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.

digital love

Thank you Derek for making us this great video!! And thank you Tim, for taking the pictures. We have really wonderful, talented friends.

And another wedding-related tidbit: My Christmas present to myself...

It's way too cold to wear this now, which is another reason for me to be really, really excited for spring.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! ^^

Another day at the office

Halloween!

We decorated the classroom for Halloween.

Here's a little ghostie up-close. Jason had the best scary face.

A Synopsis: July-September

This is a little rough and unorganized. I sort of created the narrative around the pictures we have, which is not always indicative of the most important things that have happened in the last few months, but I gave it my best shot.

1. Columbia.

It was so good to go home and see this pretty girl get married. I wish I had more pictures from the wedding. It was gorgeous.

After six months of cheap, crappy Korean beer, Stephen couldn't wait to wrap his mouth around a bottle of a cheap, crappy American Stag.

2. Kansas City.

We love Rob's work uniform. And Rob.

3. Chicago.

A two hour layover turned into a twelve hour layover. I'm bitter towards American Airlines, but we still had an amazing time basking in the sun, feeling the perfect Chicago summer breeze, listening to some jazz band play at Millennium Park...

The big bean mirror thing is sweet.

Do I already look frazzled? I still have a good 24 hours of travel ahead of me including more unexpected delays. American Airlines. Ugh.

4. Incheon (FINALLY).

It was really good to get back to Korea. Not just because American Airlines sucked, and because we were stuck in Beijing for a night, and because they almost lost our luggage. But it just felt like home, in a really great, surprising way. A second home, I guess.

Anyway, we had gotten to be pretty close with Jesse and Emily, so we tried to spend as much time with them as we could once we got back from vacation. Here's Emily on one of our scenic little bike rides:

Unfortunately this is the only picture I have from the night we got a "love motel" (you can guess why they call them that) in Hongdae (trendy college-y part of Seoul) I liked all the plants outside our love motel!

We had a little triple date at Garten Bier with our Academic Coordinator and her boyfriend. This is a bar where every table has a little switch, and when you turn it on the little spot for your beer turns into a little refrigerator. Soo your beer stays ice cold down to the last drop. Pretty neat, but...efficient use of energy? Probably not.

The girls: Emily, me, Hana.

And the boys: J.H, Stephen, Jesse

Do you see the glass beer mugs? You can get a single, double, or a triple. I got the triple on Stephen's birthday and it felt like it was bigger than I was. It took forever to drink, but gee whiz, it stayed freezing cold the whole darn time.

And here's what our lives pretty much revolve around:

Show and tell. This was so freaking cute:

These little girls are, like, BFFs.

Stephen and some of his kiddos (I love this picture):

We just enjoyed three days off to celebrate Chuseok, which is kind of like Korean Thanksgiving. It's a very big holiday, and there are a lot of great traditions to go with it. Leading up to the holiday we did some projects at school to celebrate.

We made songpyeon, a traditional kind of rice cake dumpling thing (those dark spots are red beans):

And the kids wore their Hanbok, traditional Korean clothes.

My little Helen looked like a Korean princess (But notice her tacky, bright orange indoor shoes. hehe).

We celebrated our one-year anniversary at a fancy restaurant. We clean up nice, right?

And that brings us up to now. We're so glad Derek and Ashley are here!! They live in the same apartment complex as us, and our fancy robot screen lets us call them directly, so none of us really need to get phones.

Life is really, really good. More to come on adventures with the cousins :)

dae han min guk!

The Korea v. Greece match was super fun!

This is one of our coworkers, Ryan. Huge soccer fan.

And this is Jesse and Emily, being very Korean.

We spend a lot of time with this couple. They've been in Korea for a few years, and have graciously helped us figure out how to teach and live in Korea. Excellent people.

Anyway, 2-0 victory! Yayyy!

After the game we ran around in the street high-fiving everyone we met, clapping and chanting, "dae han min guk" which means "Republic of Korea." We were kind of a spectacle, and the fact that I brought my beer glass into the street with me didn't make us look any more respectable. However, I'll add, this was a completely legal act. No open container law in Korea.

I love this country.