All posts by Claire

About Claire

Wandering (and wondering) development professional and aspiring aid worker. Contact me on anticipationofwonder[at]gmail[dot]com

Extreme eating

Adventures, trains and train stations, travelling in Korea

A long weekend is a rare blessing in Korea, particularly as a Hagwon employee. This long weekend – courtesy of Buddha’s birthday on Friday – was a chance to take a trip to the less touristed, less famous South West of the country. Except that there are no trains that run across the country (east to west). In order to go from Daegu to Mokpo, it is necessary to travel half way to Seoul (heading North), change stations and catch another train back towards the south. Frustratingly complicated, especially because the whole country was on the move. Having bought my tickets 2 weeks in advance, it took me leaving Daegu at 7:40 in the morning (having worked until 10:20 the night before) to reach Mokpo at 12:20.

I arrived in Mokpo, hopped on the city bus (thankfully described in the guidebook because there is NO English) and promptly found myself going in the wrong direction. One more try and I made it to the Mokpo Ferry terminal. The terminal isn’t particularly well sign-posted until you’re right on top of it. At least, it isn’t in English. It may be perfectly signposted in Korean.

I took a wander along the road, loving the hot sun (I even put on sunscreen) while I waited for my partner-in-travel to arrive. Her bus was slightly delayed by the traffic jam of people leaving Seoul for the weekend, but eventually she arrived in Mokpo and proceeded to follow in my footsteps and get on a bus going in the wrong direction. While I waited for her to change buses and find her way to the coast, I sat on the steps outside the Ferry terminal and watched the world of Mokpo pass slowly by.

Mokpo is a relatively small and underdeveloped city. The whole province of Jeollanam, in fact, is underdeveloped, in terms of infrastructure for tourist but also economically. This is, according to guidebooks and the other usual information sources, apparently partly because the opposition was, for a long time, based here. This was also the hot-bed of revolutionary resistance to dictatorial rule during the early 1980s, resulting, among other things, in various security-force crackdowns, sieges, massacres and other strategies of oppression generally employed by authoritarian regimes clinging to power in the face of change. Unsurprisingly, this adds to the appeal for me. As a result of being the trouble-makers, this region was, apparently, systematically underfunded and has only in the last few years begun to be given the kind of investment it needs. This is one of the reasons the transport systems are nowhere near as prolific and efficient as in, for example, the South-East (where I live) which has produced a large number of recent leadership figures.

After her bus adventure, Anna arrived. We were, by this stage, both a little hungry, hot and tired, so lunch first. There are seafood places all along the street across from the ferry and marina. You know they are seafood places because they have pictures of seafood creatures on their signs. There is also the dead give-away of the tanks of sea creatures outside. When I first saw shops with tank upon tank of octopus, squid, crabs, fish of all makes and sizes, not to mention eels and weird mollusc-ey things, I thought they were pet shops. How wrong I was.

We picked a restaurant at random, wandered in and gratefully settled onto our floor-cushions and ordered beer. The women working there wanted to know (all in Korean of course) if we’d be eating too or just drinking. Anna went off to point at something in the tank (no menu, let alone in English). She pointed, the women looked concerned. She pointed again. They told us the price. We were a little shocked by the prices but really didn’t feel like going elsewhere so we decided to pay anyway and pointed meaningfully at the tank of baby octopus. The price really did seem rather high for Korea, or for that matter anywhere. In retrospect, that should have been a warning.

Korean food sometimes arrives too quickly. I like being able to relax and chat for a while until the food is ready. Here they tend to bring it quickly and relax after. Even for Korea, this food arrived remarkably rapidly. They brought us a couple of sides first, one of which was baby potatoes – making me particularly happy – and then the main dish was brought out.

What was placed in front of us was a dinner-plate sized platter of cut up baby octopus. Under normal circumstances, this would not really have bothered me. I quite like octopus. I’m a big fan of calamari. But calamari, at least in my previous experience, does not usually move. I know, it’s probably my own fault – I should have learned a little more of the language before venturing into the less touristed places and we should have asked more questions before ordered. We certainly didn’t intend to order a plate of raw, grey, slimy, squirming octopus tentacles. They were moving and wriggling like a mass of worms. One, I am not kidding you, almost managed to escape off the plate. They twisted themselves around the chopsticks. They stuck, with their little suckers holding on for dear life, to the plate. We waited a while for them to die – after all, the tentacles had been severed from the bodies, waited for them to stop moving, but the minute you touched one with your chopsticks, they all wriggled madly. The woman who worked there showed us the red sauce to dip the tentacles in. Dipping them in the sauce had no effect other than to turn the grey wriggling tentacles into red-brown, dripping-with-sauce, wriggling tentacles.

