Hey all! It's Been Awhile!

So I realized that, once again, I've been a terrible blogger, and haven't posted anything since we were going to Seoul to meet Leslie for her three-week visit. Very long story short, we had an AWESOME time, and we were sad to see Leslie go, but we were reminded of something we had all but forgotten: we're now officially past the halfway point in our contract! When we left for Korea, Leslie was just beginning to plan her visit, and we hadn't even realized at the time that that visit would be happening around the six-month point of our adventure!

So I guess that makes this post our six-month update. I'll try not to disappoint.

We've learned quite a bit in the last six months about who we are and what we want out of life. The wonderful adventure that is teaching English in Korea is really awesome, and even after six months, we still recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who isn't sure what to do after graduating from university, or who is just looking to travel or have an adventure before settling in to 'real life'. It's a tremendous opportunity to experience a different culture, learn a new language, and even earn a little extra money while you're at it.

That said, one of the things that Shan and I have learned while we've been here is that having a real life and globetrotting don't go all that well together. Since we've been here, we've had a great opportunity to get involved at a church here, but our involvement means that we don't often get to do the classic foreigner things like travelling all over Asia on the weekends. Now, this is definitely not a bad thing - far from it, in fact. It's simply what our experience has been, and we've realized as a result of that experience that as much as we love to travel, we would prefer to do it in more of a classic vacation style than expecting to do it and still have to be back for work on Monday.

The other thing we've learned is that, when 'real life' finally beckons, it's hard to ignore. For a few years now, I've had an idea in my head of what I think 'real life' holds for me, and being here, working at a job and pursuing my passion on the side, definitely has its difficult moments. Combine that with this conversation every time we meet new people:

-oh, you're married?
-yup
-do you have any children?
-not yet
-why not?
-because we're in Korea

Such conversations tend to be a rather constant reminder that we're only here for a season, and settling down to start a family is definitely part of that whole 'real life' thing, too.

By this point, you've probably figured out where I'm going with all this: as much as we love it here in Korea, we've decided that it's time to make the jump into 'real life' and come home after only one year in Korea, rather than the two we had originally planned. We've been mulling this over since our original jobs were unexpectedly terminated, and we were moved across the city to a new job and a new (albeit AWESOME) apartment. The change, while definitely not a bad one, served as a reminder to us that this adventure is not a permanent one, and that God's got plans for us when we get back to 'real life'.

Now, of course comes the point when when we realize that we have to start planning for our return home - jobs, housing, etc. and that in and of itself seems a little bit of a daunting task. The extent of such planning up to this point is making the decision that we'll go wherever we can find a church that will take me on (most preferably in a musical capacity), but that we'd prefer to stay in the Maritimes. A Master's degree is on the horizon as well, but probably not full time, and not before the 2010/11 school year.

So that's basically what's been happening with us over the last while. Shan will have a more in-depth report on our visit from Leslie coming soon.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Long Weekend!

This evening I find myself sitting on the KTX train on our way to Seoul for our first long weekend since the end of the January Intensives. It's most exciting because our trip this weekend has an ulterior purpose, too - our good friend Leslie (who played no small part in us deciding to come to Korea in the first place) is coming to visit or three weeks!

*Unfortunately, Leslie is currently trapped in Japan because of a precautionary swine flu quarantine, so we won't see her till tomorrow, but we're all still excited*

We're not 100% sure exactly what we're going to he doing this weekend (although, for me, that's part of the adventure), but we're excited nonetheless. Leslie will be the first person from home we'll have seen in person since we got here, and that is exciting enough even without the long weekend in Seoul! We may hit the zoo, we may go to one of the theme parks, we may just go sightseeing and shopping - it's just nice for us to have some time off. All I know for sure is that we'll be taking lots and lots of pictures, which makes me happy because I've been a really bad photographer lately, and I've not gone out for some serious picture-making in a fair little while.

As always, for more up-to-the-minute updates on our adventures this weekend, feel free to follow me on Twitter (or just watch re myriad of status updates that get transferred to Facebook automatically for me).

(also, I apologize for not yet doing the video tour of our new apartment. We bought a Wii instead of a camera last weekend.)

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

This is a Test

I've just found out about a photo-sharing site called Kizoa, and I wanted to give it a quick test to see how well it works with the blog.

So, for your viewing pleasure, here are a few of the pictures from our trip to Seoul a couple weeks ago.



Coming soon: our very first video entry - a tour of our new digs in Gwanjeo-dong!