Bye, Bye Korea

We have arrived in Finland, and some pictures will be coming soon! But here is the last pictures of Korea land. Korea will ALWAYS hold a dear place in our hearts. We have felt so blessed to be there the past two years and we are ready to take on life in the U.S.A.

The gifts from Ahra (Jon's elementary school teacher) A lot of food with cute post-its on it giving directions on how to eat it :)

Our homestead :)

Gifts from my extra class :) The doll is "me". I'm really fancy.

my AWESOME teachers :) I definitely cried as I left the school.

Enjoying our last ferry ride on from the islands.

This is how Ian feels about leaving... happy and sad... and a little creepy.

you can barely see it, but that's the palguem island sign behind us. Goodbye island home!

All of our crap that we moved all over the place! 

GOODBYE KOREA LAND!!!! WE'LL MISS YOU!

You say goodbye, and I say hello

This weekend perfectly represented all the feelings that have been swarming around inside of me for the past couple of weeks. Excited, sad, happy, upset, .... the list goes on. I feel like my entire body, mind, and my emotions are in complete conflict.

First, we got to start off the weekend meeting Sara! Sara is the little sis of one of my closest friends from university. We've been chatting and sending messages on Facebook for over a year now, so it was nice to finally meet up!

She just arrived in SK about 2 weeks ago and is settling in nicely to her cute little house :) We took her to the green tea fields for the sweatiest hike of my life... Sara and I were both feelin' it and then we got semi- lost on the random trail on the way down. 

We hit up some BiBimBap

And then we headed back for some snacks and movies :)

The smallest brownies EVER.  Seriously only as big as the bottom of the spoon.

Apparently what you see on the box, is exactly what you get. We polished these off with some ice cream and the movie Kung Fu Panda... oh my goodness hilarious. If you haven't seen it. go. watch. now.

But our awesomely random time with Sara came to an end way to quickly and then we were off for some goodbyes.

We headed to Haenam to say farewell to our teachers from last year and our favorite BBQ place.

It was so delicious! This is one thing I will be missing when we leave Korea-land.

I was proud to say I held the tears back while we were saying our goodbyes.

But they were coming on full blast as we walked and drove away. 

To imagine not seeing any of these teachers again, or being able to visit our first little home as a married couple just breaks my heart.

This is first of MANY goodbyes  that we have coming up, and I'm dreading every single one of them.  Is there nothing to make the process easier? Any ideas???

Overall, it was a great weekend and we're so blessed to still be meeting new friends here, and knowing that we are saying goodbye to some amazing friends. Life in Korea has been sweet and we will miss it greatly!

Why I Love being a Teacher

As you all obviously know by now, teaching is not my passion in life. It's difficult for me to feel excited about a lesson. And as much as some of my students drive me up the wall,  there are some students that it will break my heart to never see again.

I know leaving after this contract will be difficult for me, leaving this school, these teachers, these students... it's a struggle for me to think that I'll probably never see them again.

Well, after the corn dog adventure the other day we found out the day after that it was our last day. And we were all a little upset about it. I then had to break the news that they wouldn't be seeing me again after September... it was so sad.. and touching to see how upset they were. They couldn't believe I was going. They then told me if I got bored in the U.S.A. to come back and move to Jaeun... cute... but probably not happenin' :)

Then they gave me these:

And that's an order!!!! :)

(sorry for the blurriness)

I  may not enjoy teaching, but at least with these students I feel that I made a difference and that we all really enjoyed that extra class. Even now as I re-read them my heart just breaks a little and tears come.

Can I just take these kids with me??