A new year and a new attempt at blogging

Hey, I'm still in Korea. It's an attempt at security and an avoidance of making any drastic changes (like another international relocation) just yet that I chose back in November to stay until next July. In short, it's just easier to stay where I am. Of course, at the time I was feeling incredibly satisfied and fulfilled with my job, my social life, my romantic life, my recreational life, and the state of things in Seoul.

Happiness is a funny thing, too, because once it comes around, it deceives you into believing things are going to look up from now on...until they don't, and you spend some time scrambling or frantic because circumstances are out of your hands. Besides that, I just really enjoy being happy. Who doesn't? Unfortunately, my shortcomings and insecurities include a bit of jealousy, indignance, impatience, and melodrama. Having no control over the momentum of life often leads to flare-ups in some of my less-marketable qualities, and happiness factors tend to drop in those cases.

By December, I had found myself in a sticky social situation, discovered I didn't have the money for any trip during my winter vacation, and felt as though I had nothing to really look forward to. Christmas and the New Year promised nothing more than solitude and sub-freezing temperatures, and life felt grim and lonely once again. Change is inevitable, in beautiful, painful, unpredictable ways, but it comes and that's just fact.

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I decided that if I was going to drop a bunch of money during my week of paid vacation, I was going to put it towards something I could remember clearly. Like a big tattoo. I have been thinking about getting one to essentially commemorate my life in Korea, the phenomenon of change and how it is a beautiful thing, and something that I have especially loved about Seoul. Eventually I settled on ginkgo leaves, which come in many shapes and sizes even on the same tree. They are a brilliant green during the spring and summer, and they gradually gild over in September and October until trees everwhere are a luminous yellow. They have dictated so much of my subconscious feelings about my life here; experiencing seasons in a temperate climate, the reverence for their medicinal and nutritional properties, and seeing the scattered, fallen leaves dry and brown but retaining their classic shape, all during the winter. I see them peeking out of the snowdrifts, occasionally. I think they are lovely, plain and simple. I feel a special connection to ginkgo, and ginkgo is a familiar thing in Korean life.

Five hundred dollars later, I am now tending to the healing of my brand-new, intricate and extremely professional-looking tattoo.

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After my contract is up in July, I plan to fly to Bangkok, Thailand, for the first leg of a two-week trip around the country, before I fly out of Bangkok to Phoenix. By now, obviously, changes this big shouldn't scare me. My world has turned upside-down so many times I can't quite count, and I'm no worse for the wear. In fact, I'd like to say they have been huge growth experiences and that I'm better for having had the challenges of starting over again and again. Little rebirths. This all relies on my faith that God is directing my life and has stretched a massive safety net in case I stumble. So far, so good. Why not view the impending international relocation as yet another renaissance? I certainly won't be the same person when I get back to the States, so I shouldn't imagine that I will find myself back in the same conundrums. For as unappealing as Phoenix seems to me, it still serves as a home base, and always has, and I've never had too much trouble springboarding out of there when the right opportunity arose.

I have been frightened, but I suddenly understand that there's no need for it.

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Additionally, I feel pressure to lose weight and be in good condition to train in taekwondo and receive my black belt before July. This is absolutely within reach, but I no longer feel the liberty to answer only to myself, because now my trainer is keeping tabs on my weight loss. This motivates me but only when I have made progress; otherwise I feel shame for not having the energy or the determination to maintain a healthy diet. I stay quite active, far more than I was for most of my life, but occasionally I injure myself or get sick, and my training intensity suffers. I seem to have lost the foothold on being tidy and having a regular, healthy sleep routine, so I am most often dragging far behind where I should be. Lethargy is my constant foe.

