A Short Story (Part 3)

One activity the couple enjoyed together was rock climbing. They found that Korea was full of mountains for them to hike and climb, and enjoy with friends.














































They did and saw so many things that year. It was beautiful, new, and exciting!











































They got new ideas about EVERYTHING.

Surreal

For the first time in awhile, I'm feeling happy, excited, and thankful! I always seem to get depressed around this time of year, this one has been no exception. It's cold, it's dark, it's windy, I'm basically unemployed, I haven't climbed outside in months, and I've entered into a massive state of transition in basically every aspect of my life. Our apartment is nearly empty, the kitchen has becoming a sad, barren place, there is no place to sit except the floor, and most of our belongings are either en route to America or have been given away. Over the past two months, our life in Korea has slowly and methodically been taken apart piece by piece. It's been a long, emotional process for me. But what is starting to emerge is hope and ambition for our future.

The light at the end of this long, tedious tunnel of moving back to America is growing brighter each and every day. With it, I sense myself starting to come alive again. The end of a wonderfully thick chapter in my life is about to give way to a new one. I will miss my friends, my easy paycheck, and the uniqueness of our life here, but there is so much to look forward to in coming home. Best of all, we get to reunite with all our family and friends. As we continue to check things off our to-do list here, the burdensome tasks and anxious thoughts have started to fade away, allowing previously fuzzy dreams and possibilities to become tangible. Two weeks from today we'll hop on a plane bound for America with no plan to return to Korea. And we'll push 'play' on so many things that have been on 'pause' for several years. Now that is surreal!

Current State of Living

What I've been up to today:



What Dusty and Epic have been up to:

A Short Story (Part 2)

At first, Korea felt really hard. Everything was much bigger and faster than where they had come from.










Fortunately, they worked with many other foreigners who helped them. They made friends and didn't feel so lonely.


















They worked with children that didn't speak the same language. They were supposed to teach them English, but found that much of their jobs required more entertainment than education, hence the term "edutainment".

A Short Story (Part1)

Once upon a time, there lived a boy and girl in Arkansas. They had a dog and a house on Blueberry Lane. The boy had a job and worked very hard and prospered. The girl was very smart and went to school. They both enjoyed rock climbing.



They loved their life and everyone they shared it with, but something felt missing. So they took a trip around America in search of that missing something.


The trip was really fun, but they didn't find what they were looking for.
Sometimes all you know is that you want life to be different.









Along the way, some bad things happened.



The boy and girl decided to leave their familiar life and comfortable home on Blueberry Lane. They packed up everything they owned, left their dog with family...




and flew far away to a mystical place called South Korea.

Be Present

As this chapter of our lives begins to close, we have been feeling all sorts of different emotions. Anger, excitement, anxiety, to name a few. I've noticed irregularity in my sleep. This morning, I woke up at 6:15 and was wide awake, long before the sun came up. That's not a normal thing. I chose to take that time to check a few random thoughts online, such as, how far is it to bike from Tulsa to Tahlequah? (about 80 miles) It's thoughts like these that keep me wound up. Somewhat pointless, I know. But the underlying theme is that I'm stressed.

I never thought that the thought of moving back to America would make me to feel this way. It was 5 years ago around this time that I was feeling the same kind of stress about moving to Korea. I had a million questions, not knowing what living on the other side of the world would look like. Fortunately, we had a great recruiter who was able to answer our questions and was continually reassuring us that it would be okay.

Now, we are on the reverse side of it all. Yes, we know what we are returning to, but having lived in another culture for 4 years has truly changed me. One of my fears is that I will return and see old friends who think I am the same person they knew 4 years ago. I think I am to an extent, but have also had many life-changing experiences. My thinking is different, so to assume that I am the same is selling me short. I'm afraid once my friends realize I'm not the same, it may cause distance between us if we can't find a way to bridge that gap. If you're one of my friends back home and are reading this, my best recommendation to you is to do research on Korea in order to understand where I'm coming from (literally and figuratively). Think of good questions to ask, to show that you care more about me than just the fact that I'm in your life.

Coming home has all sorts of different moods. We have experienced the excited, dreaming stage, where I think about living a life of solitude in a cabin in the woods. Sounds dreamy, doesn't it? But those romantic feelings are long past now, replaced by questions like, What am I going to do for work? Will I be able to live without internet for several months? Will my friends from America remember me, or better yet, will we be able to relate to each other? And so it continues...

The one thing I do know and am able to control, is that I am here, now. What I mean is that I have the opportunity/challenge for the next 2 months to be present with the friends we have here in Korea. Daily, I have to remind myself of this. I never want to be waiting or wishing for another time, because God gave me this time to make the most with the people I'm around now.

One great example of this was Thanksgiving. We have become fairly adaptive in our situation here, and are pretty resourceful when it comes to food. So for Thanksgiving, we had several of our closer climbing friends over to share in good company and food. Rebs and I took care of most of the cooking, which turned out to be a hit with our friends. We had chickens instead of turkey, but everything else was pretty much the same, only made from scratch because it's our only option here. Corn casserole, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and turkey gravy, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, and homemade cranberry sauce. It was pretty fantastic (toot! toot!). All to be topped off with Rebs' homemade pumpkin pie! (Sorry, no picture. I think we were too excited to eat it.)

One thing I really appreciate here is that everyone is accepted. At our Thanksgiving, we had a couple military friends, a few English teachers, and a Russian grad-student. But in Korea, everything is "normal", meaning it doesn't matter if you're not from around here... because none of us are. We celebrate each others' differences and are usually open to learn from each other instead of segregate. Thank you to my Korean friends for that.