And the little square-headed statue goes to...

It is Tuesday night here in Korea. Today is Oscar nominations day, and I am pleased to report that I watched the live announcement via streaming video on msnbc.com. Right on. I love that I could sit here cross-legged on my floor and watch and hear Mira Sorvino and Sid Ganis in a little box on my screen and through my speakers. It's times like these when I hardly feel I've traveled around the world at all.

I think about the whole hardly-far-away-at-all thing a lot. I mean, seriously, if it weren't for the complete and total lack of Mexican food, I might not even notice I was living so far from home. (I should like to point out that I do notice that however. Every day. I dream of tortillas. I fantasize about enchiladas. Even Casa Loca in Seoul does not have enchiladas.)

Furthermore, I think about the ways in which I as a 21st-century traveler have it different from travelers throughout history, and the ways in which I do not. For example, as everyone who knows me is aware at this point, the main (only) (non-food) thing that makes me even remotely sad about being here is being far away from someone who allegedly is in a relationship with me, although based on his actions any sane person would have started reasonably doubting that by now. Last summer I read David McCullough's wonderful book John Adams, and I often think about how very long John was away from his beloved Abigail. It was a major theme of that book, while he was in France and England, how he was steadfast in his resolve to work for and build a new country, but how terribly much he missed his wife. Life was so much better when she came to join him, but they had to spend years apart.

I think maybe I'm nowhere near as strong as ol' J.A. He had to wait weeks, months, for contact. With every ship there was the question: would he get a letter from Abigail? No phone. No e-mail. No text messages. No global priority mail tracking. If I go two days without talking to the ass it feels like an eternity! (ed. note -- But then, maybe that's because it usually meant he was up to no good when he wasn't returning phone calls late at night. UGH. -- 8/2008)John Adams was awesome. (And it's a really good book, by the way, the McCullough.)

Then again, this past weekend I was reading The Ugly American. Yes, I'm still reading War and Peace, but I am on page 640 and will be reading that forever, so sometimes on the weekend I pause and read something else really fast. And this weekend I met up with an expat literary society here in Daegu consisting of English teachers who are going to be my new reading pals. They have a monthly book swap, where I acquired The Ugly American, and I am joining a reading group with some of them, too. Anyway, for those who don't know, the novel makes such a major statement about U.S. foreign policy that its title became part of the vernacular. It was published in 1958. Many of the foreign service characters in the fictional country of Sarkhan live as if they are in the U.S., doing their best to not "go into the hills" nor really get intimate with the country.

"He told about commissaries which stocked wholesome American food for Americans stationed all over the world. 'You can buy the same food in Asia that you can in Peoria. Even, say, in Saigon they stock American ice cream, bread, cake, and, well, anything you want,' said Joe Bing. 'We look out for our people. When you live overseas it's still on the high American standard.'" -- p. 80

It got me thinking about how it's not a peculiarly modern thing to try to bring it with you. And even in John Adams' day, travelers and ambassadors kept shippers busy as they ordered goods from home. I think Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson even procured many items from home that they wanted while they were in Europe.

I frankly wish it were ice cream or Oreos that I missed -- those certainly are available.

As for The Book (War and Peace), I am loving it, not that you could tell by how infrequently I post to the blog I made for it. Today I read the all-too-charming scene of the mummers at Christmas, with costumes and sleigh rides and the 'kids' philosophizing, and Sonya and Nikolai falling in love all over again. It was such a delightful portion of the book; that Christmastime evening has made it to my list of favorite scenes in all of literature. (Other all-time favorite scenes include the was-he-poisoned? meal at Hotel Nacional in Our Man in Havana and the whole Hi-Hat/jukebox operator part of Wonder Boys.)

