homesickness, et cetera

after insisting to every person with whom i reconvened last week in arizona that i was quite happy with my life in korea, i am finding myself with a severe case of homesickness and persistent melancholy.  my trip home was too short, i think.  i wasn't ready to leave when i had to leave, i wanted to share in more of my loved ones' lives; a few more hours, a few more days.  everyone seems to be doing so well, so cheerful and motivated.

then again, i felt a bit out of place there, because i do have a life in korea with which i am comfortable.  i am used to saying things in english and exchanging similar phrases in korean, a habit that merely confused my friends in phoenix and tucson.  i spent so much time sitting inside and eating heavy foods and never walking or kicking or dancing, i certainly plumped back up a bit.  i tried to walk or bike to my destinations, but it was so hot i only walked twice.  and i enjoyed driving far too much to walk anywhere in phoenix.

and i have conveniently placed myself in a frame of mind that prevents me from moving on or moving back together with toby.  is it over?  will it ever be?  neither of us has made much progress in independent singledom, yet we have fundamental differences in life momentum that may never bring us back together.  dare i take yoshi back?  i've pointed myself at graduate school like an arrow, and the life of a researcher tends to lack certain permanence or routine that a little dog depends on.  since my return this has weighed heavily on my heart.

i had only anticipated the strangeness of returning to north america during a strange economic time, not the consequential emotions of leaving north america again.  it shook me up and in my travel-related fatigue, i am unable to find peace or solace.  i am once again between worlds.

and yet, the one nagging voice behind it all tells me to wait.  patience, have patience.  because i am driven, and i try to make the changes i want to see, i am most often briefly put off by obstacles of this nature.  i take steps back and i regroup, and then i approach with my new strategy, or i simply charge at the blockade and this is usually effective.  my instinct is to push through it, but with this i suspect that won't work anyhow.

i have such a short attention span that i find myself with new small, bite-sized goals that i can easily barrel through if i so much as try, and it has led to a string of interesting and tangential life events and relocations, hence my present circumstances.

when i came back from beijing i had a similar period of mourning, if you will, since there is such a huge difference in culture, attitude and pace of life between seoul and beijing (coincidentally sister cities).  there was so much more i wanted to see and do, and i just wanted more time to absorb the feelings i experienced while there.  i suppose that sounds very whistful and cerebral, and maybe that's exactly what i am, but more than any photograph or souvenir, i can conjure up a vivid recollection of my heart and so i try to make sure i have something nice to remember.  i'm not proud of the moments where i was dissatisfied, tired and cross.  coming back to korea, i could only see the uptight, pushy, xenophobic side, since i resented having to be here rather than getting to stick around in yet another land and learn about it.

get over it, right?!  international travel isn't free, not everybody gets to do it, i should count my blessings.  i'm lucky i went home at all, i'm extremely blessed to have those people to welcome me back so graciously, who were all so pleased to have my company.  my grandmother is well, my family seems happy, no major crises, no illnesses, no deaths (in the family).  and furthermore, i'm so blessed to have good friends in korea to come back to.  i have to stop getting myself worked up into such a self-pitying lather and getting so caught up in a feeling.

these are the back in korea blues, i suppose.  why, i'm even blessed that i have a computer, internet, and fingers with which i can complain about it all on myspace.

a blessed place

I know, I've been very bad about updating my blog here. I got busy, I had a month of nothing but LOST episodes, traveled to Osaka for a weekend, and got serious about belly dance and taekwondo. I also powered my way through a nice, successful attitude adjustment. Another one, I guess.

A lot of time has been spent planning for things, working out, and traveling around. I came to Arizona for a week and I've been rekindling my love for the Sonoran desert (which I obviously already loved). I'm leaving in a day but I'm having a great vacation like it's waking up briefly from a dream I've been having for almost a year. I'll be asleep again soon, back in Korea, working my way through another year, most likely...

