We left our apartment in Jeju Tuesday (11/21/06) afternoon to head to the ferry. It was HARD! Shutting the door to our apartment for the last time was hard...very hard! We left our home never to return again! Melisa cried first and then I cried. I think Daddy even shed a tear or two. Misa and I cried for the first 20 minutes of the drive to the other side of the island. The rest of the drive to the harbor we talked about all the awesome things that happened in our 2 + years on Jeju. It was an awesome time of reflection for our family! We truly have had an amazing 2 years and 4 months on Jeju Island and an awesome 4 years in Korea!
When we made it to the harbor Clark drove the van onto the boat while the girls and I met up with Yo Han (Clark's student who rode to the mainland with us to get 5 more hours with our family). When Clark got back we paid for the van and the caught the shuttle bus to the ferry terminal. Once at the terminal, we bought our tickets to ride on the ferry and headed to board. At the gate we had to show our passports...but wait...my purse was missing and I had it when we paid for the van!! We took off on a mad search. I waited for 10 minutes for the shuttle bus to come again and as soon as the doors open the drive handed me my purse with a BIG smile! :-) I am SO thankful that I lost my purse with our passports in Korea and NOT America...I never would have gotten it back in America! I was SO thankful that I said a special prayer of thanks of the spot! God is SOO good to us!

We boarded the ship and found our way to our room. Everyone is assigned to a big open carpeted room. You remove your shoes and have a seat wherever you can find a place and settle in. We were "lucky" enough to have a room with an entire girls middle school Judo Team! Talk about LOUD!! The girls were instantly surrounded and overwhelmed! So, we decided to take a walk out to watch as we set off to sea. We took a few last pictures of Jeju and said good-bye with some more tears. We had a BIG family hug and cry. It was sad and a bit scary seeing the island that has been home for 2 + years fade into nothing not knowing if we will ever be back again!

The girls started to get red noses and were cold, so we headed back to our crazy room. Cali immediately went to sleep as she hadn't had a nap all day. Melisa settled in for a movie. It seemed rather calm and the first 2 1/2 hours passed without event. Then, the Judo Team returned from dinner...LOL! They circled around Melisa and she gave them an art class and they all drew characters from Disney's The Three Musketeers. Misa would pause the movie and they would all work on drawing together. When the DVD battery died, Melisa was WOUND up...it could have something to do with all the candy and ice cream the middle school girls kept giving to her! Before long she started a tickle fight with them and not too long after that they were chasing her ALL over the ship (no, not just our room...the ENTIRE ship). She had the time of her life playing! All the giggling and squealing ended up waking up Cali. She didn't warm up to the girls like Melisa did. She hid in my lap and gave them a grin every once in a while!
The next 2 1/2 to 3 hours flew by without much adventure...just LOTS of playing. We left the boat with the e-mail addresses for the entire Judo Team. Then we had another very sad moment; we had to say good-bye to YoHan! He left us as we headed down to get in the van. He had a train to catch so he couldn't wait with us to get the van. We must have given him 3 hugs each and had more tears! It was hard to leave such a precious friend! Melisa had even started calling him Uncle Yo Han!

We made the trek through the cargo hold area…oh my word, what a trek! We were climbing over huge chains, walking through tons of grease, stepping in eeewy, gooey puddles, and walking in between big semi style trucks. It took us about 10 minutes of walking through the craziness to finally find Big Daddy Cool (our van). Then we had the fun adventure of trying to climb into Big Daddy Cool in the dark with it fully loaded. Oh the joy! I am just thankful the laptop still works after Bug and Bean fell on top of the bag it was in! Once we settled in the van we sat and waited, praying we would survive all the carbon monoxide that we were having to breathe in as the trucks started up!

As we sat and waited we also saw a lot of Korean culture before our very eyes! There were tucks with cows, pigs, trees, and dogs. I couldn’t help myself. I got out the camera and started snapping pictures. I got the cows first, and then tried for the pigs, but missed them. Then I got a great picture of the truck that was LOADED down with trees to the point that it almost didn’t make it off the boat! Then I turned my attention to the truck with at least 100 dogs in it. They were dogs being hauled for poh-shin-tang (dog soup) so I snapped some pictures of it. Well as soon as I took the last picture the driver of the truck JUMPED out of his truck and stormed over to my window. I got my window up and told Clark to roll up his. Well, my wonderful husband pressed the wrong button and started to roll MY window DOWN! As I swatted him on the arm 100 times in 2 seconds and screamed as loud as I could he realized what he was doing and rolled mine back up. The man was at my window banging on it and pointing at my camera. I bowed low and said in my very best and sweetest Korea…Twe-Sa-Ham-Ne-Da, Me-Yon-Ham-Ne-Da…or I am SORRY, I am SOO Sorry! I said it 5 times and he kept pounding on the window. My husband was telling him, Ani-oh, ani-oh (no, no). I stopped saying I am sorry and started pressing buttons on my camera saying "DELETE, I DELETE…no picture, I DELETE!" (of courses I didn’t delete the picture mind you) He kept pounding on my window pointing at my $1,000 + camera that I would cry over if he broke it! FINALLY what seemed like an eternity later the truck behind his blew it’s horn because the line was moving. So, he stammered back to his truck (the moment we realized just how drunk he was) and climbed in. Clark looked at me and I looked at him and all we could do was laugh until we cried! Then the person behind us blew their horn for us to move too. Clark was sure that my picture taking addiction was going to get him in a fight with a drunk Korean man just to protect me and my camera! Oh, the loyalty! LOL! You know our family, we can’t have a week go by without an adventure worth writing home about!

After that adventure we decided we didn’t want to be on the road all night with the Koreans truck drivers who had been on the boat with us, they were way too drunk to be driving. So, we pulled 2 blocks away from the harbor and found a small little hotel and checked in for the night! The girls were thankful to be out of the van, off from the boat, away from the drunk man, and in our own quiet room. It took 1 hour and we were all sound asleep for the night!

The next day was rather uneventful (thank goodness). We woke up and got loaded back up in the van and were on the road by 9:30. We got on Expressway 15 and made the 5 + hour drive into Seoul. We stopped every 2 hours or so at a rest stop and let the girls out to run and play as well as the dog. We were amazed that we were traveling on the busiest travel day in America with NO traffic at all…LOL! Once we reached Seoul we had a small traffic jam that we sat in for about 30 minutes or so! While we were in the traffic Bug decided to open the van door! I still don’t know what was going through the child’s head! I dove and caught the dog carrier as it about fell out and then climbed into the back of the van and waited for us to slow down again so I could shut the door all the way! The last 2 to 2 ½ hours were awful for Bean. There was NO making her happy again and she cried and cried and cried some more! We were all thankful to be in Seoul and at the guest Unit!

So, there you have it, another adventure in the books for our 3 Ring Circus! Sorry it was so long, but it was quite the trip! I will try to get on and post pictures later as well as a post about Thankgiving day (nothing exciting, just a peaceful Thanksgiving dinner)!!