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Belly dancing has been very fun and fulfilling for the past several weeks. Our instructor has been away, traveling around the world, training and performing and advancing her skill. Meanwhile, three girls from our dance troupe are leading different sections of the class. It has been a really wonderful, healthy thing for us to have this time together, doing technique drills and bonding on a totally different level than before. It's very a comfortable and supportive atmosphere. They are such wonderful teachers and their experience, approach and interpretation of the dance has been very eye-opening and empowering. I really needed to learn more technique and work on it, so I feel as though I've caught up somewhat to the other girls who have been doing this for at least a year longer than I have. Very valuable. I'd like to be slimmer for this as well, since I am hung up on insecurities with my belly and stretch marks. All in good time, I suppose.

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Though I've dated a tiny bit while being in Korea, there's certainly no one who has ever measured up to the bar Toby set for me. Since I've been here, too, our friendship has deepened, and we communicate on a different level (FINALLY). We are best friends, and I can always count on him to understand what I am going through and to be encouraging and supportive of me. Our interests are fairly different, but highly compatible, and in terms of humor and music and academic pursuits, he just plain "gets" me. To be fair, I haven't been totally open to the idea of replacing him as the Significant Man in my life, and the few guys I've actually found myself really drawn to seemed to have no interest in me, so the choice has always been easy. Toby wins. And, as usual, I fixate on him, just like I've done for a decade, but the refreshing thing is that he welcomes my attention and I don't feel like a crazy stalker. He's even risen to the occasion of meeting me halfway, in a sense, to stay in touch and make meaningful, loving gestures of affection and friendship.

He is supportive of me being all the way out here, working on myself, making progress he swears he can see daily (even though I am somewhat blind to it), and refuses to impose his own life momentum on my goals...though I don't want anybody but him. So we're in a state of Limbo, I suppose, and may remain that way until something stirs inside of him to pick up and run to a new life, or something stirs inside of me to move along. So far, nothing.

That means, of course, that my little domestic romance did not last long. A nice, attractive guy, yes, but a major lack of compatibility was glaringly obvious the longer we dated. It isn't his fault, but he doesn't do or say the things I want him to, he isn't what I want in a relationship. We're still friends, but in a manner where I am wholly uninterested in him (a few ugly revelations of his immaturity really turned me off romantically), and he still makes attempts to flirt with me. It's not enough to enjoy his good looks, because I find myself frustrated with him more often, and that's probably all it will ever amount to.

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I should, and likely will, start posting blogs again with cheerful descriptions of my most recent adventure or infatuation, with photos to complement. These cold winter months (MUCH colder than weather in which I've ever had to function daily) have slowed me down and made me acutely apathetic. That's the word of the month: Apathy. A-P-A-T-H-Y. It's such a big thing to have to crawl out from under, just like repressing bad memories and pain, because it builds up to such an immense degree and becomes exponentially more difficult to recover from every day that it continues.

Lately, though, I can shave little tasks off the huge pile of things I should do. So it's not going to weigh down on me forever. I just need to practice maintaining it all the time.

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another year!

I recall once when I felt prolific and wanted to spend hours pouring my thoughts into my little Space blog, and at some point it fell away from me and I stopped knowing what to say or wanting to say it.

Things happen every day that are noteworthy, and I could wrap my mind around phrasing and interesting vocabulary, but somehow it becomes overwhelming trying to chronologue it all the time.  I was so good at it before!

Then I think I should try to catch up on all the things that have happened, to give myself a sense of how far I have come since my previous entry (in October?!).

So, let's see...October...
I was crushing hard on a boy who lived outside of Seoul, and was working hard in dance and taekwondo.  I had my first dance performance, and then my second, back to back.  I prepared so diligently for those performances, I was beside myself with worry that I would forget part of the choreography or not know the intricacies of the music.  On the performance days, though, I was unbelievably serene!  It's a rush to be performing again, especially as a dancer (which is something I've NEVER felt that confident doing) and having nothing to do with singing or acting (mostly).  I was even drumming, and that's new too!  Halloween came and went; it wasn't very important or exciting. I helped a friend get her costume ready for weeks ahead of time, and threw mine together in 45 minutes.

