Countdown

I feel like I am on a perpetual countdown now...

~Every paycheck feels like a countdown
~I'm counting down do all of my online class money and my extra class money
~About 2 15 days until I become an Aunt for the first time (2 weeks)
~20 days until my Bridal shower/Bachelorette Party (less than 3 weeks)
~30 days until Cody's 25th Birthday (Just over 4 weeks)
~55 days until Cody and my Wedding (About 8 weeks)
~69 days until we are planning on going to the Philippines (About 10 weeks)
~94 days until the last day of our contract (Just over 13 weeks)

and then an un-named amount of days until many other parties and events. It's crazy. Some days I wake up and can't believe I am in a foreign country and that I am about to become a married woman. Other days I can't wait to become a married woman and get out of this country.

I love it in Korea, but I miss home a lot. Korea has left a lot of impressions on me...

Samgaebsal, Bibimbab, Kimchi Chiggae... well kimchi in general... and many other dishes.

Korea has also left a lot of cultural impressions on me, both good and bad. A lot of days recently I don't want to go to school and wish I could just fly out the next day. I know I'll make it, and I know leaving will be kind of bittersweet. I have made a lot of friends here and i know some of those friendships might not last through the severing of our close proximity and the continuance of our adult lives... but so goes being an adult and growing up, it happens. I also know that once we leave this country we might... well, not lose... but definitely have to let go of friends that we expected to return home with and continue our lives with in Portland. Fallon may be leaving us to go live in Australia for awhile.. and while that is awesome for her (I would love to live in Australia), and I hope everything works out well for her, I will miss her and cannot help but being upset or angry in a silly way that I feel like I am losing her.

One thing I don't look forward to moving home is feeling like I am losing all of my friends. I have friends back home, but all of them are male, except for Fallon, Jen, Lori and perhaps any work friends left back home. Jen is planning her big exciting move to Italy, and Fallon will be spending most of her time in Idaho until she leaves for Australia, and Lori is busy being a newlywed. I am a bit afraid that I will have a really hard time making more close female friends. I seem to have had a hard time as an adult making female friends... until I came to Korea. I think I have come out of my shell a little bit since coming here, and I think in a way, being forced among so many strangers and being almost made to make friends so wuickly, may have helped my friend-making skills. I really hope so anyway. I love my guy friends back home, but a girl really needs girl friends... and friends who are willing to hang out with her apart from her husband....

I don't know, maybe I am worrying all for nothing, and I have a lot more worries than that for when I get home. I have to change my name, get a job, find a place to live, find a place for Dante to stay until I find a place to live... pay off debt... travel some more. Mostly travel. Cody and I need to go on our honeymoon when we get back (somewhere in Mexico or the Carribean I think), we want to visit our friend Scott, who is currently serving in the airforce in California, and I really want to take Cody back to Ohio for a few days to visit my ailing grandmother and my very large quantity of family there... and maybe take him to one of the two main theme parks there... Cedar Point or King's Island... maybe even drive to Six-Flags or Sea World. Either way, he has only met a little portion of my family, and it's really important to me that he meets most of it, especially my grandmother, and as she's about 90 years old, there's not that much time left...

Anyway, i am really looking forward to being married to the love of my life and going home and starting our life together. I hope everything works out, I am sure it will, it always seems to, but I always worry too much.

At this point though, I am really just very excited about my bachelorette party and bridal shower... Hehe... more on that in three weeks...