I’m lying on the floor of my apartment on my sleeping bag.  Aside from my mammoth fridge and unstable washing machine that compete for the title of Loudest Whiteware 2011, this is all I have.  I’ve kept this blog for over a year and have managed to keep it positive, so I won’t go in to the details and explain why.

I say it’s all I have, but I also have a mess of things to fit in to a suitcase.  This has all made it a little bit more real that this experience is over.  It’s still kind of hard to accept but I guess time will help it.

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting and, without getting in to the cheesy ‘I’ve grown so much as a person” thing, I can probably get away with saying that this has been the experience of my life.

I’ve had an amazing time, met so many great people, met some “characters” (read: strange people), eaten some weird things and had some first time experiences.  Most of the memorable ones are things that aren’t new to most people here; I experienced snow, went on a subway and saw heaps of new animals like chipmunks, squirrels and snakes.

Teaching was an interesting experiment, but I don’t think I could work as a teacher back home, as fun as it was at times.

There are a bunch of things that I will miss about Korea, mostly the little things (I don’t mean the hunched over old people), but things like honesty, free stuff from shop owners and double hinged doors everywhere so you never get embarrassed by pulling when you should push.  Of course, these go hand in hand with things I won’t miss like spitting.

Top of the things I will miss list are the friends I have made here.  There have been lots of promises to see many of them again and I really hope it happens.  Thanks to you all for an amazing year.

Thanks for following this blog as well.  After almost 200 posts I can’t believe you’re still reading it.  I hope you haven’t been reading this whole time hoping for some thoughtful or inspirational ending that creates a nice sense of completion because I only have one sentence to end this with.

The red stuff is hot.