................Taking Flight...............: 1 Year Anniversary in Korea!!

Today marks 1 year of being in Korea! I still can't wrap my head around the fact that I've been outside of the US for one year, 365 days. It just blows my mind. I can't even fathom how I haven't held and cuddled with my Toby-baby, seen my mom, slept in my bed, drove my car, hugged my grandpa, eaten veggies out of our garden, picked fruit or gone to Silver Beach in a whole year. I've missed weddings, snow storms and my favorite spring season.

But I also know that I've had quite the experience here too. It's been an incredible journey and time of growth, challenges, changes, love and new experiences. I've met new friends, reconnected and deepened old friendships, learned to teach EFL, gotten back into soccer, started studying Korean again, traveled to Taiwan, Bali, Malaysia and Thailand, seen the marriage of one of my best friends, met another friend's baby, had visitors, met my boyfriend's parents and made a new boyfriend who's always by my side and helps support me when I'm feeling homesick or down. It's been a roller coaster for sure and I feel blessed by the people who helped shape me at home to be able to come here and do this for a year, and the people who helped me here be able to stick around for one more.

Camp went well. I had one more girl show up, so now the poor boy is out numbered 3-1. They had fun today and we taste tested some foods to practice textures and flavor descriptions. The snack for today was ice cream which I loved. :)

I stuck around til 2 today and then it was off to Myeongdong. First on the list was the bank. I wanted to go to a really international area so that I had a higher chance of the bank teller speaking English to help me. I wanted to do an international transfer and send some money home. I also wanted to exchange some Korean Won to USD for my trip home in TWO WEEKS!! I was successful only in the international transferring. They had to set up an account for me to do this and it took almost an hour. Luckily, the worker spoke really good English and was very nice, so I did right by heading to Myeongdong. It was getting close to 4 at this point and I didn't want to stand in line and transfer money in the other bank part so I headed out so I could finally get "lunch". I walked to Pita Pit and had a sandwich there. I sat and hung out there before doing some window shopping.

Then on to class. Class was okay . I left early because I wanted to celebrate the 1 year of being here with Jacob. We met up in Hongdae a little after 8 and went to the Beastro for dinner. We wanted to try it and it was closed the last time so I thought it would be a nice place to go to celebrate. We tried a french fry dish, chicken macaroni and cheese, and the fried chicken. It was really good. I loved the mac 'n cheese. The fries were a little crunchy and salty for my liking. We were so full from dinner we didn't get any dessert to celebrate and it was already a bit late.