April | 2012 | mudandkisses

So, I’m starting this blog about a year and a half later than I had planned. I got to Korea on July 19, 2010 and got completely sucked into my new life that I failed to do two things I had hoped to do: learn Korean and start a blog about my adventures.

I had high hopes of learning Korean, but my thoughts on how things would be while here were way wrong. I thought I would be completely surrounded by Koreans (who only spoke Korean), with just a few native English speakers around who were also teachers. I would hang out with my new Korean buddies in the Norabongs (Karaoke bars) and sip Soju (really cheap Korean alcohol ..basically tastes like rubbing alcohol) with temples in the background.

Boy was I wrong! Within my first week in Seoul, I went to something called Mud Fest. You would think (as did I) that I was going to some uber-Asian event. Wrong! It was a bunch of Westerners flying down mud slides (it was Korean mud at least!) and singing along to covers of American rock songs (the bands were made up of mostly Koreans though!). I sure didn’t feel like I was outside of the US at this point. I also met several American soldiers while there. One in particular that I made sure to throw some mud at in order to start a conversation.

The following weekend, I started hanging out with Allen (one of the soldiers I met at Mud Fest), with whom I had quite a few months of fun with hanging out at clubs and meeting new people. All of those people being American, Canadian, or of various Asian ethnicity that spoke completely fluent English. I had also started in at my new job during this time (they only gave a couple days of training before throwing us in with a classroom-full of Korean kindergartners. Thankfully I had teaching experience and the best group of kids anyone could have asked for, but I’ll talk about them at another time) and realized that for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, I would be engulfed in teaching (so only hearing and speaking) English. Let’s just say, I was not on the right track to learning to speak Korean or meeting some new Korean buddies and singing K-Pop with them. Most (of course there are exceptions) Koreans could really care less about making friends with the Westerners here anyways (but all of that is a whole other story). Basically, I realized that it was not at all necessary to learn to speak Korean and it was about the last thing I wanted to learn at the end of a 10 hour day of teaching.

Remember that other guy I ‘had to throw some mud at and get to have a conversation with’? Well, he was another reason I threw all of those other ideas about how my ‘time in Korea would go’ out the window. He was (and still is) the great reason that my time in Korea ended up completely different than I originally had planned.

So, you’ve heard about the ‘Mud’, now here comes the ‘Kisses’. Reggie and I went on our first date just about a week after I had been in Korea. We went to a restaurant called Buddha’s Belly (Thai). I liked this guy…I really liked this guy. To make a long story short, he only had a month left in the country but decided to come back for several visits to make things work with me. We had a lot of great times and also visited many Korean tourist spots, so I was at least carrying on a little bit like I was in Korea.

We carried on this long-distance relationship for about 8 months, with 2 visits in-between and during that time discovered that we would be having a new addition to our lives. This came as quite a surprise but we grew more and more excited. Although, with our current situation of me still in Korea, not being finished with my contract for another several months and Reggie still in the States and looking for a job (he had retired from the Navy after that first- my first, his last, month in Korea).

Luckily, Reggie landed a great job soon after our news! Only thing, this job was in Korea. Looked like we would be spending more time here, and now with a little one. (This sure wasn’t what I initially expected of my Korean adventure!) We were going to make this work! Making another long story short, Reggie moved back out to Korea and a couple months later, I finished up my contract at school and headed tot he States to have our son.

Now, exactly 5 months to the day (4/9/2012), we have a beautiful little boy named Peyton Riley! He and I are back in Korea with daddy and this little guy is smothered in kisses on a daily basis and he couldn’t be happier about it!