Well, that part's a little harder. Thankfully, or unfortunately, I haven't become so close to any Korean people that it will actually be hard to leave them. I'll miss my students, but I had practice with saying goodbye to two groups of them as they graduated, so I'm not terribly attached. The co-teacher I was really close with changed schools this semester, so I haven't been seeing her as often, and though I'll miss her, it won't be devastating. Plus, I'm sure we'll still e-mail. I'm starting to feel a little sad about saying goodbye to Mrs. O, the only co-teacher I've had for the full two years. She's the one who isn't very good at English, but we've been together a long time, and she's always been helpful. And I know I'll never talk to her again, which is, I guess, what makes it sad.
I'll miss the job, but hopefully I'll be teaching in America. I will, I'm sure, sometimes feel marginally nostalgic for the streets of Naju, my haunt, but the good qualities of Orlando will hopefully make it easy to let go. I think I really might miss Korean food. Scratch that, I just Googled it, and there seem to be three decent Korean restaurants in Orlando. Excellent. Mostly, I'll just miss Tim. I mean, I know that we'll keep in touch, and I'll go visit him in California sometime. But it's just sad that we won't be able to have dinner three times a week and share books anymore. He was such an important part of the past two years that it's hard to believe he won't be a physical presence in my life anymore.
I was reading a few blog entries from last year around this time. I was counting the days until I thought I was leaving for good (before I decided to extend), and was full of these big plans to blog everything and take lots of pictures and travel so that I could be sure I accomplished everything I wanted to in Korea and wouldn't have any regrets. Now that I'm getting so close to the end again, the same worries are arising. I should make sure that I blog often, not only for the purpose of having these entries to look back on but also just because I feel like I get more out of life on a daily basis when I'm doing some reflection. I should take pictures, although I'm no photographer, but just to have some to look at when I feel inclined. It sucks that I haven't had a cord to upload pictures for the past six months. I feel like if I had I would have taken more, but I can at least take a bunch in the next few weeks so that later I can create an album of the best of Korea.
As for travelling... that's tougher. The one place I really want to go is back to Chuncheon, where we stayed for six weeks during Orientation, and Tim and I have plans to go sometime in the next couple of weeks. I want to revisit the university where we stayed, walk around, take pictures. The city is famous for two dishes which I'm dying to eat, so it'll be nice to have those. I feel like I should go to Seoul and do all of the touristy things that I've never done, but... I don't like Seoul. I don't like doing touristy things. The weather's too hot, and it's exhausting, and I'm just not that interested in it. There's a few other cities I feel like I should go, or that I once felt compelled to visit, but again... it's money and time and energy that I just don't feel like expending on it. People are going to ask me all these questions about what I did in Korea and where I went and I'm going to say... I just hung out in Naju, a tiny farming town, for two years.
Is that weird?
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