I left Korea 4 months ago and have been home about 3 months. I already miss Korea, even though I know leaving was the right decision. Here are some of the things I will miss! Once again, they are in no particular order. The pictures are also in no particular order because I am majorly fighting with blogspot. I wrote the entire blog but it refused to have any of the writing next to the picture I want it to, so I am going to slowly copy and paste it over to new blogs. But that will take a long time. So here's part 1!
1. My friends. I met a lot of great people from all over the world. I remember one night, relatively early in my time, when I was sitting at a table with a group of people from the US, Taiwan, Macao, France and Australia. I thought at the time, "This is really amazing."
I not only met a lot of people, but I made a lot of great friends that I hope I will know for the rest of my life.
We were struggling a bit to figure out my selfie stick. I only bought it since I was traveling along afterwards, but never quite got the hang of it and didn't use it once on my trip.
2. I will also miss my students. I had so much fun with them. There were obviously ups and downs and I will admit that I had some difficult students. But I had a fantastic experience with them.
The picture to the left was an accidental picture.
This included getting letters at the end of a term that make you realize that you've made a difference in your student's lives, without even realizing it. I may have wept when I read that letter. I erased her name from the photo in case she reads this and gets embarrassed.
One of my students took this picture, which I love.
3. People sleeping and vomiting all over the place.
Ok, maybe not the vomiting.
4. Great concerts, musicals, plays, nerdy events and cultural events in small venues for very cheap. I love, love, love Sondre Lerche. I am also extremely depressed that I'm missing Caro Emerald. Of course she's coming to Seoul in May, after I left. She's my favorite singer. Ever. I saw a ton of musicals, Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia, Jesus Christ Superstar among others. It was fantastic!
5. The food. I will miss the food so much. I loved everything. The spice, the soups, the meat. The fish market was amazing! Everything was amazing!
As most of you know, I left Korea in November. I got insanely behind on my blogging. I greatly enjoyed my time, but there were some things that I did not enjoy. Here is a list, in no particular order, of things I will not miss in Korea. A list about things I miss in Korea will follow.
1. Finding terrifying or horrible fish in the markets unexpectedly.
Or sharks. Sharks were the worst. I am pretty sure it was caught accidentally, but still.
Also, the horrible shock of finding giant fangs in your food. I will not miss that.
2. My shower. For almost 4 years, I did not have a shower. I had a shower head attached directly to the sink that got the entire bathroom wet. While it made cleaning the bathroom easy, it was really irritating. It is so nice to actually have a separate shower again.
3. The washing machine. For some reason that I cannot figure out, no matter what I put in the washing machine, whether or not it had ties, were normal sweaters or t-shirts, my clothes would come out in giant knots, usually for no reason. I will also not miss having to air dry my towels due to the absence of a dryer. They always always always felt like shark skin, no matter how much fabric softener I added!
4. Watching CCTVs videos, even when I'd see things like polar bear hats on the screens. Watching those videos took up hours of my life I can never get back!
5. The bugs!! The bugs were the worst. House centipedes are creatures from hell. As are cockroaches that decided they needed to invade my first apartment by the dozens, occasionally sprinting across the room towards me for no reason. Or they flew, which was worse. I developed supersonic hearing that allowed me to hear the flying ones land in the middle of the night while it was pitch black. Horrific. I had so many that I stopped getting freaked out by them. My first few cockroaches would interfere with my sleep, but after a while I'd just kill them and move on. You know what that means? That means that I had way, way too many bugs in my apartment. The bug to the left was in my classroom one of my last days in Korea. My students refused to help me kill it.
6. I loved, loved, loved my students and I loved teaching them. But occasionally, they would behave badly. One of those incidents happened my last day in my favorite class. I had fully expected to cry at the end of the class. However, one of the girls brought something similar to gak to class. I asked them to put it away. Just as another student was about to start her presentation, I hear "How dare you! My hairrrr." I look over to see what you see to the left. Slime completely embedded in Sarah's hair. After much "How dare you! I was growing my hair out! I'm going to have to cut it off!" and a LOT of hot water, we melted and combed the slime out of her hair. It was a miracle. I thought disaster was averted until another student sat in it and it was all over her pants, which just happened to be her mom's pants. It was a very eventful last day with them.
7. Misconceptions about foreigners. This picture is not the best example, since it just shows a snack I've never seen in the US at the American food stand at an international food festival. But I did run into interesting ideas about foreigners that were completely false. It's also really nice not to get yelled at for speaking on the subway in a near whisper, just because I'm speaking in English.
8. The smog! The pollution in Korea is bad. It is not as bad as what I experienced in Beijing, but it was really thick and awful some days. In the spring, they have Yellow Dust season, when dust from China blows into Korea and turns everything yellow. It feels like you're breathing dust. Because you are breathing dust. I will definitely not miss those days.
9. Weird fashion. Also, being able to find clothes that were the proper size and length. Even when they fit, the sleeves were always really short!