Out of fiction and back to reality, as it were: today our new teacher came! He started work! We don't have to cover departed-Canadian's classes any longer! It was actually strange and a little sad to say good-bye to the Tuesday afternoon class of beginning 6-year-olds that I've been covering. They charmed me, in the end, and they're so cute even though they can't speak for crap. They get so excited when they see me. Today as I walked by the classroom they wanted to play a "hiding" game and - get this! - they USED THE VOCABULARY we've been practicing! I have been drilling "let's run/hide/seek/swing/slide" etc. in there and they were totally busting it out today, of their own volition, before class started. They turned off the lights and hid behind their desks, waiting for me to happen by, and then they cried, "Teacher seek! I hide!" I melted. But then I had to say good-bye. I showed them their new teacher and I felt like I was abandoning them.

I discovered an amusing picture in one of the Ding Ding Dang dialogue books today. There is a dialogue about "Today we're going to the United States. Where is your suitcase?" etc. Well, I looked closely at the little illustrations for the first time and noticed that the Statue of Liberty looks suspiciously like all of the stone Buddha and harubang sculptures here in Korea, especially the square head. I chuckled. The green color was off, the crown wasn't right at all, and it was definitely not Liberty's face. Come to think of it, it looked more like the head of the Oscar statuette...

Oscar acting nominations that make me particularly happy:
David Strathairn
I haven't seen Good Night and Good Luck yet, but he's always so fantastic
Amy Adams
Junebug was one of my two favorites of the past year; she was phenomenal

Oscar-nominated movies "coming soon" to my Daegu theaters:
Walk the Line
Memoirs of a Geisha
Munich

Oscar-nominated movies I so clearly yearn to see, and soon:
North Country
Paradise Now
Capote
Crash
and Brokeback Mountain of course

Oscar-nominated movies I would have little desire to see if it weren't for their noms:
Pride and Prejudice
Cinderella Man

Oscar nominee in category to which I will pay even more attention than usual:
"On a Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin" nominated for Best Documentary Short Subject

Norman Corwin is the amazing journalist and radio legend who was one of my professors at USC. Besides his life and contributions, of personal relevance he was one of the supporters that fateful semester who had been to Cuba and who offered wholehearted support and was impressed by our intrepid traveling. Even a couple years later, when he did some stuff with Marketplace, where I was working, Norman Corwin stopped to ask my Savvy Traveler co-workers, "Did you know Linda went to Cuba?" They were all rolling their eyes, saying, yeah no kidding, it's all she ever talks about, but here was this prominent figure of whom even my then-boss JJ was a bit in awe stopping to give me props. He is a truly wonderful man: talented, brilliant, and good to the core. I hope the film about him wins! Now, how about that, I've given you all a reason to pay attention to the Documentary Short award! Of course, it's an honor just to be nominated.

In the Grotto

All right, let me just bottom line it for you right now: this weekend is the lunar new year. It is an extremely big deal holiday here in Korea. We have a three-day weekend so I do not have to work on Monday. This is because the lunar new year happens to fall on a weekend this time around, but we would have three weekdays off too (in fact, we English teachers are all a little bummed we got the short end of the stick with the holiday this year). I received presents from work, and presents from a couple of my students. (Towels, socks, a rather nice umbrella...) On Friday we had kite-flying in the park for pre-school and the kids wore the traditional Korean hanbok costume. There was a mass exodus of traffic from Daegu Friday night as people headed to their families, and the downtown areas were not nearly as packed with people as usual. I traveled to Gyeongju today and many restaurants were closed there and its streets eerily empty as well.

All this is to say that in the U.S. this holiday is called Chinese New Year, but clearly it's not just for China anymore!

I tried to explain that to one of the (cool, reasonably fluent in English) KTs at my school on Friday, that the misconception in the U.S.A. is Chinese New Year but she didn't seem to get it. She was sort of confused: "But why, Linda, would you just call it Chinese New Year?" I'm like, exactly! That's my point! I think it's fascinating.

I do so like to do Buddhist things and of late I especially like to mark significant occasions with visits to one Buddha or another. Today Robin and I rode the bus to Gyeongju and then went up the mountain from outlying Bulguksa temple to the Seokguram Grotto. Seokguram was built in 851 A.D. They carried tons of granite up a steep mountainside. I myself rode up this mountainside in a bus, an overwhelming experience in itself. The Buddha statue is a designated UNESCO World Cultural Heritage item. It was beautiful and peaceful. When I stand contemplating the Buddha I do feel what I can only describe as a stirring calm in my soul. It's rather amazing, actually.

