8 Months

Last week flew by, which explains why I'm late with my 8 month post.  Plus, I'm recovering from being sick yet again, it's what happens when you work with children.  Last week all started with recovering from a crazy Saturday night out, with Jen and a few new friends, in Suwon after watching a few Gaelic Football matches at the FEXCO 2011 Asian Gaelic Games.  Jen and I had no plans of staying in Suwon that night, but we ended up crashing there anyway...fun times!  I never heard, or seen, Gaelic Football until my Irish coworker, Ciara, started working with me.  It's a very interesting sport.  Pretty easy to follow once you learn the rules.  I like it!  The Irish are CRAZY!  But I, and I'm pretty sure you, already knew that.  (Just had another crazy/fun Saturday night hanging with the Irish folk!  BTW, it's taken me a few days to complete this post.  Sad but true.)

Soooooo I don't think I'm finished with Korea just yet...  I'm having a great time and always meeting great people.  It's gonna be a sad time whenever I do decide to leave, but I will have to move on eventually.  Free as a bird and able to do whatever I want, which makes it difficult and great at the same time.  One step at a time.


"It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains." 
~Thomas H. Huxley

"Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase...The question you should be asking isn't "What do I want?" or "What are my goals?" but "What would excite me?"
~Timothy Ferris  
(Thank you Jamie for introducing me to The 4-Hour Workweek!)

It's time for Fall...

...and these are just a few things I will be missing from the States...

Plus some good old southern comfort food!!!

7 Months

So I'm beginning to think a lot about my plans after Korea.  Such a heavy mind...it's expected when you're contemplating your life and what it is that you want to get out of it.  I feel as if I'm walking a double-edged sword and that I'm having to make big sacrifices to live the lifestyle that I want.

Lately I was beginning to think that I might just stay here for another year, but I believe that notion may have passed.  Especially with the cooler weather making it's way.  When the weather changes in Korea, it changes fast.  Not that I don't mind the cold weather, it's just that I wasn't really able to enjoy the summer since it rained most of the time...and when I arrived here, it was cold.  I'm currently thinking that I'll head down to the Philippines for a few weeks to sight-see and visit family I haven't seen since I was in elementary school.  Then possibly make my way down to Bali and maybe travel to a few other countries in SE Asia.  Then head back stateside.  Everything's still up in the air, but at least I'm beginning to come up with ideas.  It's a start and I'm not at a standstill...


"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
~ George Bernard Shaw

Where did the summer go...?

Ooh, I know...it rained for most of it here in South Korea.  Now it's time for the fall season.  The weather is cooler now in the mornings and evenings.  This is my favorite time of year.  Unfortunately, the fall and spring seasons don't last very long here.  Before I know it, it will be time to put on my winter coat.

With the cooler weather making its way, I'm hoping to sneak in one last trip to the beach for a couple of days this weekend since it will be a four day weekend...Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving).  Yay!

...and maybe, just maybe, I'll actually catch up on my posts..

...and now I have a friend/coworker trying to convince me to stay another year since I don't exactly know what I'm going to do once my contract is up...

I just have to reuse this...

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where…” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.       

~Lewis Carroll , Alice In Wonderland

6 Months

Midway into my contract.  I think I've reached my "mid-contract crisis".  Yeah, that's what I'm calling it.  Which means I need to figure out what I'm going to do once my contract is complete...or at least have a few plans in place since I'm constantly changing my mind.  It will all boil down to how I feel when my time here comes to an end.  I'm fairly certain that I will not stay another year (I know I keep saying that).

Since my arrival here I think I have finally overcome my homesickness, realized that I should never say "never", come to terms with the fact that I don't know when I will return to Atlanta and if I will stay there...the list could go on.  One thing I have realized during my vacation in Tokyo is that I really do have a great life.  What a wonderful feeling!  It seems as if I am in a dream world.  There's nothing holding me back...I can do whatever I want.  Never in a million years would I have imagined myself working/living on the other side of the world, or even in a different country.  I'm meeting great people and forming friendships which I know will last beyond Korea.  The proximity to the places I would like to visit is ideal and unbelievable.  Since I'm on this side of the world, it just wouldn't be right if I didn't visit my motherland.

So the time has come for me to start my list making of what I would like to do in Korea before I leave and what I would like to do when I leave Korea.



"Don't ask yourself what the world needs.  Ask yourself what makes you come alive.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."  ~Howard Thurman


"People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life.  I don't think this is what we're really seeking.  I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive."  ~Joseph Campbell

Lost in transit...

Imagine going from this rinky dinky railway system...

Atlanta, GA (USA)

to this...

Seoul, South Korea

(I'm still trying to figure out the bus situation in Seoul.)


Okay, now imagine having to use this...

Tokyo, Japan

(I'm not even going to try to figure out the bus system in Tokyo.)

It's quite overwhelming for someone who has had to rely on having her own car in order to get around town...

Five Months

...and so the saga continues, not really.  FIVE MONTHS!  Time seems to be a flyin'!  Before you know it my contract will be up and I better have a plan.  It's probably time to start considering what I might be doing when the day comes for me to leave my humble abode here in Seoul.  Oh decisions decisions.  This won't be easy.

I'm just being me...having fun while making friends.  Sometimes I do find it a bit difficult with the part where I make new friends.  My problem is that I haven't figured out how to balance the groups, especially since I continue making new ones.  I can't hang out with them all at once, so it forces me to choose.  If any of you know me, you know that can be a difficult decision since I am indecisive and pretty much would like to do everything.  I just have to learn how to prioritize, but then I feel bad when I am forced to decline the other peeps I decide not to hang out with.  Oh first world problems.

A few things are changing at school...a South African coworker is marrying his Korean girlfriend this weekend, after five months a Canadian coworker is moving to Scotland where his girlfriend just started grad school, another Canadian coworker is leaving to go back home (sad)...that's not all of them, but I'll spare you the rest.  Of course, all of this will bring in new faces and possibly new friendships.

On a different note, I have a couple of exciting trips coming up...yay!  There's the Boryeong Mud Festival this weekend, which will be a blast...there will be a whole lotta craziness going on!  =)  Then off to TOKYO for summer vacation, July 30th to August 7th...can't wait!  I'm going with Steph, my friend/co-worker.  We were originally planning on either going to Thailand or Vietnam, but we decided at the last minute (sitting in front of the travel agent, which is the best way to book airplane tix here in Korea) on TOKYO.  I've always wanted to go to Japan, well everywhere for that matter.  So now I'm getting my chance.  There may be a couple of other small trips next month...we'll see where the chips fall.  You have one life, so make the most of it.  That I plan on doing...yessiree!  Marking things off of my bucket list while adding a few more at the same time.

Looking over the Han River at Yeouido Park during my bike ride earlier this evening.  Riding along the river is very relaxing...such beautiful scenery.

"We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again-to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more." 
~Pico Iyer, "Why We Travel"