Most notably, I'm spending valuable time with Yoshi. All my friends that I've been able to get in touch with are doing so well and are so healthy and happy, so it's really wonderful to see them too.

What a vacation!

wish you were here

I've found myself so groggy or sleepy or spaced out for several days.  I'm functioning all right, but now and then I wonder if I'm going to wake up in the middle of it.  When I was in college sometimes I felt like this, a bit, as though I'd just come to and realized I had a test the next week and had just been chugging along without looking forward or backward.

It isn't deja vu, but sometimes almost the opposite, as though I'm experiencing something I remember from a vivid dream.  I suppose this comes with being so close to a vacation that is surely the most unique homecoming of my life.

Last week I got a black eye during a bit of an extreme low point for me, which is odd because I've been trying so hard to be better.  I've nearly doubled my workout regimen and have clear results to show for it, so I'm really proud of that.  I've also taken more risks and relaxed about priorities and demands, which may well be the source of my daydreaming.  Without deliberate focus, perhaps I tend to mentally drift far and away.  I have more projects and most of them go unfinished (not unusual for me), but I abandon them sooner after starting them and care little about seeing them to completion.

The nice thing is that I have recognized my ability to bounce back, which is probably also part of this detachment.  This could be a mental and emotional recuperation, standby mode if you will, to help me leg up the last week until I have a legitimate rest.

I've started focusing more on dancing, too, since I have more experience in my repertoire.  I have to create the costumes for the performances, which I am most certainly not ready for, but it has given me a new opportunity to practice my limited sewing skills and to incorporate some of the many beads I bought last year at the Tucson Gem Show into something that represents my artistic side.

I like where my head is right now, although I haven't connected much to anything.  I feel really grateful for the people out here who love me, and for the beautiful summertime biology that is so different from a desert summer.  I've packed and cleaned a bit, too, and have managed to get my glasses repaired and tended to my puffy purple eye, so I haven't disengaged myself completely from the world.

Only time will tell.  I like to wonder how I will reflect back on this next summer.

n-e-g-l-e-c-t, find out what it means to me

Since I have absorbed myself in the first 4 seasons of LOST rewatching, coping with what I considered to be an extreme amount of work (nearly overwhelming), and considering what I want to do with the next few months of my life, it has been a bit impossible to come here and drop an update in without wanting to elaborate on the minutia and having that sinking feeling at the same time.

But now that I am post-attitude adjustment, I'd like to think things have smoothed out enough for me to paraphrase them in my rarely-read myspace blog.

I've been quite ambivalent about whether I wanted to stay past the end of my contract in November.  Several reasons were pushing me to stay, like tax paperwork I'd have to do if I came back in 2009, not wanting to dive into the so-called recession where my family and friends are being laid off every month or so, enjoying my friends here, and wanting to stick out another paid vacation to travel where I please for a week.

And certainly, there were things compelling me to cut my losses and run, but many of them dissipated with my poor attitude about things.  The high school and kinder classes I teach are both over for summer vacation, so that took a huge load of stress and excess work off my shoulders, for now.  Missing important people back home has also distracted me.

I'm learning several lessons about minimizing the number of things that would anchor me to a specific location, like pets and furniture, since I am so hungry to wander and be available for those ephemeral opportunities.

Despite having some tension with such intense friendships, I still love my friends here very much.  It's refreshing to learn myself so much better in sticky situations with these guys, since our community is so small and we depend on each other more than we would if we lived back home.  I'm so blessed to have found trustworthy, supportive friends here.  Strangely, my friends are almost exclusively female.  I think this is largely because the straight male expat population here seem to be very interested either in having drunken flings or Korean girlfriends, and expat men are quite popular among the radiantly beautiful Korean females here, so that creates a predictable situation.  I'm not thrilled about the dating scene here, and don't find myself interested in anybody to speak of, so instead my heart points west.