Had I not heard of this ‘delicacy‘ before, I think I would honestly have assumed they were trying to play some horrific joke on the foreigners. But I had heard of it. In fact, I have friends who tried it and were warned that you have to be very careful to chew each tentacle thoroughly (and hard) to make sure that they’re dead, otherwise they can sucker onto your throat, killing more people each year than blowfish. It had never even vaguely occurred to me that anyone would assume that’s what two accidental walk-in tourists, who obviously had no idea what they were doing, wanted to order for lunch. We were horrified. Anna at least is a fairly experimental eater. I’m not. And I’m certainly not going to happily chow down on a bowl of wriggling tentacles which arrive with no warning or time to psych myself up.

Which is not to say we didn’t try it. We each tried at least two tentacles. Picked up with chopsticks (around which they instantly, squirmily wrapped themselves), dipped in the appropriate sauces and (deep breathe and eyes half-closed) stuffed into the mouth chewed as fast as possible to stop them wriggling about. We sat for a while looking at the plate, hoping all the time they’d stop moving so that we could eat the rest. They never did. We couldn’t do it. It seemed a terrible waste to leave all that expensive food but there was no way. I am very solidly a carnivore but even I cannot quite bring myself to eat something that is still fighting back after it is sliced up and sitting on the plate.

We paid our bill and left as politely as we could given that all we wanted to do was run out of there before anyone suggested any more extreme eating experiences. I have it on video (a video of lunch!) and watching it again, I can’t believe that a) I actually ate some and b) people think this is a good thing to eat. It certainly wasn’t delicious enough to make it worth the trauma, to risk death by wriggling things. That said, it didn’t taste bad, actually. Not amazing enough to make it worth it but it wouldn’t have been too offensive if only it hadn’t moved. No-one died, so I suppose we escaped relatively unscathed but we got out of Mokpo post-haste and couldn’t quite bring ourselves to eat at a seafood restaurant for the rest of the weekend.

Gumboot dancing into Korean hearts

Arts, Daegu,

Drankensberg boys’ choir, Suseong Artpia, 15 May 2010

After almost a year in a foreign country, the homesickness becomes a dull background ache. You stop noticing the little gaps in your experience of the world. Other things become normal. You get on with it. And there are good times and life goes on. It takes a show like this one to remind you that your heart doesn’t beat with the regular clackity-clack of the high-speed, high-tech world of Korea – it pounds and whispers with the complex sounds of Africa.

The show started with a mini-intro performance (2 songs) by a Korean choir. Possibly the Daegu City Children’s choir but no English info. They did two songs. They were good, their conductor was enthusiastic and their pianist wore a sparkly ball-gown. They even moved a little from side-to-side and clapped their hands in the second song. A little unfortunately, their rather stilted movements provided a glaring counter-point to the natural flow and energy of the Drankensberg boys.

Once the little girls and boys in aqua-marine (with ruffles) and simply awful white double-breasted blazers had been applauded off, the main act took to the stage. The first half of their programme was a fairly traditional choir performance. They stood still (-ish) in rows (mostly) and sang like with angel-voices. It took a while for the audience to get into it. Their performance was good, but not spectacular and traditional choirs singing traditional music very accurately aren’t all that unusual here. In a country where almost all of the kids play at least one musical instrument and a large percentage (I’d say at least ¾) study singing in the same way they study maths and English, accurate,and often excellent, performances are not uncommon. Which is not to say the audience didn’t enjoy it. They did. The choir even performed Pie Jesu, which was pretty good but not perfect. It was during this performance that I glimpsed, from my seat in the second row (no, I don’t know how I swung that), a sight one doesn’t often see: a Korean nun stealing forward from her seat to get a better view from up front.

