Merry Christmas!

My Christmas in Korea:

My Charlie Brown Christmas tree and dollar-store decorations

Decorating the tree!

The finished product, complete with Christmas candles

Even better at night

Christmas eve get-together with friends at a "game room"

The punishment for losing the game was getting "bopped" by a stranger (hehe)

Merry Christmas from Korea!

Love and miss you all

Summary of FL

1. Weather was wonderful and I love FL sunsets and walks in general

2. Shopping is wonderful... except when you have to do a bunch of it in a week...

3. Friendships are complicated! (But worth it)

4. I really do miss American food. There wasn't enough time to eat all I wanted to.

5. It was really hard leaving home, and I cried... but being back here isn't so horrible.

***One thing I regret is having to sleep. I tried not to, but my body wouldn't listen.

****And I hate jet lag.

Home...

is great. It's like I never left.

But Korea's great too... It's weird.

I'm LOVING this!!!

I'll Be Home for Christmas!

With only one more week to go before I'm HOME... I can't stop thinking about it. It's weird being in a culture that doesn't celebrate Christmas.

PEOPLE here celebrate Christmas... but the culture doesn't. There's a few decorations up in some stores, and one or two major streets have lights on them... but it's SO not the same. It makes me REALLY miss America. And so glad I'm going there soon!

I've been sinking a little into culture shock once again. (Not sure if that's possible...?) But getting definitely homesick with each passing day, and less tolerant of things I don't understand in Korea.

The first thing I'm going to do (besides see my best friends and family) is go to Best Buy and get my freakin computer fixed! I tried to figure out the process of getting it fixed overseas... WOW. It sucks. I'd have to pay for all the costs and then they'd pay me back in about 2 months. Yuck. I'm just praying they can get it fixed before I leave!

And then the next thing I'm going to do is go shopping at a drug store for necessities... that are in ENGLISH! And then I'm going to have something amazing for dinner. And then grocery shopping. And then Christmas.

Ugh... I am so homesick... I can hardly wait!

Keepin' Busy

Sometimes it feels like all there is to do now is stay busy. And wait.

Wait for a change of residence. Wait for a change of jobs. Wait for opportunities to come my way.

I'm trying to keep myself busy with my amazing friends from church and soon-to-be roomies. It helps (but I still miss Jin).

Tharine (one of my new roomies) stayed over for a few days this past weekend since she's inbetween places to live at the moment. We can't move into our new place for another week, and her school let her go at the beginning of the month. And since the schools usually control the housing... yeah, you're homeless. I think both Tharine and I are really happy that we're going to "own" our own place. If something happens to our job, we'll still have a home.

The other really nice thing is that Tharine and I will have this place the whole next year we have our contracts! However... Eli's (my other roomie) is finished next year... She's not sure what she'll do yet.

It's definitely nice because more and more this church and its people are becoming a family to me. Even though I know it's not permanent here, I don't feel like I'm drifting... and that's nice.

It's so double-sided because I love traveling to new places and seeing/experience new things... but I miss having a home. A stable place where the people have known you for years and love you and want you around. I guess right now home is still Florida... with my parents there and some of my dearest friends... I guess it will be for awhile. I just still need to figure out how to feel "at home" in a foreign land. I think I'm learning...