I take my job seriously, and I try to do a good job.  I can tell my students love me, especially the kindergarteners, because they swarm me in the halls and show me loose teeth and scraped knees and mosquito bites, or wrap their tiny arms around my waist or legs and drag along any time I pass them in the halls.  All I need for a pick-me-up is to wade through the halls when they're about and reassure myself of my rock star status.  I love it.

For the kids I have trouble with, I've found that I'm not the only teacher struggling with them, since I've talked to other teachers and they all want to scream or cry or punch the wall at least occasionally.  I see them handling themselves with such grace, so I know I can do the same.

I'm doing taekwondo every week and am nearly a green belt (that's the 4th belt level).  I'd be much further along, but money and time constraints have kept me from fiercely dedicating my time to it.  I also take belly dancing, and have been invited to join the performance troupe that dances at shows each month (if not more often).  I really enjoy it but I'm not confident that I'm ready to dance in public, at least until August or September.  Taekwondo should help with that, too.

The weather here is pretty awesome.  Yes, it rains at least every other day, usually all day long, but the air is cool most of the time (although sometimes it is unbearably warm and muggy), and the plants everywhere are so green and full and stunning.  There are different flowers blooming every few weeks and frogs singing and honey and bumble and native bees moving all over the flowers, and I like to hike up around the small mountain behind my house and breath in the sweet forest air.  My friends pressure me to find an apartment closer to the bustling part of town, but this is where I belong, in the suburbs, close to nature, so that I can retreat into it when I please.

In three weeks I'm coming back to Phoenix and Tucson to visit.  My grandmother had a stroke on Easter and since then she has been recovering (almost completely!), but it rattled me so much that I didn't hesitate to spend an ENTIRE paycheck on airfare back for my week-long summer vacation.  I'm so excited to see everybody I love in Arizona, to have reverse-culture shock, and not be at work for a whole week.  I'm literally counting down the days.

Even without studying very much, I understand and can speak quite a bit of Korean, which I am quite proud of.  If I gave it any kind of effort, I'm sure I'd be partly fluent by now, but I have found lots of other things to do with my time.

My break is about over and I have to do something responsible before it ends, so I should wrap this up.  Maybe I'll grab another cup of coffee!

tiny violin soloist

I still have a draft about Beijing waiting on hold, but I'm unmotivated to write about my trip and slap several dozen photos in there. It's time-consuming and I'm feeling emotional right now.

I've been a bit low for a few weeks, I guess. I was so sick for a month before we left for Beijing, and even then I felt like I'd been underground and completely unaware of the world above. I'd show up at work and have no clue what to do each day; I was truly too ill to be going to work and in no position to take a sick day (because of the effort in preparing sub plans and getting my coworkers to sub for me). I deserved a sick day, though.

I don't know what it is. The suspicion that this might be that slippery slope into another bout of depression is ever-present, especially when I am unable to identify any explicit reason for my blues. A handful of reasons, like feeling a bit alienated and alone, overworked and stressed, thoroughly exhausted from being sick or sad since Easter, and wondering if I'm crazy for possibly settling without ever really reintroducing myself into the single life and still considering that more could be out there, have come to mind when I try to make sense of it.

My temper and patience are shorter, my tolerance is lower, and I have become extremely apathetic and antisocial. This feels, to me, somewhat like a "relapse." Or it could simply be hormonal and maybe tomorrow I'll wake up feeling springtime fresh. Since I've already explored the idea of psychotherapy and anti-depressants, if only very briefly, I know that avenue is out of the question. I'm opposed to medication, and doctors, in almost every form.

Self-medication hasn't always been more cost-effective, and binge-eating, net-surfing, and exploring ways to spend all my money online rarely lead to improved health and vitality. I've been out of taekwondo for nearly two months, as well. I left for a month in March, and attended for roughly 4 classes in April, and have not been there in May. I could really use those endorphins, I suppose.

It's that tiny violin...do you hear it? I feel angry and stubborn, on top of sad and unmotivated. This all needs to go away.

And I need to go to bed.

