Final Farewells



Goodbye Girls!



Boss came and took away all my furniture on Saturday to give to the new teacher. That's right, the new teacher got ALL the furniture (even though she moved in early), and I was left in my apartment with only a couple blankets and my pillows, lol. Okay, so I made that sound worse than it really was... the funny thing? It's exactly how I moved IN to Korea, so it was appropriate that that's how I'm moving out as well.

I officially moved out of my apartment on (what day is it today!?!) Monday night after working until 7pm, and I've been at a hotel since then. Hotels in Korea are not cheap in this neighbourhood, it's costing me $70/night to be here - outRAgeous, really! That's what I get for working/living in the fancy-schmancy richpants neighbourhood of Bundang :)

You made Korea ALL kinds of fun :)

The hotel is nice (though it's covered in piles of my stuff), it has a soft (by Korean standards) bed, a sofa with a coffee table, free coffee and green tea, and a computer with wireless. If I could make Skype work on it that would be the bomb, but I'm fine without it really.  It has a giant TV (with a DVD player and VHS that I just noticed), and the fridge has water and juice and cookies and crackers that are all free for the noshing. Mostly I'm enjoying the giganticness of the bed, and the hot hot bubbles of the jacuzzi tub after ALL that freaking time being restricted to my hard-as-a-rock bed and the apartment's showers only!

See you in Vietnam!!!

I've spent this last week saying goodbye to everything here.  Goodbye to my young Korean-teacher friends, goodbye to moms of the girls I taught at home, goodbye to other ex-pats that I've been so happy to get to know since 2003, goodbye to my kids in the classroom and at home, goodbye to their parents...

Goodbye shellfish BBQ!

I've had my last in-country shellfish bbq with Barb, my last Korean bbq with Jill (we forgot about noraebang/karaoke!), my last shabu-shabu (also with Barb), and my last night out with $5 drink all night and dance up a storm at the Loft (my terribly favorite dirty little hole in the wall in Seoul) with Jill and Katie.

See you in Canada!!

Laying around here tonight I don't even feel sad about most things, I feel kinda empty, maybe it's better to describe it as numb.  Tomorrow I have a list of things to do, (go to the bank, cancel my cell, mail packages home, repack my travel bag, pick up my passport from the Bangladeshi Embassy in the one alloted hour, say goodbye to one last friend), pay for another night at this hotel...

I'm not feeling that stressed about it, but I am feeling a little frozen.  As a matter of fact, the only thing I'm thinking about is having another bath, disappearing down in the bubbles with my music on and the candles lit... relaxing.  So, off I go then!

See you soon in India!!

The more I make room and distance myself from Korea so that I can allow my heart to get on the plane, the more I also feel myself distance from other things in life that I just can't carry around in my backpack for the next 5 months.  To my friends and loved ones at home and abroad I'll keep in touch as I can (both with the constraints of technology and the self-imposed limits on time spent online vs. experiencing the countries I'm in), but please don't take my absences personally.  MOM: I PROMISE TO WRITE SO YOU KNOW I'M ALIVE AND WELL! 

Oh, and I just checked my inbox... 74 emails in my inbox - really world??!  That just made me run away, lol, I'll get back to it later, maybe at the airport, lol...

Goodbye Korean BBQ in Korea!

As the ancient taxi driver last night reminded me, I'm about to "recommence studies in the university of life."  I went into Itaewon to meet a friend and on the way home the driver really said that to me after asking about my travel plans (I'd only mentioned Bangladesh, Nepal and India by that time)... "Why are you going to very poor countries to have a trip?  You don't like to go to Guam? To Saipan?" 'I don't want beaches and resorts, I want to see what life is like there... I want to see the country, I want to feel what it's like to spend time there, in the country and with the people...'.  "Ah, you are a student of life... you have a new job now, you will study at the university of life." 

Strange as it sounds, he's right, it's a big world out there, and there's just so much to get to know and understand - and not ALL of it is out there, but helps me figure out stuff on the inside too. 

The next 5 months are going to be amazing for all kinds of reasons, and it starts in 2 more sleeps. 

2.

More.

Sleeps.

Thursday morning my flight leaves at 9:40.  That means I can check in around 6:40, be the first in line to deal with my visa at immigration when they open at 7, which means I leave my place here around 5:15am to catch the first airport express bus the heck outta dodge... wow!