I've never started a blog before let alone any kind of diary so apologies if this is a dull read, bear with me! Well, the lead up to the start of the trip was difficult, exhausting and very emotional. The last two weeks of my teaching job were so chaotic that I had barely any time to process that my lifestyle of more than 3 years was about to end. Fortunately the kids were great in those weeks, and I had some great lessons, though I was still more than a little preoccupied with recovery from surgery, that was painful to endure - I never told anyone at work so had to suffer it in silence. Anyway the last day was pretty anti-climactic, though I should show some appreciation to James and Marc, who I went with for some great Korean BBQ after, and they paid for me too! I also finished my online teaching job as well during that time, it was kind of emotional with one parent begging me not to stop teaching her son, and one student crying about me ending his classes - he had been my 1-1 student twice a week for two years.

I had a lot of trouble getting all of my stuff ready to leave Korea; in particular sending my things back to the UK, and then also sending money home, in the end I ended up losing more than I liked to bank fees but managed to tie things up in the end, Sungrim was super patient and helpful with the whole process, so many thanks to her. Moving out was a pain, we gave some stuff to friends, but in the end we had to throw out a ton of stuff. Boxing up and sending stuff was a nightmare as when I got to the office they wouldn't let me send a speaker I got from my Dad, eventually I got it to Sungrim's sister to look after, after lugging it around for a week! Sungrim was also very concerned about where to put her things, eventually choosing storage in Korea, but she had to throw away a lot so it wasn't an easy time for her. We also had a debacle with our visa to China - well mine - whereby apparently immigration hadn't stamped my passport upon re-entry from my winter trip to Japan; though it was OK eventually it meant a lot of worrying and yet more sitting in silence in the office while the agents argued about it with Sungrim - since I can't speak Korean well there's been a lot of situations like that...One thing that did go smoothly was that I got my 40,000,000 won deposit back for my house problem free, which was a massive relief.

I spent as much time with friends as I could during those two weeks after finishing work, spending some very valuable time with them; topping it all off, my friends surprised me with a trip to a pension (rental home) where we stayed for one night, eating, drinking and they even made a goodbye video and photobook for me! Everyone did a fantastic job keeping me in the dark about it, even Sungrim who saw me everyday during the week before, they even paid for it all and wouldn't let me contribute anything - in that moment I felt very down to be leaving Korea. Special thanks to Javier, Gyeongsuk, Brittany, John, El, Areum and Justin for that moment. I saw others in that time too, leading up to the end - Seongjun, Cheongman, Myo-hong, Basil, James and Gangsuk. Javier and Gyeongsuk we saw on the last night before we left Gyeongsan, Cheongman too, who helped me so much during my time in Korea... I'll miss them all.