November...
Fall in Seoul is beautiful.  The leaves faithfully changed colors and took on a much more romantic, whistful ambiance, and I enjoyed many a stroll down roads on blustery days.  I extended my contract until the beginning of next July.  Thanksgiving was an interesting event this year, sharply contrasted to last year, which meant nothing because I knew nobody and it was my birthday and none of it mattered.  This year, I joined a family Thanksgiving meal and we engorged ourselves on all the delicious traditional dishes of home.  For my birthday, I joined another expat Thanksgiving celebration, and enjoyed loads of champagne and red wine and long, aimless walks to other parts of the city.  That weekend I went on my first Buddhist temple stay in Ganghwa-do (an island off the northwest coast of South Korea), and tried to silence some of the many conversations I was having in my head.  That was a valuable skill to practice; mediation is one of the most challenging things I can think of doing.  My "romance" was also waning and I knew that would happen, but it felt natural and not disappointing.

December...
This month started with me feeling desperately sad and lonely, wondering how to recover from being villified and seemingly abandoned by very close friends.  Eventually, it worked out, but it sucked.  I saw the boy for the last time.  I sent off my Christmas presents, I bought myself a few things.  I decided on some directions for the next phase of my life (e.g. After Korea...), and settled that graduate school feels like the necessary next move.  That's where I need to be devoting my time, that's what I want for myself.  I had the bright idea that I'd vacate to Thailand for two weeks after I finish my contract here, since I had been toying with the idea of going to Santorino or some other Greek island...but have you looked at flights to Greece??  Way out of my budget.  Thailand is so much closer and affordable, and easier to fly out of.  So I bought one of my three flights, planned out several activities, and am fantasizing about the beach and the palaces and temples and how cool it's going to be to finally have a vacation like that!!

Also, I found a posting for a graduate school program that really sounds perfect, and so I sprang on it and sent my application.  Even if it doesn't pan out for me, I needed to break the ice with that whole idea, since I've been completely intimidated about the application process and not seeing anything that really worked with my aspirations.  Besides that, writing the cover letter and updating my CV were really empowering.  I impress myself!!  I sincerely do feel good about my experience and how hard I've worked and how far I've come.

Christmas was good, too, despite being pretty sick all month and still under the weather on my holiday.  I slept in (late) and joined some church friends for a big Christmas lunch nearby.  My evening plans fell through and I ended up staying home and baking persimmon walnut muffins (DELICIOUS!!), but Skype and Facebook kept me in touch with my loved ones back home and that meant a lot.   I didn't feel far away.  My presents reached them the day after Christmas, and that was great news!

I went skiing for the first time ever this past weekend (on the 26th) with a friend, and it was awesome!  She graciously took time to teach me how to ski, and even though I fell a few times (and sprained my knee at one point), she said I took to it very naturally.  Can you believe it?  So I've been doing physical therapy this week to fix my knee up because it was pretty badly injured, but I don't think it could've happened at a better time.  I was already sick and still recovering from bronchitis, so my aerobic activity has been lower lately, and my vacation starts on Friday so I won't have to stand around all day teaching.  I can take it easy!!

Whoa, that means next year starts on Friday.  What a year, 2009.  I can't imagine what's in store for 2010!

where was I?

O, there are a whole slew of developments since I last entered anything here.

Should I really divulge into detail? No. I live in Korea, and will continue to do so until July, 2010. I re-signed my contract.

I am a purple belt in taekwondo (which is the fifth belt in a 9-belt system), and have found my speed and form and strength are all well-improved. I still need to work on my stamina, because I just can't spar full-on for much longer than 10 minutes or so. My instructor does want to enter me into some tournaments, but I want to really prepare for that and it would mean a more sincere dedication of time and effort.