After you walk out of the little grotto, you go down some steps along which lie curved roof tiles where people from around the world have written messages that ask for blessings or peace. There were messages in Korean, English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Dutch, Swedish, German, French, etc., and piles of tiles next to the path that didn't fit on display. It was amazing to behold. There were messages by people from Romania, Malaysia, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Argentina, Ireland, Ghana...I was particularly struck by some of them, even ones whose languages I couldn't read.

*One said, "Angels on earth, please keep family and friends safe" from a Canadian. I thought that was a nice notion, angels on earth. It sort of fit with the beautiful mood of the place on this mountain overlooking ravine, valley, trees, and on out to the distant East Sea.

*One said, "Kyrgyzstan & Japan" with a heart, and a message in Korean, Japanese, and what was presumably Kyrgyz.

*One was from Ngaing wongchhu sherpa chopulung from Nepal.

*One said, "Peace on Earth, blessings to the people of South Korea" from Tanzania.

*I rather liked "Je souhaite que de l'amour naisse de l'union du soleil de notre coeur et de la lune de notre esprit ... Boudhiste, chretien, juif, musulman, tous la meme foi. Ayons confiance en la vie."

Cat! Cat! Cat!

My pre-schoolers have discovered my tattoo.

It just sort of happened, the other day. I guess it was the combination of my sweater's length, where my jeans rested on my hips, raising my arms, and turning at exactly the right time. It was revealed for a split second, but they all started shrieking "Cat!" And they were up out of their seats and lifting my sweater and touching my back and it was great fun. "Yes, it is a cat," I said. They would put their finger on it, laugh with each other, then look at it some more. I think it could have provided hours of entertainment, but I finally made them sit down and we resumed class.

The next day I wasn't even thinking about it, but in the usual before-class milling about/talking/playing (remember, once I had my skull cracked during that time) they all came up and lifted my shirt to see the cat. The Korean teacher who has them the period before was just leaving the classroom and looked at me strangely. "Yeah, they discovered my tattoo yesterday," I told her. "If you start getting parents' comments about 'Why does that crazy American girl have a tattoo?' I'm sorry." The Korean teacher was a bit fascinated as well, but in more of a normal adult way (even in the West, as it were, sometimes people like my tattoo).

The third day, I hadn't even made it out of the staff room where I was putting my bag down at my desk and about six of the girls appeared in a huddle at the doorway shrieking, "Cat! Cat! Cat!" until I let them surround me and peer at it some more. The two other foreign teachers in there, who were sitting at their desks and thus had the pleasure of their ears being just about perfectly at shriek level, were like, what's happening here? "They seem to be fond of my tattoo," I understated. I walked forward dragging a half dozen five-year-olds clutching at my hips.

We'll see what happens today. It's Lunar New Year! This is a very big deal holiday here, on the level of Christmastime in the U.S. Today we are going to fly kites in the park for pre-school and the kids will play New Year's games and wear the traditional Korean hanbok and eat yummy foods. Or, maybe they will be yummy. So I hear. I tried the rice cake concoction at work last night and it was fine. Then we have a three-day holiday weekend! I guess traffic to and from anywhere in the country will be a nightmare this weekend as everyone visits families and ancestral graves, and bus/train tickets have been booked long in advance. On Sunday things will be closed around the city, like shops and restaurants perhaps. I am going to relax. hike, hang out with friends, read, write, and just generally revel in my good mood. No work on Monday, and then on Tuesday no pre-school (and no cat-touching), so we don't go into work until two in the afternoon.

Happy Seol Nal!

1-2-3

I'm sure there have been people happier to get the Internet at home than I was when I finally got my apartment wired this weekend, but I don't know those people.

Here's an example of how many Canadians there are here in Korea: when Mr. Phone Company came to hook me up, he did his thing with the phone jack and the LAN data box and so forth. Then he worked on the computer, clicking through various screens to ensure I was all set up. He took one look at me and set my homepage to google.ca (Google Canada). Which is fine -- just really funny to me. Canada is just about the default assumed home of English teachers, so in the "Where ya from?" game that is almost always my introductory conversation with people I do get a lot of "Oh, the U.S.!"

