It's finally time. One week from today, Will and I will be on a plane, far from Korea. We've packed many of our belongings into suitcases, prepared boxes to ship home, planned our goodbye dinner with the teachers, planned parties in all of our classes on Friday, and purchased plane tickets. We have a long list of errands to run, but we are well on our way to being completely ready. So, for the few people reading this blog who do not have a Facebook and have not seen my exuberant status updates, it's time to reveal our Big Exciting Travel Plans for Anastasia and Will's Awesome European Adventure 2012.
Next Sunday, we travel to Seoul and hop on a plane to Berlin. We spend 3 nights in Berlin, 2 nights in Zurich, 3 nights in Florence, 4 nights in Venice, 2 nights in Salzburg, 3 nights in Vienna, and 3 nights in Prague. We arrive at the Atlanta Airport on December 17th, and travel to Florida for Christmas on the 21st. We have this amazing opportunity because of a generous severance pay for fulfilling our contract, and the school's contractual obligation to pay our way home (which means they reimburse us for the average cost of a ticket to the U.S.). We are so excited to have this experience!
To give a little history, Will has been to Europe several times, but has never been to Switzerland, Austria, or the Czech Republic. He has been to Italy, but has never been to Venice. He has been to Germany to visit his mom and brother who lived there, but he has never been to Berlin. I went to Prague, Salzburg, and Vienna (as well as Munich, Germany) with my choir when I was 16. I am so excited to return to 3/4 of the cities I saw, as well as to visit Berlin, Zurich, Florence, and Venice for the first time. We have grand plans for sightseeing and adventuring, but as we haven't quite finished that stage of the planning, we'll reveal those later.
I won't have time to write again before I leave, but please keep checking my blog. I will try my best to post an update from each European city we visit, and I also plan to post more observations and pictures from our stay in Korea even after returning to the U.S. Part of the way I learn and come to conclusions is by writing and sharing my thoughts, so I'd like to continue the learning experience after returning home. I'm sure returning to America will feel very strange, so perhaps I'll post something about that as well.
Sorry for the dry tone of this post - I'm a tired girl! We just finished speaking tests and open class days with the kindergarten parents, and my free time has been devoted to packing, shopping, errands, and trips to Seoul to picked up souvenirs and Will's new suits. I'm also a mess of emotions - I'm sad to leave Korea, excited to travel, impatient to just be home, devastated at leaving my students behind, glad to finally have a rest, exhausted from my work and errands, and worried about unfinished trip planning. Therefore, to keep this messy, sticky, emotional glob from spilling into this blog and making you dizzy and sick, I'm going to keep this post neat and clean. But expect a whirl of (quieter) emotions in the posts to follow.
One thing is sure; I have absolutely no regrets about coming to Korea, and I am so very happy to be returning home.