By the time the choir performed the Prayer of St Francis with hand movements to illustrate the words, everyone was starting to warm up to them. The conductor also eased their way by saying a few words in Korean. And then they performed Arirang. Arirang is a Korean folk song that seems to be considered a part of the essence of what it is to be Korean. A little like Kimchi. I’m not entirely sure they don’t think it is part of their genetic make-up. Every Korean child knows it and they have a tendency to start singing it spontaneously every time there is a discussion about Korean culture in class. I was a little nervous. I think I held my breath throughout the whole song, eyes on the audience to see how they would respond. Attempting Arirang would either be a huge hit or a disaster. I was hugely relieved when the end of the song was greeted with thunderous applause. The audience was on our side and I relaxed into enjoying the rest of the show. Yes, I know I have nothing to do with it, but when a choir from your country is performing for an audience in the country where you now live, it feels a little personal.

There was also a very good chance that some of my students would be in the audience. There were certainly plenty of teens and kiddies there, some in groups of friends, some with their families. The teenage girls only but made their presence felt a few songs later, when two young black boys led the choir in ‘A crazy little thing called love‘ and got a pop-star (which in Korea equates to superstar) response. Man in the mirror, which got the whole audience clapping, and Circle of Life, and it was time for intermission. The mood in the room was jovial and children and adults buzzed up and down the aisles chatting and laughing.

For the first half of the show, the choir had been wearing the traditional (awful) blue and white outfits of the Drankensberg Boys’ Choir. During the interval they went off to change and the stage was rearranged for a different kind of experience to come. After a slight delay post-lights-down at the end of the interval, they returned and opened with a song I am particularly fond of, and which will now be stuck in my head for the rest of the week, Kwangena Thina Bo.

The second half was completely different fare. In brightly coloured shirts, interspersed with zulu warrior costumes and gumboot dancing gear, the choir wowed the audience with a series of South African favourites, often not even leaving time for applause in between songs. After a few songs, everything went black and they performed a piece called ‘Night Sounds from the African Veld‘. Every South African knows those sounds. I found myself taking deep breathes and shedding a few tears for home.

Then there was Soccer Ball Surprise – Bazeya, a delightful, energetic song using soccer balls to create the rhythms beneath the perfectly pitched vocal movements. And then came the gumboot dancing. It is hard to say whether the Zulu warriors or the gumboot dancing got more reaction from the audience but the cheering and teenage-girl shrieks and the thunderous applause were a significant indicator of how they felt. They were also enhanced with the two little boys in full Kaapse Klopse outfits (complete with umbrellas) who brought in Nuwe Jaar.

During a later song, four little zulu warriors in skins came out into the audience and greeted their adoring fans, ranging, I was amused to note, from toddlers and teenage girls to middle-aged mamas. They said ‘Anyeong’ to as many as they could manage before returning to the stage for the last few songs.

One of the pieces that affected me the most, although I found it interesting to see that the Koreans didn’t seem to react to it all that much, was an African drumming piece. Rhythms in Korean music tend to be, from what I have observed, fairly regular. I think the complex beats which filled my soul with ecstasy and made me feel alive were a bit too foreign for them. Actually, they missed a lot of the rhythms. The audience kept trying to clap along to everything but the clapping soon petered out as they lost track of what the drums and the shakers and the nimble hands were doing. I noticed people trying very hard to follow , though, in the same way they tried to imitate every time a ‘click’ sound showed up in a song.

Far too soon for me, and I think a lot of other people, the show was over. After two encores, the conductor resolutely shepherded his choir off the stage. They must have been exhausted from all the energetic dancing and singing. I hope everyone who was there had fun. I certainly did. And walking out of the theatre, through gaggles of girls who were clearly waiting around to try and get a chance to talk to their new heroes, I was so glad I went and so very, very proud to be South African.

One hundred stories

Daegu, Mozambique, Why, ,

It seems somehow appropriate that I should write the 100th post on this blog just as I start packing up and getting my life in order to leave the land of the morning calm vegetable sellers. Having recently said I’d be leaving in 40 days, I have now been told I will be leaving sooner than I thought. It seems my school has decided that the kids need a Korean-speaking teacher, so I finish work in two weeks (end of May).

In honour of this 100th post, I have spent the last few hours rereading my life. This blog began, in November of 2008, as a way of recording the adventure on which I was about (or thought I was about to) to embark. I was going to Russia. After a rather traumatic period of joblessness and several months of interim positions, I had taken a basic TEFL course, applied for a position and, after a phone interview and a series of emails back and forth, been offered a position to teach English to adults in Moscow. How different my life would have been, had that plan panned out. Obviously, it didn’t. At the end of 2008, the global financial crisis struck, almost collapsing the Russian economy and putting a very definite pause to their English-language-teaching industry. My dreams of Russia had to be shelved.