Part of my time and effort (and a LOT of my money) is going to belly dance. I'm now part of a dance troupe, which means the instructor has very high expectations of us and I am really going out of my way to participate as much as possible, because it affects every member of the troupe if I don't carry my weight. We are going on our first out-of-town performance this week

I'm dating a very nice, very attractive guy, but unfortunately our relationship has formed around an obvious barrier to close interaction: 150 miles. Getting to know someone by phone and Internet only works to a certain extent, and our time together has so far been very limited (but also wonderful). I have misplaced my frustrations about the situation (that I walked into knowing full well it wouldn't change) by growing bored on the phone and restless sitting in front of Skype.

I'm a bit bored and restless about everything at the present moment. I wake up early and refuse to get out of bed for hours. I find myself under pressure to make lots of people happy around me. Dance, taekwondo, friends, boyfriend, school bosses, students, parents of students, and somewhere in there, myself. As opposed to being fulfilling as usual, everything just feels demanding.

After being so active all the time, I certainly lost weight. As of late, however, I'm eating out of tension, and my weight loss has plateaued. I know eventually I'll get back into the swing, but I'd like it to hurry up!

the Jitters

so, i'm actually really happy right now.  of course, for me and everyone else i'm sure, happiness is rather cyclical, and the road gets bumpy and we all deal with it how we do, but for me this is a new and different brand of happiness.

i recently reflected on the span of my lifetime, recalling my happiest times in childhood and young adulthood and official adulthood.  the sheer dearth of joy from what should have been my most carefree years and the subsequent compounding damage and bitterness as i aged are an appalling discovery of how infrequently i felt truly happy.

as a child, i had a mixture of people who loved me and treated me gently and people who were harsh, abusive, and entirely selfish with me.  in my immediate family, four of seven adults were extremely abusive, so i lacked the safety and security i certainly deserved.

i acted out in response to that for the next decade or so, emotionally flailing and flopping and never developing a sense of self love or self respect.  i waged war on my body for years.

i lost my father, my stepfather was exposed, and my mother was diagnosed, and i moved away and out of the pit of unhappy memories and unhealthy family ties again and again until i finally found a foothold in a city not far away while attending university.  my heart was still wrenched and scarred, and i had so much undealt-with pain, but finding myself in a new environment at least allowed me to associate my past with somewhere else.

though i knew it was an absolute necessity, i put off seeking professional help for my endless unhappiness, for three years after it occurred to me that i really did need it.  when i finally did see a therapist, i had so much repressed that dredging it back up was an absolute nightmare, but it was the first priority in healing.  all of a sudden, i had a breakthrough, and i was the happiest i'd ever been in my whole entire life!  i was literally high on life!  of course, i was around people at work and at home who were not so deliriously happy, and it was a matter of time before i let my environment bring me back down again.  but i had tasted it, the sheer weightlessness of it, and i wanted to be happy again!

luckily, i am loved.  i always have been, but i frequently can't see that, because i most often did not love myself at all.  i have wonderful friends, amazing people i consider as close and dear as family (the non-abusive kind!), and i did my fair share of relying on them to carry me through some of these really dark patches.  my faith has also strengthened deeply, and i am satisfied that spiritually, my heart rests in the right Hands.

but i am always on the move, always searching.  perhaps running.  i have had more happy moments and much closer together than i can ever remember growing up, but i have still let the emotional scars control me, i still struggle with loving myself.

living abroad has somehow, indirectly, put things in perspective for me.  it has been an excellent opportunity to get to know myself better.  additionally, i have been doing things for myself that i really enjoy that offer such benefits as having new skills, losing weight, increased stamina, social interaction, creative catharsis, and being just plain ol' fun to do.  i'm feeling and looking fit and healthy, i've done a lot of personal analysis and hopefully gleaned some wisdom from it, and i can share and contribute my life and wisdom to those around me.

but most importantly, i think, i have reconnected with LOVE.  it was always part of my philosophy, that love is the fiber of the universe, but living that truth took shedding a lot of layers and skins and delusions and misconceptions about myself and others and life.  i have found a deep respect and love for myself.  i love who i am and i'm very proud of who i am.

