Farewell Dinner

Here's one last happy memory I'll post about my old school.  I invited my three closest teacher friends out for a little farewell dinner - Gina Teacher, Tatiana (the Russian teacher), and JinJin (the kitchen manager).  I have gone out with all three of these ladies before, and we made another date to go out again... so I'm happy to say that we won't lose touch.  :)  Tatiana and I actually live closer to one another now that I've moved, so we plan on meeting up for a walk or jog around the mountain (aka hill with a walking path) near my host family's house!

We had dinner at a really nice restaurant called Eunice's Garden.  The owner designed this unique restaurant out in the middle of nowhere and added some really special touches.  Outside, there are a couple of walking paths.  One leads you around a garden, complete with many different flower beds, a wood chip walking path, and a little babbling stream.  You can even hear cows off in the distance.  It might not sound too exquisite, but in this part of Korea, a quaint scene like this is hard to come by.

There is another walking path closer to the restaurant entrance, that takes you under a dazzling arrangement of hanging lanterns.  It is beautiful in the day time, and even more so once the sun goes down.  There are even little benches nestled into vine-laden trellises.  Definitely a romantic environment.

As for the food, there's an outdoor grill section and an indoor pasta section.  We opted for the pasta, and weren't disappointed!  Afterwards, we stopped by the gift shop to look around and have some yummy tea.

At the end of our dinner, JinJin suggested that we all meet up for dinner again in about a month - this time, to dine on chicken feet.  When she saw Gina Teacher and I squirm at the thought, she informed us that the particular restaurant she had in mind was the second best restaurant in all of Ansan.  Well... ok then.  Once we eat there, we'll have eaten at all of the top three restaurants in town - number one being the chicken feet place, number two being O'Hills (the really expensive seafood buffet), and number three being Eunice's Garden (the one in all of these pictures).

I couldn't have made it through the year with out these ladies - they always had welcoming smiles and open hearts towards me.  I will miss having coffee with Gina after lunch each day, being filled by JinJin's infectious energy whenever I ran into her in the hallways, and brainstorming fun lessons with Tatiana.  

Thoughtful JinJin giving me a parting gift!