GOING HOME!

yes it's official!!!! jens and i are going home at the end of this contract! unfortunately that does not mean his book was picked up to be published yet. we just thought it all through and decided that no matter what we'll go home april 2010! i'm so excited!!!

it all started when i emailed jens and told him i was done with korea. that i couldn't take it anymore! lol korea has been a wonderful experience and i definitely don't regret doing it but there just comes a point when it's time to leave, ya know? (i emailed him because we always do that when we're both at work).

he wrote back giving me all the numbers- like how much we've saved, how much we could save this year, how much we would save if we stayed a 4th year, how long it'd take him to write a 3rd novel and go through the firefighter emt training he's going to do, etc. then he sent a second email saying he had just found out some more info about the training- turns out he has to do a boot camp (in person in texas of course) before he can finished the last 9 months of the training. originally he was thinking he could get ALL the training out of the way before going home so he could immediately start looking for a job when we got back. but since he can't finish the training in korea that changes things a bit.

but he was still sounding pretty pessimistic and wanted to know more from me- about why i wanted to leave now, what we would do in texas, etc.

long story short- i convinced him that this should be our last year! woohoo!!!!! i can't believe it!

it's such a relief! it's amazing how much it's changed my perspective already. i feel so much more optimistic. i feel like i can really appreciate korea more now that there's an end in sight, ya know? i find myself wanting to take pictures again like i did when i first came here! pics of random things like mailboxes and carts filled with cardboard boxes and little dogs with dyed hair!

aaaaaahhhhh it's so refreshing!

now we're thinking about all the places we wanna see and things we wanna do in korea before we leave. we're still planning to go to se asia in winter. i think we're gonna try to go for the full two months- jan. and feb. depending on how much we wanna spend. se asia is super cheap though so it should be doable. i mean some places cost like $5 a night lol

then when we go home in april we'll live in my grandma's old apt. that my dad built onto their garage. we call it the bungalow. it's really nice and we'll share my parents one acre yard with them. that'll be REALLY nice seeing as how we've had NO yard for 3 years lol it'll be great to be able to let the dogs out the front door to use the bathroom and run around. no more pee pads! (hopefully they'll catch on pretty quickly lol)

career plans:
jens will write his 3rd novel in sept./nov. then do part of the emt/firefighter training online in nov./dec. we'll go on vacation then he'll do another part of the training in march/april. once we get back to texas he'll do that boot camp and then he'll have 9 months left of training.
as for me i'm seriously thinking about getting into event planning/wedding planning. i want to try to be an assistant to someone who's already doing it so i can get hands-on experience right away. then if i really like it i can become a certified event/wedding planner and do it on my own. another option for me is culinary school. in high school i wanted to be a chef but gave up on it when i became vegetarian because i didn't want to deal with meat- plus i was young and wasn't sure what i wanted to do. but now that i'm not vegetarian anymore and i've really gotten into cooking the past couple years i think it's a possibility for me again. i'd love to work in the cooking school at central market. so those are two things i'm going to pursue when we get back. a 3rd thing i'm interested in is the eco-friendly field in general which opens up a lot of options. hopefully i can find a job in one of those fields right off the bat but if not i'll just take anything until i can find what i want and we can get on our feet.

so our to-do list so far is:
see and do things in korea
go to japan
have ben and viv visit
go to se asia
jens- write novel
jens- train to be a firefighter-emt
randi- look into job opportunities
sell stuff off
ship stuff home
prepare ourselves for culture shock! lol
go home!

yaaaaaaaaaay! goodbye korea! hello texas!