Saying Goodbye

There are those faces I will miss.
Of course, there are those I won't.

But Mini, Alice, and Jessica. I will.
Mini is really smart, always coming up with new ways of saying the same old things, which is impressive considering how redundant most of the class can be.
Alice and I laugh together. A lot. I had her for a reading class as well, and she and I would share books, and make jokes. Sometimes mine would go over her head, and sometimes hers would go over mine. I don't know much Korean. Yes sir, Chee-sol, ma-di-ga-sol. Still not sure what that means.
Jessica is so determined. And beautiful. They all are.


Jeff. Won-young. Jeff. Well, Jeff and I have had some problems. Andy was always great. And Alex, he had a slight lisp. It was awesome.

One year complete. It's hard to believe, but great to look back on. It was a great story.

Gap

So, first off, sorry.

I realize I have never written anything pertaining to my future plans after I wrote about decision-making.

And yes, I have made a decision.

I'm packing up my whole life and love and leaving Korea. Please don't ask me why. I know why. But it doesn't make any sense to me right now because I "couldn't wait to get going, but wasn't quite ready to leave".

Looking at what is ahead, I can tell you that I'm excited for the plans that have been made.

First stop: VietnamNow I normally don't like using pictures that I haven't taken, but I couldn't resist. This is Phu Quoc Island, off the coast of Cambodia, but still a part of Vietnam. This is our last stop on our month trek around the southern coast of the country. I'm traveling with Shmeepants and Carry.

Next, onto Bangkok. For the weekend. I've noticed that I have several of these "weekend" trips, as our trip was orchestrated around cheap air tickets, Bangkok to Berlin being one of them. But why not spend more than an hour there?

From there, like I said, it's onto Berlin. Carry has some friends that we'll meet up with, and I'm excited to see Germany, as I missed it on my last time traveling. Train down to Munich, and stay there for a couple days before, tentatively, heading to Switzerland to see an old friend.

Now the whole trip started as a haphazard plan to get to Croatia and Montenegro because Carry's mom owns a kayaking business in the former, and a house in the latter. What?!? I know, right. Call me silly, but I've always wanted to go to Montenegro because, every time I studied WWI, that's the country that I liked the name of most. See, one of those silly, rather whimsical reasons of mine. Kind of like my love of Latvia over Estonia or Lithuania.

Anyways, we'll spend the next three or four weeks hanging out around there. Making trips to northern Croatia, Albania, Serbia, and Kosovo. Unless we do that on the way out. Which takes us to Thessaloniki. The trip gets kind of fuzzy at this point because we don't necessarily have to plan all of it right now since we will have plenty of time in Croatia to do this planning.

So, either fly from Thessaloniki to London, or take a train from there over to Istanbul for a few days (depending on time) and then fly to London. Either way I have to be in London by the 19th.

That way, I'll have "a weekend" in London, a city that I love, before my flight home to Seattle on the 22nd of November.

Whew. Deep breath.

Just in time for Thanksgiving. Huge smile.