I was fairly shattered when I found out. It was the end of a long year. I had quit my job and put everything into this plan. Round about the same time, some friends were planning a two-week trip to the coastal paradise country of Mozambique. I had been a little jealous of their planning but had put it out of my mind because, after all, a short trip to Mozambique didn’t really compete with Russia. Now Russia was no longer and option and when one of my very supportive friends, one of those doing the Moz trip, suggested I join them, I was able to brush aside all rational ‘reasons’ why I shouldn’t and get (a little bit overwroughtly) excited.

That is how I ended up in Maputo and Inhambane and Vilankulos with a congenial, stimulating group of friends on a trip that changed my life just a little. Strangely, I didn’t ever write much about the trip, but I go back to it in my mind again and again and regularly look again at all the photos I took. I remember so many moments. There was the day we walked what felt like the whole of Maputo, in warm rain and sunshine. We saw the Iron House and the pretty cathedral. We visited a wild garden, more beautiful for the neglect and slow decay. We discovered a sausage tree outside an old fort. We failed to find a war museum which was either closed or no longer there. It was listed in Richard’s guide-book. The book that we paged through so many times that it was, by the end, almost falling apart.

We spent New Year’s in Tofo, which was perhaps not our most inspired decision. The subsequent stint in Inhambane, however, was incredibly special. On New Year’s night, we found ourselves sitting on the low wall between the street in front of our backpackers and the water of the bay, as a street party happened around us. Just near where we were sitting, an entire Indian family, parents and children, grandparents and teenagers, was gathered in beautiful colourful clothes. A DJ played and people danced in the streets. Women in little more than bikinis lounged on the top of vehicles. Richard entranced the local children with his fiery poi. It was warm and festive, yet somehow peaceful – with no-one making demands on us and no need to rush. Everyone was having a good time and we were welcome to sit and sip our beers and simply watch.

A few days later, post 5-hour drive in an overcrowded taxi with water leaking through the back door, we spend some of the happiest days I have known in beautiful Vilankulos. The sea was perfect blue, the sun shared the skies with dramatic clouds and put on spectacular sunsets, there were palm trees everywhere and islands danced across the water. We walked for ages, along dusty streets, along the shore, between rustic palm-leaf homes, past half-finished island resorts. We sipped ice-cold soft-drinks in the only place with internet – a run-down coastal hotel on the other end of town. We stopped at a bakery and managed in our limited lingo, to buy some rolls. We bought squid from a man on the side of the road, who sold it to us in a plastic bag, and took it back to our backpackers, where we put the slightly dodgy kitchen to good use (or at least those of us who are good in a kitchen did) and produced a memorable lulas pasta. We made pina coladas from the basic fresh ingredients. We adopted a dog, or rather, a dog adopted Richard and followed us home.

And all the while, rambling, open-ended conversations drifted back and forth. Conversations about life and choices and travel. Perhaps the most important moment of that trip for me was rather innocuous. One of the nights in Tofo, we found ourselves on the beach below the backpackers, long after dark. We weren’t doing anything in particular, just chatting and relaxing and playing with the poi-thingy. There was a conversation. I don’t remember talking much about my situation (i.e. Russia falling through) but I’m sure I must have – it was definitely uppermost in my mind. On this occasion, I was chatting with one of my fellow travellers who had had his own experience of teaching overseas. I was sad that I couldn’t go to the unusual and dream-fulfilling destination I’d picked. He said I should just take the chance to go where I could go – just get on with it.

A few months later, after a few more months of limbo and the torture of waiting for bureaucracy, I was getting ready to go to Asia. It wasn’t all plain sailing this time either. The evening before I headed up to Joburg, where I’d be for a week to sort out the final visa details before taking off for Korea, I was informed by my recruiter that the school had changed their minds and no longer wanted to hire me. I suppose I should by this stage have been getting used to disappointments but it takes a lot to psych myself up for major life changes and I still don’t react well to them falling through at the last minute. To say I was bitter would be an understatement, but is probably the best way to sum it up. I still went up to Joburg – a good friend was leaving on her own adventure so I needed to see her – before returning home one last time. Luckily Daegu had a second chance and by the end of June I was getting on a plane – tense with anxiety and anticipation – and flying off to Asia.