(quiet time)

as it turns out, 6000 miles can make a difference in the relationship between two ex-lovers.  it has been good, and it has been bad.  right now, it is bad.

the time difference is unforgiving, and for someone who was already difficult to get in touch with, now toby just feels like he's not interested in anything but my body (which is strange by itself since he's just watching me naked on a webcam).  our conversations frequently go nowhere, and i assume he's simply waiting for me to take my clothes off so he can masturbate.

it's lonely.  i'm lonely.

my friends out here are still very distant, temporary or tolerated.  my job feels too demanding with too little support.  i'm here for 10 more months, and i'm visiting the states in 3, and at the present moment, i don't feel like i belong anywhere.

i'm hormonal.  this is pms, and i'm bound to start my cycle any second, so i have my ear to the ground to sense anything that may be emotions underscored with excessiveness, which this most certainly is.

i'm tired of briana, as well.  for someone i get along with so well, her frequent complaining has become tiresome and discouraging.  her short, red-hot temper is somewhat like an extra person to tip-toe around, and her insecurities and judgements about nearly everyone around her make me wonder if she has any sort of confidence at all.  she is a little black rain cloud, with frequent thunderstorms and unpredictable lightning.  she's so rude, too, to katie and me and everyone else.  this sense of entitlement may come from being an only child, but i have enormous trouble relating to it or even tolerating it.  i don't feel able to cut 50% of my friends out during my fleeting time in korea, but it's grating my nerves and i am struggling now to keep any kind of annoyance from slipping out, lest she have yet another fit or make yet another scene.

i pray about it but i don't think i've prayed appropriately.  i'm not sure what to do.

i think i would like to quit one of my high school classes, as well.  the students are rude and they never pay attention, and the planning time it takes for this class is excruciatingly boring.  they want me to teach things i have slim knowledge of and for an extremely long time (two months, twice each week, for one program in microsoft office suite 2007).  i just don't like teaching that class at all.  i get nothing from it, and i most often find myself telling my students to shut up.

i feel better articulating these things.  i'm apathetic and hurt and angry and hormonal.  every action has a reaction.  it's time for bed.

A Beijing Spring Getaway

I went with my two friends, Katie and Briana, for a three day trip to Beijing (北京) during a long weekend for the Children's Day holiday in Korea. It turned out to be a major travel period, because China, too, had a national holiday called Workers' Day, which lasted May 1-3.

Friday night, after work, the three of us met at Katie's house with our luggage, and gushed about what we would do on our trip the next day. We slept for about 2 or 3 hours before waking up early to catch a shuttle bus to the airport.

The shuttle was probably as long as the flight to China. I was exhausted, good old insomnia prevented me from getting more than an hour of sleep so far.

We made it to the Beijing International Terminal, which is absolutely huge and really beautifully designed, around 11am (China time). After a little monorail shuttle ride to the exit area, we found a cab and showed him the address to our hotel. The landscaping along the highway is a bit one-note, with the same trees planted in a very redundant grid pattern, but it was landscaped the whole way (which is not the case on the way to the Incheon Airport just outside of Seoul).

It seemed our cab driver could not specifically locate our hotel, even after he called them, so he dropped us off and gave us some helpful advice (in Mandarin) and drove away. The three of us wandered up on street and then back down and around, until we went into a different hotel and asked the clerk where ours could be. Oh so eventually, we were in our moldy room, changing our clothes and sprawling out, exhausted, on the beds. I asked the clerks where we were on the map, but mostly we communicated using pointing and gestures, as the gap between Korean and Mandarin was sizeable. Our hotel was on Hepingli Xijie (和平里西街"Hepingli West Street"), so from there finding our way around made sense.