10. Christmas in Korea! I love Christmas and celebrating with my family. But Christmas in Korea is a couples holiday rather than a family holiday, which is awful. Also, it was difficult to be away from family on those days. Even when I opened presents with my family over Skype, it was not the same as they'd be looking at a book I couldn't see or chatting while I couldn't hear. It was so nice to be back home for Christmas this year.
11. Winter! The sidewalks in winter were crazy. Korea has not learned to use sand or salt to melt snow and ice. As a result, after it snows, all the sidewalks turn into solid blocks of ice that you can't help but fall down on, all the time. I knew at least 2 people who broke their legs on one of those sidewalks. It was ridiculous. Also, I saw at least one restaurant owner throw water out his front door, so that the water froze into very smooth ice on the sidewalk. That was one of the many times that I fell in Korea.
Also, I have never been so cold in my life. The cold is biting and cuts through all clothing you can wear. I had nights where I was in my apartment with the heat and my nose was still frozen. It's cold.
12. Insane traffic! All the time! I knew a LOT of people who were hit by cars. It's so nice not to have to worry as a pedestrian. In Korea, pedestrians are the lowest on the totem pole.
13. Age and level inappropriate reading assignments. The program I taught for assigned 4 books each term for the masters classes. Each term, there was book that was absurdly hard for my students to read and they considered extremely boring, but due to the fact that they couldn't understand what was happening, we had to spend most of our time going over what happened instead of delving deeper into the reading. It was not fun. I do not recommend teaching Robert Louis Stevenson's "Kidnapped" and Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" to 7th grade ESL learners.
14.Feeling like this when I speak in Korean.
Also people pretending they don't understand me when I was being extremely clear. Here is an example conversation that actually happened.
Barista 1: (In Korean) Hello, what would you like?
Me: (In Korean) A white mocha please.
Barista 1: (in Korean) I don't know what you're saying. I don't speak English.
Me: (repeating in Korean) White mocha
Barista 1: I don't speak English!
Me: I am speaking in Korean. (Insanely slowly) Whitteeee mochaaaaa
Barista 1: I don't understand!!!
Barista 2: (In Korean) She is clearly saying white mocha. She is speaking very clearly.
15. Noise and Light pollution. It's so nice to be somewhere where it's dark at night and you can see the stars and, in the morning waking me up very early, there aren't bull horns announcing they are selling things or picking something up. "Good morning! LAPTOPS! WE ACCEPT LAPTOPS!"
16. Crowds like this, at basically all events, even dumb ones. Or just crowds while walking. It could get very overwhelming and occasionally made me feel like I wanted to punch my way out of the crowds!
17. The Korean obsession with Frozen. Well, my temporary relief of hearing my student's obsessions. One time, in a cafe with Grant and Adrienne, they played "Let it go" 4 times in a row. The Idina Menzel Version, then Demi Lovato, then Hyo-Lin's Korean version, then Idina Menzel again. I had to ban all Frozen songs from my classroom. I also had to ban "What Does the Fox Say?"
Overall, I really enjoyed Korea and I am so glad that I went, but these were some of the things that were just a little annoying. They by no means are the entire list, but I felt this was sufficient!
After visiting the world's worst cultural park, we drove to Jimbaran Beach for a beautiful sunset and dinner.
The sunset was fantastic. It was one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. We watched as the sun set along the horizon, then after it had passed, the sky turned this incredibly pink! It was so beautiful.
While watching the sunset, we ate a rather large seafood dinner, which I believe may have been the cause of my bout with Bali Belly.
Or it could have been the coconut.
These puppies were adorable. A small girl from Australia, probably about 6 years old, ran over to play with it while her family all yelled hysterically and simultaneously, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" My friend thought they were being dramatic, but I fully agreed with them. I had seen another tourist playing with stray dogs earlier and was thinking, "RABIES!" even if he was adorable!
Is the culprit here? I wonder
I had never eaten lobster before, so that was an adventure.
I mean look at that!
Our lovely table.
Afterwards, we got one final fabulous massage then flew back to Korea on Garuda Airlines, which won the 2013 World Airlines Award for best economy class, which they totally deserved. They were so helpful and gave people a lot of things, like diapers for children! It was a lovely flight.
I also saw a Korean woman sleeping on the plane with a cosmetic face mask. ON THE PLANE!! Ridiculous.
I made it back to Korea and then was stricken with illness. I can tell you this: You do not want to get Bali Belly. I don't know what it was that caused it, since I was very careful about drinking water, but it was awful. I hadn't heard of Bali Belly, but when I returned to Korea everyone asked me, "Did you get Bali Belly??" which is when I discovered it was a thing. I don't want to go into a lot of detail, but let's just say that it was very uncomfortable for about 10-12 days. On day 6, I was convinced I was being ravaged by an intestinal parasite. Medication did not help and actually made my situation worse and more uncomfortable. It just had to work it's way out of my system. Obviously, I survived. I would still highly recommend Bali, with the caveat to not eat seafood and refuse to eat or drink anything that has touched the water. Don't do it, people!
This included getting letters at the end of a term that make you realize that you've made a difference in your student's lives, without even realizing it. I may have wept when I read that letter. 