Daegu has been good to me in many ways. I’ve had a chance to regain a my confidence, to spend time with myself, to make new friends and to experience so many new things. I have visited centuries old palaces in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world. I’ve seen a giant fish market and walked along a foreign beach. I have visited parks and mountains and walked for hours, with others and alone. I have spent an awesome day riding bikes through a beautiful autumn with a delightful group of friends. I’ve been run off a mountain and soared through the air (paragliding). I have visited ancient tomb parks and wonderful museums. I have fallen in love with Gyeongju and it’s legacy of 1000 years of Shilla rule. I have drunk cocktails from plastic bags and tried dongdongju and soju. I have been to three operas and a ballet. I have spent a weekend in a beautiful hotel and taken a ferry trip on a lake. I’ve experienced a far-away Christmas and visited temples and monuments to a history so different from my own. I have learned about a culture from teenagers and children. I’ve tried beondaegi and bossam and learned to like kimchi. I’ve tried skiing and snowboarding and seen real snow. I have written so many stories.

In just a few weeks, I will leave Korea, get on a plane and fly home. In that time, there will be a few more experiences but most of my Korean narratives are done. That is a strange sensation. I’m thrilled to be returning to the land of cheese and lamb and people who sing and, most of all, those I love and miss dearly. But it’s strange to think that the Korean stories are almost done.

I’ve  not been entirely sure what will happen to this blog, but reading through again today has reminded me that it isn’t just a ‘Claire-in-Korea’ tale. There are stories here of other places and other things. So perhaps I will simply take it with me, change the name and keep writing. I have no doubt my life will continue to be filled with exploration and experiences. I look forward to writing them here or elsewhere: more disjointed highlights and piece-meal narratives of what I can only hope will be a more-than-ordinary life. A toast to 100 posts and 100 more stories to tell.

One hundred stories

It seems somehow appropriate that I should write the 100th post on this blog just as I start packing up and getting my life in order to leave the land of the morning calm vegetable sellers. Having recently said I’d be leaving in 40 days, I have now been told I will be leaving sooner than I thought. It seems my school has decided that the kids need a Korean-speaking teacher, so I finish work in two weeks (end of May).

In honour of this 100th post, I have spent the last few hours rereading my life. This blog began, in November of 2008, as a way of recording the adventure on which I was about (or thought I was about to) to embark. I was going to Russia. After a rather traumatic period of joblessness and several months of interim positions, I had taken a basic TEFL course, applied for a position and, after a phone interview and a series of emails back and forth, been offered a position to teach English to adults in Moscow. How different my life would have been, had that plan panned out. Obviously, it didn’t. At the end of 2008, the global financial crisis struck, almost collapsing the Russian economy and putting a very definite pause to their English-language-teaching industry. My dreams of Russia had to be shelved.

I was fairly shattered when I found out. It was the end of a long year. I had quit my job and put everything into this plan. Round about the same time, some friends were planning a two-week trip to the coastal paradise country of Mozambique. I had been a little jealous of their planning but had put it out of my mind because, after all, a short trip to Mozambique didn’t really compete with Russia. Now Russia was no longer and option and when one of my very supportive friends, one of those doing the Moz trip, suggested I join them, I was able to brush aside all rational ‘reasons’ why I shouldn’t and get (a little bit overwroughtly) excited.

That is how I ended up in Maputo and Inhambane and Vilankulos with a congenial, stimulating group of friends on a trip that changed my life just a little. Strangely, I didn’t ever write much about the trip, but I go back to it in my mind again and again and regularly look again at all the photos I took. I remember so many moments. There was the day we walked what felt like the whole of Maputo, in warm rain and sunshine. We saw the Iron House and the pretty cathedral. We visited a wild garden, more beautiful for the neglect and slow decay. We discovered a sausage tree outside an old fort. We failed to find a war museum which was either closed or no longer there. It was listed in Richard’s guide-book. The book that we paged through so many times that it was, by the end, almost falling apart.

We spent New Year’s in Tofo, which was perhaps not our most inspired decision. The subsequent stint in Inhambane, however, was incredibly special. On New Year’s night, we found ourselves sitting on the low wall between the street in front of our backpackers and the water of the bay, as a street party happened around us. Just near where we were sitting, an entire Indian family, parents and children, grandparents and teenagers, was gathered in beautiful colourful clothes. A DJ played and people danced in the streets. Women in little more than bikinis lounged on the top of vehicles. Richard entranced the local children with his fiery poi. It was warm and festive, yet somehow peaceful – with no-one making demands on us and no need to rush. Everyone was having a good time and we were welcome to sit and sip our beers and simply watch.

