the time we return in mid April, many of those questions will be answered. Now that's crazy!

Here are John and I before we left our apartment on New Years Eve. I deemed the theme "crowns" for the evening.

The kings of the evening with their variety of crowns.

School Festival Part 2

The second day of the school festival was filled with performances. In the morning was the talent show broken up into two categories: dance and song. In the afternoon the school orchestra performed, a few student debuted the films they made, 2 plays were performed (one in English and one in Korean), and of course the dance club performed K-Pop dance routines. These kids were amazing. I was particularly impressed by the dance routines. If I leave without having learned a K-Pop dance routine I will have failed. Here are a few photos.

If you can't tell that's cookie monster on their shirts.

This is one of my boys classes who formed a band. They are performing a rock version of, "All I Want for Christmas is You."

Yep. There were smoke machines and machines that shot fireballs into the air.

If you are guessing that the boy on the right does not have any pants on, you are correct. He was wearing a poncho that he designed himself. He wants to be a fashion designer when he grows up and he is the school darling, everyone adores him. The guy with the guitar, didn't actually play it, it was a prop. This is the singing portion of the day, and they are performing "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga.

Here is our school orchestra performing. 

School Festival Part 1

My students have been preparing all year for the school festival which was this past Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday was the carnival day in the gymnasium. I got my face painted, had a staring contest with a student (I won), had my fortune told, bought a pair of socks at the "flea market", and won a white-out pen. Here are a few photos from Wednesday, I'll post more from Thursday later. Get excited, Thursday was mostly K-Pop dance routine photos.

Our school gymnasium.

This is the bookmark decorating station. I decorated a bee bookmark for John. Behind the student is the "cocktail bar". The students running the booth made a concoction of blue Powerade and Coke. Not that tasty.

These are two of my students posing as Harry Potter and Hermione (they made the props).

Here is one of my students reading my palm. 

One of my students and me.

This was the throw darts at a balloon game and win a prize. However instead of darts we threw mechanical pencils. 

The chemistry lab was transformed! We had the opportunity to make fake snow and eat ice pops, frozen in front of us using dry ice.

This is a student explaining to me how to dunk my fingers in ethanol and then  light my hand on fire, and light the candles, then put my hand out in water. It was scary, but I did it.

Students melted sugar to create lollipops and then rolled the lollipops in sugar.

The Holidays

It was hard to be away from friends and family this last holiday weekend, but through the wonders of international mail and Skype we were able to connect to folks back home.

As any good holiday should be celebrated, we were able to eat good food and spend time with great people. Here are a smattering of photos from the last few days.

We visited a new local Korean bar. You'll notice the festive bar snacks: dried fish, sweetened dried green beans, and sweet corn chips.

Bowling. Not really that different.

We celebrated Hanukkah with latkes and matzo ball soup.

We made caramel popcorn.

Christmas eve we went to a friends house for a potluck.

And of course after the potluck we headed around the corner for some traditional Christmas eve karaoke.

This is John and I knocking Feliz Navidad out of the park.

These types of claw machines are everywhere. Up until Christmas the stuffed animals had eluded us, but, thanks to a Christmas miracle, we won a tiny stuffed frog!

Thanksgiving

Instead of heading to the local Sea Farerers club for a traditional Thanksgiving buffet, which we thought would offer an impersonal, poor imitation of Thanksgiving, we hosted a non-traditional, but very thankful meal at our house the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We re-arranged our house in order to fit our ten guests but everyone was sitting, and no one was on the floor! We made lots of tasty treats with an autumnal theme, though not necessarily "Thanksgiving".  Below is our menu from the night and a couple photos.

Drinks
Apple juice, pear juice, cinnamon juice and soju cocktail
wine! (thanks everyone)

Appetizers
red lentil roasted squash dip
roasted garlic and tomato dip
roasted red pepper hummus
crackers/bread/carrots

Main
roasted broccoli, pumpkin seed, green olive salad
carrot, apple, almond, tofu salad (thanks Craig!)
cream cheese mashed potatoes (thanks Christina!)
chickpea burgers with sweet potato and kale
creamed onions

Dessert
pumpkin cake
banana bread ice-cream (homemade by James, dairy free!)

Everyone gathered round.

Our friends Christina and Brittany. You can see the Christmas tree that I just put up, left behind by the previous tenants.