[Finished Theodore Rex. You can check out my review here]

We’ve had a wonderful time while staying in the southern portion of the Korean peninsula, but in a couple of hours, we’ll begin our journey “home.” La has been an absolute champ in the way that she’s acclimated to this culture and to a few [somewhat] uncomfortable circumstances. I’m not going to throw out a list of things that we did while we were here, but our fotiki.com site will be updated as soon as we can transfer our pictures onto a hard drive.

There’s not a whole lot that I’ve missed about being in the U.S., but there are two very significant things that La and I have discussed that have been hard to do without.

The first involves the language gap. Growing up, I was given quite a few opportunities to learn Han Gul [the Korean name for the Korean language] but never applied myself to it – I was a pretty rebellious son-a-b as a child. Opposed to seemingly popular opinion, the rest of the word does not [in fact] speak English.

[as an aside, we have been tempted on more than one occasion to speak to people in Spanish and Portuguese – which is just dumb]

The second is our loss of autonomy. It has been difficult for us to try to go anywhere alone. When we do, and if we are gone for an extended period, we are asked “what happened.” This is a difficulty as La and I love to explore our surroundings when we’re in a new place. On the good end, my mother’s family have been so unbelievably accommodating in shuttling us around or leading us through different areas. Their kindness has made this trip sweet.

All in all, leaving is sort of bitter sweet.

You come to love people that you’re related to – the same people that you only get to see [apparently] every decade or so. On the other hand, you get to leave the people that you have no social history or common language with.

You have to leave the extreme kindness of your family and new found friends. Conversely, you’re free to live again.

When it comes down to it, that’s what we want though [right]? Don’t most of us in our individualized culture yearn for freedom? Trust me, this will bleed into my next blog.