We decided to walk south, since the map said that's where everything was. We came upon a lovely public park, and strolled through it. This was the Park of the Altar of Earth, and it had a large entrance to a market that we considered but didn't enter. Around the bend was a HUGE restaurant with big gaudy red lanterns and elaborate wooden carvings. Since we were starving, we went in and figured out the extensive menu. I took photos of all our plates, which included spicy smoky duck soup, Sichuan noodles, stuffed eggplant, steamed dumplings, but some of the dishes were less than tasty for our Western palates. We simply ordered more, because the food was SO cheap! That was fun.

Then we investigated the strange building across the street, which turned out to be the Yonghe Lamasery. It was about to close, so we exlpored nearby the preserved hutongs (alleyways), and down Guozijian Jie (国子监街/國子監街 "Imperial College Street"). We drank Red Bulls while sitting on a stoop and watching the world a bit, marveling at how different China and Korea seemed to be. We decided to go to Beihai Gonguan (北海公园 "Park of the Northern Sea") from there.

This place was truly magnificent, with a lake, or the "Northern Sea" (Bei Hai), surrounding the Tuan Cheng (Round City) and the Qiong Dao (Jade Islet) where sits the Bai Ta (White Dagoba), and we walked all over and took hundreds of pictures. It was really peaceful, and as the sun was setting, bats and swallows swooped all over the water's surface. The pollution, sadly, was so thick that the colors of sunset were really vibrant and lovely.

We walked around the northern gate of the Imperial Palace, also known as the Forbidden City, and enjoyed people with their night kite-flying. These kites were affixed with LEDs of many colors and suspended hundreds of feet above us, much to the delight of the three of us and several tourist children.

From there we took a cab to the infamous Donghuamen Night Market, with a long row of carts and lanterns, and hundreds of patrons clamoring to taste the squid and fish balls and candied fruit on skewers. I got the latter, which looked positively delectable, but had trouble eating it because the noxious smells wafting and often pouring from some other ghastly menu options. Truly, the odor was too nauseating to enjoy or even taste my sweet fruit, so we high-tailed it from the market and wandered down Wanfujin Dajie, a popular Western-style shopping area, crammed full of boring American franchise eateries like Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut. We ended up at Pizza Hut, unfortunately, and while Briana's kebab came out in reasonable time, Katie and I had to cancel our pizza because it simply took too long and we were exhausted.

After walking well out of the range of tourists, we finally found an empty cab, and took it home.

That was our FIRST DAY.

***
On Sunday morning, after having a successful sleep with earplugs (THANK GOD for that!), we got ready for a big day and headed over to a nearby 7-Eleven that we had discovered during our search for the hotel. We were looking for somewhere to eat breakfast or at least get some coffee.

I need to take a minute to express just HOW amazing this 7-Eleven was: well-lit, clean, fully-stocked, steamed buns, sandwiches, gimbap, salads, fresh fruits, teas of all special types, and a ridiculously large and affordable alcohol selection that wasn't even behind the counter! There was also some really strange loop of two instrumental songs over and over again, and to one of which I decided the lyrics were "Xanadu...la la la la la la, Xanadu..." It sounds only vaguely similar to the Olivia Newton-John Broadway number.

We unanimously decided that we would end up there a few more times before we left Beijing.

Afterward, we again made our way to the Lamasery, through the lovely park and all the happy, relaxed Beijingers playing badminton and stretching and doing group synchronized dancing to a tape. The Yonghe Lamasery was so cool, huge and extravagant and crowded. There was a long entry path lined with large shade trees and golden ceramic-roofed buildings and gateways and incense burners in every corner and cart selling piles of huge incense sticks all around the entrance. Inside each building was a shrine to Buddha or important Buddhist masters, gilded and surrounded with silks and ornate gilded wood carvings, candles, flowers, and extensive paintings all over the walls and ceilings.

Although dozens of people were burning their incense in homage to Buddha (since it was Buddha's birthday), burning it inside the buildings, as well as flash photography, was not permitted. People came in and lay three sticks of fresh incense down by altars in every room. I came across one man who was clearly en train de 108 bows. It was so peaceful to float quietly into rooms with Buddhists silently saying their prayers and finding spiritual solace. It was remarkably quiet everywhere, despite so many believers and tourists. I think everyone displayed a significant amount of respect (except for those snapping photos inside the rooms).

