Goodbye Korea

As I write this, I am sitting on an airplane that is taking me away from Korea. My destination: the Southeast Asian seas. It’s a bittersweet journey, because saying goodbye is always hard, but I can’t pretend that Korea wasn’t really the place for me. Though it may not have been all that I had hoped, and certainly was never in my plans, I believe my six months in Korea were time well spent.

I’ll definitely miss the people I met. I have friends from all over the world now- an open invitation to crash anytime in Ireland, places to stay all over England, friends scattered throughout Canada, the US and Australia. I’ve learned about many more cultures than Korea’s, met people who have been more places than I can think of. There’s some friends who biked from China to Ireland (they did have to take a boat for the last bit), sweeping across the entire Eurasian continent. A bunch of my friends have worked as volunteers in South America. Another friend visited Russia on a whim for a week. Bodacious Brit is going to be a bridesmaid next summer in South Africa. It really is quite a head-trip. And, even taking no notice of their exciting lives, I have just made some simply amazing friends. I will miss them terribly.

I will miss Korea too. I’ll miss my favorite foods, my hangouts, the nightlife, the history, the random nudity, and the craziness of living and working in a considerably different country. I’ll miss poking fun at ajumas and ajoshis and having stilted conversations with Koreans who laugh at me but appreciate my attempts to learn their language. I took a taxi ride a few days ago and was able to tell the taxi driver that I didn’t live in my nearest shopping center. I usually use the name of the center to get me home from Seoul, and it always confuses the drivers when I ask them to go somewhere else when we get there. He laughed for a solid minute when I said “Save Zone che apartu animnida”- Save Zone is not my apartment.

I’ve loved visiting the palaces and museums, participating in the festivals, seeing the traditional and not so traditional performances, and doing a not insignificant amount of souvenir shopping. Korea has a rich history and is a fascinating country.

I’ll even miss my kids… I think. Well, not the hellions.

Annyeong hi kesseyo Korea. It’s been real.