A few days later, post 5-hour drive in an overcrowded taxi with water leaking through the back door, we spend some of the happiest days I have known in beautiful Vilankulos. The sea was perfect blue, the sun shared the skies with dramatic clouds and put on spectacular sunsets, there were palm trees everywhere and islands danced across the water. We walked for ages, along dusty streets, along the shore, between rustic palm-leaf homes, past half-finished island resorts. We sipped ice-cold soft-drinks in the only place with internet – a run-down coastal hotel on the other end of town. We stopped at a bakery and managed in our limited lingo, to buy some rolls. We bought squid from a man on the side of the road, who sold it to us in a plastic bag, and took it back to our backpackers, where we put the slightly dodgy kitchen to good use (or at least those of us who are good in a kitchen did) and produced a memorable lulas pasta. We made pina coladas from the basic fresh ingredients. We adopted a dog. Or rather, a dog adopted Richard and followed us home.

And all the while, rambling, open-ended conversations drifted back and forth. Conversations about life and choices and travel. Perhaps the most important moment of that trip for me was rather innocuous. One of the nights in Tofo, we found ourselves on the beach below the backpackers, long after dark. We weren’t doing anything in particular, just chatting and relaxing and playing with the poi-thingy. There was a conversation. I don’t remember talking much about my situation (i.e. Russia falling through) but I’m sure I must have – it was definitely uppermost in my mind. On this occasion, I was chatting with one of my fellow travellers who had had his own experience of teaching overseas. I was sad that I couldn’t go to the unusual and dream-fulfilling destination I’d picked. He said I should just take the chance to go where I could go – just get on with it.

And that is how, after a few more months of limbo and the torture of waiting for bureaucracy, I found myself getting ready to go to Asia. It wasn’t all plain sailing this time either. The evening before I headed up to Joburg, where I’d be for a week to sort out the final visa details before taking off for Korea, I was informed by my recruiter that the school had changed their minds and no longer wanted to hire me. I suppose I should by this stage have been getting used to disappointments but it takes a lot to psych myself up for major life changes and I still don’t react well to them falling through at the last minute. To say I was bitter would be an understatement, but is probably the best way to sum it up. I still went up to Joburg – a good friend was leaving on her own adventure so I needed to see her – before returning home one last time. Luckily Daegu had a second chance and by the end of June I was getting on a plane – tense with anxiety and anticipation – and flying off to Asia.

Daegu has been good to me in many ways. I’ve had a chance to regain a my confidence, to spend time with myself, to make new friends and to experience so many new things. I have visited centuries old palaces in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world. I’ve seen a giant fish market and walked along a foreign beach. I have visited parks and mountains and walked for hours, with others and alone. I have spent an awesome day riding bikes through a beautiful autumn with a delightful group of friends. I’ve been run off a mountain and soared through the air, paragliding. I have visited ancient tomb parks and wonderful museums. I have fallen in love with Gyeongju and it’s legacy of a thousand years of Shilla rule. I’ve drunk cocktails from plastic bags and tried dongdongju and soju. I have been to three operas and a ballet. I have spent a weekend in a beautiful hotel and taken a ferry trip on a lake. I’ve experienced a far-away Christmas and visited temples and monuments to a history so different from my own. I’ve learned about a culture from the mouths of children and teenagers. I’ve tried beondaegi and bossam and learned to like kimchi. I’ve tried skiing and snowboarding and seen real snow. I have written so many stories.

In just a few weeks, I will leave Korea, get on a plane and fly home. In that time, there will be a few more experiences but most of my Korean narratives are done. That is a strange sensation. I’m thrilled to be returning to the land of cheese and lamb and people who sing and, most of all, those I love and miss dearly. But it’s strange to think that the Korean stories are almost done. A few more adventures to write up and then I will be gone.

I’ve not been entirely sure what will happen to this blog, but reading through everything today has reminded me that it isn’t just a ‘Claire-in-Korea’ tale. There are stories here of other places and other things. So perhaps I will simply take it with me. Change the name and keep writing. I have no doubt my life will continue to be filled with exploration and experiences. I look forward to writing them here or elsewhere: more disjointed highlights and narratives of what I can only hope will be a more-than-ordinary life. So, a toast to 100 posts and 100 more stories to tell.