Dear home town

Holy actual crap, it's been a year!

In fact it's been just over 53 weeks since I wrote this very boring post prior to my flight to Korea. Boy do I remember that day well too; it was almost like a roller coaster, except with a track made of anxiety and a safety bar made of more anxiety.

I've decided to celebrate by making a mock-up list from the past year of things I haven't covered yet in this blog. All the fun little moments that kind of got lost in the day to day shuffle of living here, kind of like a Greatest Hits list. Or like a clip show. You know how when you're really into a TV show and then all of a sudden they do a clip show to fill time and you feel really annoyed so you don't watch it? Well yeah, it'll be like that.

But that's not this entry, because this time I have to talk about how my freaking parents came to Korea! They were here on my turf, in my apartment and everything! I have proof, check it out:

See? That's them, on my terrible couch next to my terrible guitar

As far as surreal experiences go, this was definitely up there. I had gotten so used to relaying things about South Korea to family and friends back home that I hadn't adequately prepared to show people first hand. But damn, it was a fun and all-too-short few days when they were here. I got to introduce them to Chloe for the first time (who finally admitted I was right that she had no reason to be worried, which brings the total number of arguments I've won to a comfortable 2 out of 7,000) and the four of us took a trip down to Haeundae Beach in Busan.

I forgot to mention to my parents before they came here that Korea is about 10 million kilometers closer to the sun than Canada is though. God damn was it hot in Busan. We visited Oryukdo Skywalk on the first day and hiked along the coast, then traveled out to Yonggungsa Temple on Sunday. Mostly we just went to different places, sweat a ton, said, "It's too fucking hot let's go," and then went somewhere else. But then we drank a lot of beer and passed out on the beach, so pretty good overall!

Back to Seoul on Monday! After dropping off some stuff in Itaewon, we visited Insadong market (almost a year to the day after I first went there) and then saw Seoul at night from the top of Namsan tower. On Tuesday we attempted to visit Gyeongbokgung Palace but found the gates barred for the day. So rather than risk international incident by storming the palace in a bloody coup, we simply took a boat cruise on the Han River, then met Chloe in the evening to see a baseball game. Have I talked about baseball games in Korea here yet? Man oh man. We should talk.

Ah, but all good things must come to an end. It was pretty tough saying goodbye on Wednesday. I didn't really appreciate at the time, but I had never gone so long without seeing my parents as when I moved here. It was much harder to watch them go this time even than the first time I left, because I know now how long it may be before I see them again. When I wrote that first post a year ago, I thought by now I would be writing my "I'm back in Canada!" post and wrapping this thing up. But such is the passage of time; you never really know what will come to pass. I still feel homesick, but sometimes now I look around at my tiny apartment - terrible guitar and terrible couch and all - and it feels like home too. That never used to happen before.

But there's a bright side here: with all the amazing gifts my parents brought me, there's a lot less Canada for me to go back to these days!

Yes, that's a full case of beer. Eat it, customs.

Thanks for the great visit, mom and dad. I love you!

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