Home Sweet Home

So you’ve decided you want to return home after teaching abroad for two years? What are the steps to get home with minimal damage? Can you go one hour without crying about something? If you’re confused on what to do, this is the blog for you!

It’s quite a simple process.

Step 1: Decide you’re going home

Step 2: Sell literally everything you own so you only have to travel with one bag.

Step 3: Cry.

Just kidding.

The process of getting home is much more complicated! You’re gonna be crying at every step so just pretend it’s written with each step.

First things first. Decide you’re going home. 

1. Tell your school you’re not renewing with them. Feel incredibly awkward when your co-teacher seems upset because now she must do more work.
2. Start selling/donating/trashing items you don’t want to bring back. Also start to question how in the world you obtained so many things…
3. Question everything.
4. Little by little, transfer money to your home bank. Did I really only make this much in my two years? Do I have a spending problem?
5. Did you buy your plane ticket yet? Did you spend over 8 hours waiting to speak with an actual human to get your cat on the flight with you too? Did you cry over the phone bill even though it was promised to be a “toll-free” number?
6. Cry.
7. Thanks to COVID, set up your testing appointment at the airport the day of your flight. “It only takes an hour!”
8. Within a month of leaving, get your pension.
9. Did you get rid of everything you own yet?
10. Book a hotel to stay at the night before your flight. Is it pet-friendly? Is it close enough to the airport? How can you get to the airport from your small city in the middle of nowhere?  
11. Now buy a train ticket to get to Seoul. Then hop onto the airport train because COVID ruins everything and there’s no direct trains from your city to the airport anymore. *side-eyes COVID*
12. Clean your filthy apartment before the next human resident comes. This is quite tricky because you’re living in that apartment until your last day of the contract. And then the next day that new human is taking over… oh and the landlord wants to change the wallpaper four days before you leave. 
13. Pack up everything else into your two suitcases and carry-on. Wonder why you still have so much stuff.
14. The day has finally come, leave your apartment with the grumpy furry baby and go to your hotel.
15. Be incredibly tense the next 48 hours until you finally arrive in the homeland.
16. Cry again.

Congratulations, you did it! You made it home! Now enjoy days of jet lag, but be able to understand everything that’s going on! Oh yeah, and get your second vaccination 😉