Snow.

Today it snowed. Like, the magical, beautiful kind. It was the third time I've seen this kind of snow in Korea.

Generally I've had a pretty bad attitude about winter here. We came here almost exactly a year ago (February 16th is our Koreanniversary), and I remember being so angry in the March, April, and May months because the cold just kept NOT getting warmer. So it's been really, really cold, and I've been counting down the months.

But today Stephen and I were walking to get dinner and I was really enjoying the crunchy fresh snow feel against my super-durable yellow rainboots, and I thought...I am going to miss this time. I'm going to miss the place, definitely the food, my students, the daily conveniences we enjoy here. And I'm happy. I'm really happy, even though it's so unreasonably cold.

But I keep looking forward to the future. Always logging onto my student loan account and re-calculating and re-calculating the amount of time until I'm debt-free. Always crossing the days off on my calendar, yearning for the weekend or vacation or payday or lately the end of our contract, which means a bonus and the beginning of the new, shorter-hours contract. And when that starts, I guess I'll be counting down the days until we go home because there will be a "counting-down-the-days" void to fill.

And speaking of which, that's the plan*. Going home after the next contract. And that's been the big topic of conversation for us. For a while we thought we'd stay three years, maybe even longer. But two years is long enough. No matter how much we like it here, and no matter how easy it is for us to live and work here, this place is not home. And we can't make it our home. Which is sad in some ways. Because we really, really love it here. It's a special place.

Currently I have this fuzzy picture of what going "home" looks like, and I can't really make it out. I have this image of myself sort of cowering with my bachelor's degree in the scary American job market. The principal reason we want to go back is to be close to the people that we love. But all of those people are so spread out. So where do we plant ourselves? And what will we do to sustain ourselves? It's all really, really up in the air. It's scary. It makes me feel small.

So, friends and family: What are your long term goals? Where will you be in a year? Five years? Does anyone know?

Where should we go?

*Stephen wants me to point out that it's a year away and we can't be 100% certain that going home is what's in store for us. So going home after this contract is what we've decided, at least at this point, is what we both want. Ultimately, as with all things in the future...we'll see.

Vacation

I'm sitting on the last day of winter vacation right now. We had talked many months ago about all the opportunities this 10-solid-days-of-no-work would give us. We could go to Cambodia! Thailand! Bali!

...But when I started really counting down the days until Christmas, it wasn't because I wanted travel and excitement. It was because I wanted rest. Lots of it. Sleeping, taking my time with every task, eating a lot, and talking to family.

I'm really glad I've been doing those things.

We had a good, laid back little Christmas. Christmas Eve was our last day of work, and Stephen and I had a little fried chicken party with our fifth grade class (a class we co-teach). It was really silly and fun. Poly wouldn't let us take them out, so we had to order chicken to the school and hang out in one of the classrooms. So we played Korean music and played games and ate junk food with four of our favorite students after-hours at school.

By the way, I recommend this game: It's a variation on hide-and-seek, where the person who is "it" has to keep his eyes closed the whole time. If you're not "it," you find a place to stand in the room where you think whoever is "it" won't run into you. After he counts to twenty, he has to sort of zombie-like wander around the room trying to "find" someone. And he's the only one who is allowed to move his feet. The people who are "hiding" can sort of bend their bodies, but they're not allowed to move their feet. Also, they sort of help each other out. At one point, Soomin was "it" and she was getting really super close to finding me, and then Dong-gul, who was at the other end of the room shouted "SUPERMAN!" to distract her.

Also, if you're in the fifth grade, this is how you play drinking games: You mix milk, Pepsi, mountain dew, and mustard, and everyone eggs you on to drink it, clapping and yelling, "ONE SHOT! ONE SHOT!" (much like the older Koreans do when they mix beer and soju) I vaguely remember doing this sort of thing when I was in elementary school, so it made me pretty nostalgic.

November and December were easily the worst months ever working at Poly. Walking home after this little party was surreal and cathartic. All of the chaos and stress of the last two months are over? And we don't have to go to work for a week? I didn't want to go out, I didn't want to drink, I just wanted to sit at home and revel in it. So that's what we did. (Well, I think I had a glass of wine.) And then I fell asleep.

We took a few little day trips into Seoul. Here's the boys searching the map in the middle of a crowded street, all lost-tourist style:

We weren't really helping. Just giggling and taking pictures :)

We found this little magical Santa land! I think Derek fits right in!

And this is the best Christmas decoration I've ever seen in my life:

Pretty cool, yeah? Check out what it's made of:

Yes!! Sustainable Christmas. Thanks, Lotte Mart! :-D

New Years was as low-key as Christmas. We had dinner, watched a movie, and went to sleep. This was nice. I said before that we really just wanted to have a restful vacation. Still, I couldn't decide if it was an overall satisfying holiday-time. As nice as it has been, there was a relative lack of excitement...No family get-togethers, no dance parties, no turkey. Was there a void? I don't know.

I was sort of thinking about this on New Years Day. It was early afternoon, and we were trying to clean the place and start preparing for a dinner party with the Jenkinses and my co-teacher. At 2:30 in the afternoon, Rob called us on Skype to let us join his New Years Party. He took us around the loud, music-filled house, where we got to say hello to lots of familiar smiling faces. 3pm our time was midnight their time, so we poured some soju, did the count-down, and brought in the New Year with folks halfway across the world, Korean-style. This was excitement enough, I think.

Happy New Year! We love and miss you all.