December was magical

December was actually, actually magical. 

Between restful Sundays, hot chocolate, snow fall, snowflake making, plane rides, and ice skating, December was indeed full. 

Two of my favorite times happened within the last week, so that shows you how short my memory is and how full December was. 

Last Sunday, Air Force friend J took us up in a little Cesna. It was such an awesome experience seeing Korea from above. I was also surprised with a little zero gravity action when phones started floating backwards. Seriously, everyone should do it once and I should totally be an astronaut. The landscape was stunningly snowy even though I couldn't feel my toes.

My second favorite time was on Christmas Eve, Tuesday, when we went ice skating in Seoul in front of City Hall. It was joyful and cheerful and Christmassy and just what I needed for this lonely holiday. To be with a group of uprooted foreigners in a snowy wonderland with a big Christmas tree was perfect. As good as it could have gotten (although I would've given just about anything to be home with family). 

Friends and family, I missed you all a lot this week but am so looking forward to seeing you all soon!

As I procrastinate from packing, Nim keeps attacking my feet, fingers, arms, legs, ears, and occasionally my nose. I'll still miss him and his kookiness, he has kept great company over the last few months (if a little abusive). Luckily, he'll be in the hands of two trustworthy friends to keep him entertained while I'm gone (hopefully he won't get too fat). 

Tomorrow morning, I leave from Cheonan on the 5:30am bus to the airport. From Gimpo, I fly to Beijing, and from Beijing, I fly to Chicago. I am so excited to be home for a bit and to soak up all the love and warmth of my humans. Also, I master the art of time travel this weekend as I fly out Saturday at 9:20am and arrive in Chicago at noon. Thanks Hermione, for the time turner. 

BE HOME SO SOON.  

That Darn Cat

Thursday, November 28th (Wednesday back home) was a rough, rough day. 

It was hard holding myself together at school. The kids were so happy, and I wanted to be happy with them, but even the thought of being happy made me sick. How could I smile when I had lost one of my best friends? Now, it may seem like I'm being a bit melodramatic, he was a cat after all. But he spent 13 years with my family and it's hard to remember a time when he wasn't there. He lived in the milk house in the backyard, he traveled looong journeys up north where he wouldn't stop meowing, and he spent countless days on the screened-in porch on the shores of Lake Mich. He was family. 

The first night was full of tears, but afterwards I came to realize he had had a very full and dramatic life. And it made me smile looking at pictures and remembering his antics. As a tribute to this darling boy, I thought I'd share thirteen of my favorite memories of him. 

1. The first night we had him, we went out to the milk house where he and his sister, Angel, lived to show our Aunt and Uncle. Upon arrival, we realized that only Angel was present at our gathering. In desperation we began seeking high and low for the little Tumbleweed when we heard a mewing coming from somewhere near the door. The little rascal had pulled the insulation out of the wall and then had fallen down it (tumbled, if you will). Dad had to tear the wall open to get him out (he was NOT happy about it..). And we officially welcomed Tumbleweed and Angel into our family.

2. He was a brave cat. He would follow Marshall and I down the slide (on his own, mind you) and he even went sledding with us on the backyard (we would put him on our laps in an inflatable sled and go on our merry way!). Both kitties also enjoyed climbing up to the tree house with us (two-story tree house toooo high in the tree). I still think he should've been on America's Funniest Home Videos.

3. This summer, I was painting a bench for Aunt Christy and he kept walking through my purple paint until his paws were all purple and he left purple paw prints wherever he went. 

4. He always used to sit and sleep on the bird feeder outside the backdoor waiting for us to come out and see him. When he got overly desperate, he would climb the trellis and meow through the skylight until he got our attention. 

5. Burrito kitty. He was so good-natured he would let us swaddle him in a towel and hold him like a baby for hours. 

6. Trips up north when he would meow for 4 hours straight. (And the time we tranquilized him and he was loopy for hours and kept falling off things). Sitting on the screened-in porch with him reading books in the early morning, in the afternoon, and at night. 

7. When you would hold him like a baby and he would stretchhhh all the way to the ground if he could. 

8. When I would read outside and he thought his place was on top of my book. 

9. Watching river monsters together. 

10. The number of times we found him in other people's cars or houses... he was the friendly neighborhood cat. 

11. While at school and in Korea, I skyped him and talked to him on the phone. 

12. His good taste in beverages: we shared Biggby and beer numerous times. 

13. He was a dog stuck in a cat's body and would come when he was called even if he was in Montessori or in the far back yard. His purring could stop traffic. He was constantly purring and it was incredibly loud. I will miss his purring most. 

I love you, Tumbies. 

Bittersweet

I'm re-reading Bittersweet, by Shauna Niequist because, well, life in Korea is bitter and it's sweet. There are times I love it here. I love the public transportation system, I love being brave enough to go all the way to Seoul and wander around that massive city on my own, I love being able to navigate, I love being able to solo-travel, I love having a place of my own to decorate, I love having no one to answer to. But there are the times when living here is so so bitter I could drop everything and leave. There are times when I realize I'm completely alone, there are times when I realize I kind of have a church, but I don't have a church family or a church community. There are times when I bitterly realize the Koreans put sugar in EVERYTHING and it makes even my lattes too sweet. Last week, all I wanted to do was be with my family and say goodbye to my best-friend-cat, but I could only say goodbye over skype. There are times when I need to talk to my friends back home and I can't because it's the middle of the night there. There are times when I don't want to even try making friends here because I already have friends back home. There are times when the sight of a trash can brings me JOY because they are so few and far between. Life here is bitter, but life here is sweet.

Things that have stood out to me during my re-reading, but I'm only on page 81 of 249.

"

Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness.

This is what I've come to believe about change: it's good in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. By that I mean that it's incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God's hand, which is where you wanted to be all along, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what you thought it should be. So this is the work I'm doing now, and the work I invite you into: when life is sweet, say thank you and and celebrate, and when life is bitter, say thank you and grow.

The smell of dirt and herbs seemed like the essence of life, something I needed desperately.

And this is what Denise told me: she said it's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.

I write and read, in airports and hotel rooms and coffee shops and in the little blue room in our house. I read novels and essays and magazines and cookbooks and the Bible,  and I couldn't live well without those things.

Because there really is nothing like good friends, like the sounds of their laughter and the tones of their voices and the things they teach us in the quietest, smallest moments.

There's something so healing about those quiet moments at the table, where everyone's mouth - or mind or heart - is full, when you feel connected and nourished and content, even if it's just for a split second.

Sometimes we have to leave home in order to find out what we left there, and why it matters so much.

That's why travel is so important, among other reasons: to get far enough away from our everyday lives to see those lives with new clarity. When you're literally on the other side of the world, when you're under the silent sea, watching a bright, silent world of fish and coral, when you're staying up at a sky so bright and dense with stars it makes you gasp, it's in those moments that you begin to see the fullness of your life, the possibility that still prevails, that always prevails.

"

There's the good and there's the bad, but they compose this journey I'm calling an adventure. I'm growing. And it's not always pretty. There are parts that are ugly and unexpected. There are parts of me I didn't know existed. There are parts that are beautiful. There are parts that are blooming. And there are parts I desperately need to out grow.