Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious...

 as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.  ~Henry David Thoreau

Exactly 24 hours from now, we will be at the airport waiting for our flight home. Going home is an interesting thought, because to some it might imply that we think Korea hasn't been our home for over 2 years. Hopefully you realize that Korea was never meant to be our permanent home; it was always going to be temporary.

Marc and I have had a love-hate relationship with Korea for a long time. For example, I hatehatehate effing squatty potties (as one friend of mine has named them) but I lovelovelove the public transit system. We hate that it's nearly impossible to find a good sandwich here, but love the (customer/restaurant) service and how cheap it is to eat out. Seriously, there are several restaurants where Marc and I can get delicious, REAL meals together for under $20 total (sometimes under $10 total!). I think these days you can only accomplish that at fast food places in the US, or by sharing one plate.

We've made some friends here that we will miss, dearly. However, thanks to the wonders of the Internet maybe they won't seem so far away. Eventually, I'm sure we'll all be back on the same continent so I definitely see some trips out west and up north in our future.

Tomorrow we will get on that airplane and from then on, Korea will be a memory. We will look back fondly, I'm sure, and we'll tell our daughter how she lived in Korea before she was even born (haha). Maybe our children will all look at our photos one day and think, "Wow, I wish I was as cool as Mom and Dad!" We'll get on that (those) plane(s) tomorrow and go back to our "regular" lives; we always felt like things were kind of on hold as long as we stayed in Korea.

You know, I think we're not so much "going back" as we are "going forward." I mean, look at us--before Korea, we were poor, fat, and not quite as happy as it seemed like we should be. Now, post-Korea, we'll have our first baby, we'll be financially stable, we're skinnier, AND I think we're content with our lives and where we're at and where we're going. I guess while it may seem that not much has changed back home, we've changed. We're not the same people who left 2 years ago. Because of that, it's impossible to "go back" to anything; there is no back, only forward.

I've had a whole slew of awkward goodbyes this week, so with this final blog post I'm just going to say...

Goodbye, Korea. It's been real. Good luck with everything. 안녕!