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Home at last!! We made it! My back has some permanent indents from all the bags I was carrying around but we are home! I will develop my pictures soon but for now here are the ones from my camera!! YAY! Japan was amazing but its so great to get home and just be home! I felt so much relief the second I stepped in the door. Christmas eve is tomorrow and we have nothing planned but I am a little excited anyway... I saved my packages from my family so I'll open them on Christmas and Eddie and I are too poor to really exchange gifts but I think I'll try to find something for him tomorrow and maybe finish up that scarf I was working on... Its just really great to be in my own bed.. kind'a... (my own bed in Korea that isn't really my own bed). So Korea is cold now and comparatively quiet. The cars are actually driving down the street instead of parked in traffic and I can walk without bumping into anyone. We took a Taxi from the ferry to the train and it cost $2 and the driver was weaving in and out of lanes and honking... I felt right at home! We took a 3 hour train from Busan to Seoul on the KTX train which was the fastest/most expensive option but we needed to be home! On the train we played card games and bet with Pringles chips and candy. When we got to Seoul Station we bought smoothies at the Smoothie King then took the subway home. It was a long walk home in windy Korea with all our bags but we made it! I'm gonna upload some photos then maybe go to bed!!

Also I wrote this on the boat..........

So we are on the ferry! I don’t have Internet at the moment so I am just typing in word… So we are finally heading home! We missed the Pan Star ferry bus by a couple minutes so we had to pay 660 yen to take a taxi the 6 blocks to the boat (we didn’t know how far it was before we got in the taxi)! So we concluded that taxi’s are way too expensive seeing as that’s close to $6! Today happened to be the only day it rained the whole time we were in Japan which was a pain in that we had to carry all our luggage but nice that we had a week of sunshine… These past few days have been like an Olympian spring without the rain.

So we checked out of our hotel today at 12 ate a cup noodle in the lobby then headed out. We walked around until we found a bank and Kenny took out some money. I got some leg warmers for $10 and a really cute blanket with pandas and strawberries on it for like $13!! The store was called Joint and it was pretty amazing we also got some cool belt buckles YAY! It was a vintage shop with lots of amazing T-shirts from the 80’s and cute hats and jewelry. Nick bought a hilarious pillow type hat with a big panda face on it and I took some pictures so everyone can see later.

The boat has separate rooms for men and women. So Eddie Kenny and Nick are in the room across the hall. I am sharing with 2 Korean women. I think one is the mom but I can’t be sure… They spoke enough English to ask where I was from and tell me they were from Korea then we talked about what was on the TV briefly then there was an awkward silence and so I unpacked my computer. The boat we are on is a little different from the first one we took but pretty similar. This one does have a vending machine with chicken nuggets and French fries so I would have to say this boat is slightly better! Nick and I ventured out to the store on the boat where I found some gummy banana candy and a kimchi cup noodle. Now the boys are napping in their room so I’m just hanging out in my room with my silent Korean friends… The TV is blaring a Korean talk show though so it’s not quiet. There will be a show on the boat at 8:15 so I’ll wake them up for that! On the way to Japan it was a magic show and some musical performances from the crew.

LATER...

We watched performance on the boat with a violinist, a saxophonist, and some volunteer singers from the audience that were hilarious. There was one boy who was probably 10 years old who said he was too shy to go on stage but then he went up and started dancing like he was dancing to "I touch myself" It was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time. They quickly shooed him off stage because it was so inappropriate but he was up there long enough to get a big laugh. They finished with a Mariah Carey Christmas song and then the famous "tell me Tell me" song by the Wonder girls. They were dressed up like reindeer, and Santa's and singers in the choir it was a pretty good performance and cool that it was put on by the crew because they all had really good singing voices. One of the Santa's gave me a gift and I opened it and inside was a cell phone chain of a seahorse so that was nice! (Cell phone chains are really "IN" in Japan and Korea.)


A little backtracking to Nara… When we went to Nara we had no money so it was kind’a frustrating but we had fun wandering around outside and going into the free temples and shops. We went to Nara park where we found hundreds of deer roaming around. It was funny how close they came to us… Eddie was holding a empty bag of chips and one deer came up and starting sniffing Eddie and rubbing up against him then when we walked away he made a sad wheezy/ squeaky sound and tried to follow us. The venders in the park swatted the deer’s butts and shooed them away like they were dogs. The trees were also filled with giant crows and other loud birds. We wandered through a couple little souvenir shops until we found one that accepted visa and bought a couple trinkets.

Japan was amazing but I don't think I would want to live there...