Let me just say right here and now that in the last three days I have been to the downtown Starbucks three times. And I'm so okay with that. Two out of three times, a student (late teens, possibly early university) approached me to interview me for English class homework. These things amuse me. Of course, I love anything resembling a survey/interview, so I'm game. Their English was less than stellar. One asked me to describe my personality. I started with "sarcastic." She had no idea. Eventually I wrote it down, but it may not even be an issue of translation. A lot of foreigners here insist there is no Korean concept of sarcasm.

There's almost like a little foreigners' code of mutual understanding. What I mean is, let's say that on any given Wednesday night at the commune's bar there are a handful of teachers miserable in their jobs. These hypothetical teachers might start discussing other options, talking about quitting their jobs, giving each other advice, and automatically understanding each other. You don't have to be friends with fellow foreigners' here to have them default to your side "against" the Koreans'. I don't mean to make it sound sinister or even melodramatic. It's just interesting to me what a given it is, the us/them mentality.

Did you know that here I watch Leno more often than I ever did in the States? That's because Leno and Letterman both air on AFN (the American Forces Network), and they therefore don't conflict with each other. That alone would not prompt me to watch Leno, but he just happens to be there right at the perfect flip-on-the-TV-with-late-dinner time on the weeknights when I do flip on the TV with late dinner, which isn't all of them. Then Letterman airs immediately after that. I would usually watch them on the nights I went directly from work to the "PC Bang" (public PC rooms) and then finally came home after that to collapse on the couch and eat something. Now that I'm on-line at home (wheee!) that dynamic will surely change a bit, so I'll probably go back to never watching Leno.

I'm just such a captive audience to whatever's on AFN. In our old apartment my TV was always on CNN-Asia edition. Here we don't have that much of a cable package. My roommate doesn't want to pay for it, and I haven't really determined if it's worth it for me or not. I do miss my CNN International, but now that I've got unfettered Internet access (are we noticing a theme here?) it's not as crucial. I listened to the live stream of KCRW this weekend! I'm now listening to the BBC World Service on-line! Brilliant!

Just one more week until the year of the dog commences...

Intrinsic Impossibility

Something strange happened on the way out of work Friday evening. Perhaps the mere act of venting to the so-called blogosphere made it happen ("Things I Hate," a few days ago). Anyway, I was shocked. As I left the Ding Ding Dang building, which I do by exiting through double swinging glass doors onto the sidewalk, I stopped just in time to avoid being hit by flying spit. A man who was standing in a group of three to the right of the doorway and who had his back to the doors had just turned and let fly. It therefore sailed right across the doorway at about my eye level, and as I stopped in my tracks, then gritted my teeth and moved on, my usual "Oh, that's so gross" exclamation was pretty much involuntary this time. I mean, it really was right in my face, albeit accidentally. (Lest you think that lets him off the hook, if there weren't so much spitting in the FIRST place then such accidents wouldn't happen.)

Well, the shocking thing was that the man immediately realized what had happened! and he apologized! in English! A triumvirate of surprises! I was so blown away that I sort of mumbled, "That's OK" and walked on shaking my head, asking myself if I'd really just heard what I thought I heard.

And so the 15th Week comes to a close. Exactly 15 weeks ago I was sitting in Boston's Logan Airport contemplating my imminent departure. I had completed my frenzy of jettisoning items to get my bags down to 50 pounds apiece (although I argued that since I went through Tokyo I should have fallen under the "flights to and from Japan" rule of 75 pounds per, but whatever United) and released them into the airline's care. You may recall that the airline liked my bags so much they kept them for two extra days. I sat in the chairs just that side of security and I tried to comprehend what was happening, but it really hadn't hit me yet at all. Not to mention that I was so tired. The rush to pack up and store my life had been madness. "Imagine no possessions..."