and i absolutely adore children!  it is their happy energy that has inspired me in so many ways to search myself for joy and love.  working with them is truly fulfilling, and i am so grateful to have this chance.

so i am very happy.

additionally, i seem to have met someone to whom i've taken quite a fancy.  i never thought i'd feel butterflies in my stomach again, and it has been years and years.  i was really afraid i wouldn't find someone who appreciated and understood so much about me (which is a big reason why i held so tightly to toby; he understands and knows and loves so much about me, i couldn't justify sacrificing that), and i was skeptical i'd ever meet someone who challenged me intellectually the way toby does.  the foundation of this, however, is such novelty for me:  completely honest communication.  sometimes i can feel myself balking at being sincerely romantic, but so far i am ecstatic to be involved in something that is emotionally mature and mutually enthusiastic.  it is so nice to feel special enough for the effort.

juxtaposing life now to life before this, i can say with certainty that i am happy much more often than i can ever remember being.  it is a liberating weight off my heart, i feel so much energy, i have so much more room to stretch and grow.  i can share my love with others, and with myself.  i'm staying in korea even longer than i planned, because why ruin a good thing, right?

i think i'm moving on up.

a brief reflection

sometimes i forget that i'm still young and that from the outside it looks extremely easy for me to move on from one situation to the other.  in actuality, i am frequently bogged down by what i consider to be sticky decision-making.

letting the past stay in the past is really difficult when i keep packing the past up with me and taking it out every time i feel even slightly insecure.  i keep reaching backwards to the comfort of something that wasn't ever totally healthy and is probably completely a lost cause now.  i'm not a fixer, i don't try to change others, but i do want to help nurture and support those i love.  saying goodbye to a flawed relationship is so complicated, but i've been through this process before.  it just involves so much grieving.  it was the same with my dad.  it was the same with various dear friends who changed their minds about our friendship.  women tend to define themselves by the many relationships in which they participate, family, friends, lovers, acquaintances and coworkers, students, and so on.  i'm no exception.

i can't picture the aftermath and the calamity of finally moving myself forward to be emotionally available to someone new, someone who didn't watch me grow up, someone who knows nothing about my abused childhood, someone to whom i would be obliged to explain so many things.  i hate the pity that ensues from some people, when compassion is beyond their grasp, but they still want to try and benefit my cause by donating some emotional charity.  it won't go away, it's part of my life, it shaped who i am, those were my challenges and my lessons and i'm stronger because of that.

it's just so deeply disappointing to know i need to let go of someone who truly understands me, because he has no goals, no ambitions, no dreams, and no motivation.  i wanted for so long to be his motivation, but i set myself to be let down when i was just never worth the effort.

so, i guess, let the real grieving begin.

Dalian

For the Chuseok Holiday (Korean Thanksgiving), I went to visit my friend's parents who have just moved to an area outside of Dalian, China, to teach at an international school.  Luckily, I was able to secure a substitute for my last two classes on Thursday evening, and made it to the airport limousine stop just in time to grab the next shuttle.  It was a nail-biter on the way out of the city, because it was not only rush hour but also the city had begun to evacuate to the country and families' homes outside of Seoul for the holiday weekend.  Oddly, there was nearly no traffic on the highways, at least not on the way to the international airport!

I flew in on the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic, which carried on the theme of unity and fundamental rule that China had already embraced for nearly two millenia, so of course people everywhere were delirious with celebration (I had just missed the fireworks display in Dalian).  This also happened to be the weekend of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival (similar to Chuseok in Korea), celebrating the first full moon of fall (which was Saturday), and nearly everyone had about a week off of work, so lots of stores and restaurants were closed.

I stayed at the Golden Pebble Beach National Resort, right next to Tim and Agnes' school, where they had an "assisted apartment" therein.  It was so nice, and clean, and practically empty, since they moved from India in August and were still awaiting the shipment with all their 17-years-of-living-abroad household furnishings and decor.  It'll surely be amazing once they've really settled in!

