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.