If home is where the heart is...

I must have two hearts. It is Friday, end of another week in Korea- and everywhere else for that matter. I am going to Seoul tomorrow to meet up with a whole heap of folk for a night of splendid indulgence. I should be very excited but as time ticks away the last few weeks of my contract here I meet every weekend with mixed feelings.

Yes, it is Friday. Yes, I don't have to work tomorrow. Yes, I am going to Seoul tomorrow morning so I won't get woken up by the Korean National anthemn blaring out of the school next door. Yes, I am excited that in just about a month I can see my family and friends back in England again. I just wish that there was some way of getting all of my friends to live in the same place. Hum, double-edged sword. I love meeting people from different countries, loving the fact that I have friends from all over the world, hate the fact that I can't live in the same place as all of them.

At the moment I am comforting myself about leaving Korea with the thought that I will be back. That isn't going to make it any easier to leave England though. Ah well, life is exciting and I would rather have people to miss than nobody to care about.

Goodness me, I am getting caught up in the soppiness today. Pull yourself together, H, you are going to Seoul. Looking forward to a weekend in Seoul. There was a time, not so long ago, when I used to spend more weekends in Seoul than in Gangneung. I guess that when I started a serious saving scheme- if money under the mattress constitutes serious- I also cut back on the Seoul jaunts.

I am going with some people from Gangneung but also meeting up with people from as far a field as Mokpo. Tania and me spent some time the other night trying to work out how we were going to fit all the meals we wanted into just two days. Even if we went up on Friday night we would only gain one extra meal. Certainly part of the charm of going to Seoul is to eat some honest to goodness western food. Which is kind of a shame as there are some awesome Korean restaurants there too, apparently.

It is also the weekend of the St Patrick's Day celebrations. One of the more surreal moments of my first year in Korea was when I found myself marching in a Paddy's parade in Itaewon, wearing shamrock stickers, surrounded by Irish-Americans who were giving out the stickers, following a Korean bagpipe marching band dressed in traditional Scottish outfits, lurid red lipstick exactly matching their kilts. Last year in Gangneung, we rounded up the two half Irish people here to drink with on the basis that two halves make a whole. Drinking Korean beer dyed green was also a weird experience.

I even timed my return to Korea for Paddy's Day back in 2003 as I knew that would increase the chances of my mates being in Seoul to welcome me home. And me an English girl who had never even celebrated Paddy's Day until I moved to Sydney. And the Aussies I was working with asked me why the Irish temp hadn't turned up that day!

So off to Seoul tomorrow to leave some stuff for Sam to babysit for me while I am away. One of the first things that people say when they come to my house is 'wow, you have a LOT of stuff' followed by 'your place is really clean'- not knowing that I have just picked up armfuls of stuff and thrown them into the wardrobe as the doorbell rang.

As an aside, I really shouldn't tell my middle school students about British culture, see if you can spot the thing that I regret telling them, they seem to have developed a bad photo habit.