The beach was serene and clear, but with hardly any shells or creatures on the beach, due to the extreme over-fishing of the waters, and practically empty of people as well.  The area around the resort was heavily landscaped, but still very peaceful and quiet, and the whole place is remote and truly accessible only by car or bicycle (it's just too far to walk anywhere else).

We went into a smaller city called Kai Fa Qu and shopped around on Friday, and then had dinner at a hot pot restaurant where you order a specific broth flavor and various things to boil in it, and you mix your choice of condiments in a bowl and dip those boiled things in and then eat them on rice.  Tim and Agnes are thankfully both vegetarians, so we enjoyed tons of mushrooms and greens in a pepper broth and a mushroom broth, and several Snow Draft beers.  We walked around afterwards in the nightlife area of Kai Fa Qu that had the most curious architecture.  Some resembled Candy Land, while others had giant creatures and flowers attached to the facade; not as much neon as Korea, probably because we were out a bit early on a big holiday weekend.  We had a cocktail at an "Australian" bar that was far too smokey, and then went home and to bed.

Saturday I joined Agnes for breakfast (I ate a tiny fresh pizza!) and a "foot" massage, which included neck, shoulders, back, and legs.  The foot portion was clearly the tour de force, however, and they clearly applied reflexology.  Afterwards, we went shopping at an outdoor produce market for all the fruit and veggies Tim and Agnes would eat during the week.  I bought some moon cakes and some fun jewelry.   After coming home and eating lunch, I took a lovely nap, and then Agnes and I walked to the beach, where she read a book and I went swimming in the sea.  It was a bit chilly, but not too much.  We walked around after sunset and found our way to the amusement park nearby, looking for the entrance and a possible cab to take us home, but we could find neither.  Odd.  It seems, in China, that every man with a car is a potential cab driver, as long as he knows where to go and can negotiate a suitable price beforehand.  We nearly never rode in a legitimate cab (often because they did not know where the resort was), but the "cab" we found to get home from the amusement park nearly killed us and we had less than a mile to go AND there were possibly only 3 other cars on the road, but he veered into opposing traffic and timed his turns POORLY.  We had dinner, watched Australian TV, and went down to the gym.  They went to bed, and I watched a DVD before also turning in.

Sunday, we packed up and took a trip to Dalian on the light rail.  The trip was very nice, and the architecture in Dalian is really spectacular.  We tried to take a cab from the railway station, but again no cabs would drive us the six blocks to the hotel.  Agnes mangaged to speak to the driver of a tiny, green, 3-wheeled green bean that resembled a car and convince him to take us.  He drove against traffic on a one-lane road for several blocks while I held a map open for him, and then when we found the ritzy hotel we sought, the concierge wouldn't let our green bean drive up into the vallet.  Too fancy for a dirty green bean?!  It was hilarious.  We took our stuff up to the mini-suite on the 25th floor (they were unexpectedly upgraded!), and went down to the basement for the in-house German microbrewery for lunch.  I had a massive litre of Paulaner's Dark House beer, fresh pretzels, and egg speitzel, and I was SO tired!  Afterwards, we went across the street and walked all around Labor Park, which was alive with celebrations and tai chi performances and happy children and adults.  It was a glorious sunny Sunday afternoon.  We had an amazing time.

After the park, we had some coffee at the hotel, I grabbed my stuff, and took a cab back to the airport (my cab driver drove insanely, as though I were going into labor).  I watched my last Chinese sunset before boarding the plane and making my way back to Seoul.

A fabulous vacation!

randy

Well this is certainly unfamiliar territory.  I could've sworn I had been here at some point before, but now I don't recognize anything.  It's a nice place, I like it very much, it's somewhere I want to keep coming back to, as long as I can.

Every good feeling I could describe would be too obvious and I don't want to write that down.  But I'm feeling good.  I'm feeling amazing.