Anyway, it was a long trip "home," leaving BR Monday morning and not arriving back to our apartment in Yeosu until about 8pm on Wednesday night. Needless to say, between the travel, complete lack of sleep while in the US, and jet lag, we were exhausted on Thursday, which was our fourth anniversary. Fortunately, we had expected this, so we went ahead and celebrated with a nice dinner on our trip in Thailand in March. And we had decided not to do gifts because it's just so hard over here in Korea.
And yet, regardless of how tired we were (or what we had agreed), Blake had a really sweet surprise for me when we woke up that morning...
I know it may not seem like much to you, but let me give you the back story. My grandmother has this book. For as long as I can remember, she's had this book in her house in Meridian, Mississippi. And as a kid, every time we would go to visit my grandmother, I would find this book in her house (probably wherever I had left it the last time we were there) and read it. I don't know what it is about this book that caught my attention (ok, maybe I do - I mean, it is about chocolate...), but I've just always loved it.
And to be honest, I can hardly even remember telling Blake about it. But I think it must have been the first Thanksgiving that we took him with us to Meridian. We weren't even married yet. Actually, we weren't even engaged yet. That was about 4-1/2 years ago. And I'm sure I stumbled across it at some point while we were at Grandmaw Denise's house and told him about it. I've always wanted my own copy, but for some reason that I can't really comprehend, it must not have been a very popular book because I never could find it anywhere. And its copyright is from the year I was born, so it's not like its old, right? You know what, don't answer that.
Anyway, apparently Blake remembered my telling him about it. And at some point since we moved over here, he contacted my family and got the name of the book and author from them. He hunted down this book on the Internet and had it delivered to my parents' house so that he could pick it up while we were home. And I don't really have any idea how much it cost, though it can't have been that much, but that's not really the point. This is one of the greatest presents he's ever given me. It ranks right up there with my calendar from Valentine's Day last year that he created on one of those photo product websites with pictures of the two of us. And I know it's not the engineer stereotype to be romantic, and I know he thinks that he's incapable of it, but I think he does a pretty darn good job.
And you know, it was our best anniversary so far. Because even though we're completely on the other side of the world, there's not a single Western-style fine dining restaurant within a 2-hour drive that we know about, and we didn't really have a good way to buy each other expensive presents, we're over here doing this together. And that's what really matters.
And it's a good thing, too. Because not too long after we got home from work that day, we passed out around 7, without even eating dinner, and slept straight through till getting up at 6:30 the next morning.
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