Wanfuge (the Ten-thousand Happiness Pavilion), was very large room that housed a three-storey Maitreya statue, gilded of course, with intense yet serene black eyes and long drapes of rainbow silk swagged over its hands. I stood directly below it and craned my neck upward. It's made of a huge white sandalwood tree trunk, which extends 8 meters underground and is 18 meters tall, and is one of the three best wood carvings in the Yonghe Lamasery. It took three years to transport it to Beijing and was carved under the supervision of Emperor Qianglong. It was mesmerizing.

I found a little corner shop in this absolutely enormous complex and picked up some nice souvenirs, including a little jade Buddha and some gorgeous post cards of pictures I wasn't allowed to take of the shrines.

How could I forget my lungs? With Beijing's air already irritating my tender post-bronchitis lungs, the incense smoke pluming from fire pits near every shrine smelled lovely, but I was choking and growing more hoarse by the minute. Katie and I both were dying, actually. After about an hour, we had enjoyed and inhaled our fill of the Lamasery, and elected to take a cab to Tian'an Men Square.

Obviously the cab ride was very exciting, and I was already starting to feel like I knew my way around the city, at least a bit. The Imperial Axis has such an energy, it's unmistakable. The cab driver dropped us off beside the Great Hall of the People, right next to the National Grand Theater (nicknamed "The Egg") which I had unfortunately forgotten to insist on walking past. We turned and walked toward the Mao Zedong Mausoleum and the Zhengyang Men, and on the way I purchased a lovely pink bamboo parasol from a pushy and manipulative lady, only because the sun was definitely beating down on my shoulders and it was a relatively hot day.

We walked all around Tian'an Men Square, which certainly lives up to its colossal reputation. We sat in the grass (which was suspiciously empty when we came to it), ate popsicles and pondered China, and within 25 minutes we were shooed off by some irate police.

On our way toward the Forbidden City entrance, we took several "we were here" photos, and so many opportunistic Chinese tourists grabbed me to pose with them! The first couple were cute, the next group a bit confusing and funny, and the third befuddled me into exclaiming, "What? Again? Why? WHY?!" But I posed anyway.

Describing the Imperial Palace is useless. Words like "big" and "beautiful" have no business anywhere near it. This place spared no expense. Having recently been repainted and restored quite a bit for the 2008 Summer Olympics, the buildings were in marvelous shape and gave a good sense of how the privileged few lived within these forbidden walls. We were a bit pressed for time, so our path led generally through the middle section of the palace, almost completely devoid of trees other than the Imperial Garden in the northern part of the palace. This is where the Emperor and Empress spent October through April of every year through the Ming and Qing dynasties. Huge bronze pots sat near the buildings, meant to be kept filled with water in case of fire.

Every little thing, every stone rail along a step, every platform, every gate, door, door knocker, brick, garden pebble mosaic, veneer, ceramic tile, overhang, incense burner, drainage spout, everything was a detail that was given attention and that meant something like happiness, luck, wealth, longevity, or represented the Emperor or Empress. My thoughts were consumed with what this place must have been like hundreds of years ago, quiet, new, and imperially exclusive.

We were in too much of a hurry to entertain my imagination in this swarming tourist trap. I would've stayed all day, meandering my way around. But I'll find my way there again.

The exit out the north part of the palace seemed oddly open, and, free. As in, it's possible we wouldn't have had to pay admission if we'd entered this way. We tried really, really hard to catch a cab at the end of the sidewalk, but we were blown off by at least half a dozen drivers and coveted by twice as many motorized rickshaws with enough room for two but NOT three people! Why would they stop? Who would we boot?

*****(I'll finish this and add more photos when I have time, but until then, I'll post what I've accomplished)*****