And now I'm here. Just - here. I'm sure that my blog of late has left the impression that I am dissatisfied with my Korea experience. That is not entirely accurate. In fact, I am so delighted to be here so much of the time that I think I forget to mention it; it becomes one of those things you take for granted, you know? We always seem to remember to complain but not as often do we note the things for which we are grateful.

The mere act of living abroad is profoundly satisfying. I cannot overstate the importance I place on experiencing different places. This goes for living in different places within the U.S. as well. It makes you more interesting, well-rounded, and wise. It is just better. I have a hard time respecting people who have lived in one place their entire lives. I eye them warily, no matter how perfectly nice they seem.

The fact that my school is loopy, frustrating, exhausting, racist, and just generally logic-defying can be overlooked. Or at least contended with. It's a job. I mean, if it's a choice between my previous job that made my head spin (even the lure of two to three glorious store opening trips per year couldn't keep me in that Cambridge store), and this one, I'm happy to be in this one because of the experience of which it is a part: being in Asia. Would I do this forever? Emphatically, no. But that's also partly because now that I'm here I know how to find a better gig, so if I were to re-up to teach another year in Korea, I would leave Ding Ding Dang behind and never look back.

But I very much doubt that I'm going to teach another year in Korea. Part of me fervently wishes I had done this earlier, because if I were in my twenties like a lot of these foreign teachers I meet, I am certain I'd be doing China next year and Thailand the year after that, or some such thing. However, turning 30 does things to a person. It may have been part of what made me reach my escape velocity from B_____. And it makes me have to get my self to law school. No more delays. That's my current mindset.

(Random tangent: I would like to point out that, rest assured, I may be in Korea but I will be able to participate in the delightfully silly ritual of going to 31 flavors on my 31st birthday this May, because there are about three Baskin Robbins per capita here.)

And the weekends, the weekends are just wonderful! Even though I am on a severe budget, and won't really have much carefree cash flow until April's paycheck, thanks to the wonderful world of health care and COBRA costs, I am able to see places reasonably cheaply and learn about Korea and entertain myself and search my soul.

(ed. note: With the glorious benefit of almost three years' hindsight, I offer up the following revision of what I originally wrote: What made me unhappy on any given day was my stressful, desperate, constant wish that that miserable ass who deceived his way into and out of a relationship with me (not to mention my bank account) would make good on his promise to come visit/be in Korea with me. It's true -- that's the only thing at the end of the day that made me restless, agitated, sad, or regretful. (Thanksgiving week freak-outs notwithstanding -- those are just part of the fun!) It was really, really hard to be so far away and want to be with him. Those of you who know me know I am loathe to say such things, and I even avoided saying that for all the world wide web to read for a while over there because in some twisted way I thought it makes me look weak, or something. But the really weak thing was me not trusting my gut, and when he pulled some bullshit letting him lie and connive his way out of it. It shames me that his presence taints this blog at all. I might just remove every reference. He doesn't deserve to be here. But the motherf**ker owes me money, so I'll keep some evidence around of that, I suppose. -- 8/2008)

I really wish I could know what this experience would be like if I weren't seeing it through the prism of trying intensely to reach him, each and every day. But I will never know that. "And now I think of having loved and having lost, you never know what it's like to never love, and who can say what's better...?" -- indigo girls, 'fare thee well' Of course that runs through my head.

Speaking of Indigo Girls, I must say that yesterday after having "It's Alright" running through my head all day (as well as occasionally bursting forth from my mouth), I was so happy to go home and play Shaming of the Sun and that track in particular over and over. I can't believe I didn't have a CD player for my first month and a half here. Almost two months, actually. I was going to wait until getting paid in December to buy it, too, and I couldn't. I had to get one and it made my last eight days or so before the December check ridiculously budgeted, but it was worth it. Besides, who needs to eat, right? Especially here! The way I spend money has entirely changed being in a place where the food does nothing for me.

Speaking of *that* I do believe I erred in going out with some people for Japanese "okonomiyaki" on Wednesday night. I was willing to suck it up and eat meat -- I do on occasion here to avoid starving to death -- to procure some cheap, plentiful, tasty food with my friendly new acquaintances, but I'm now pretty sure it had seaweed. It was Japanese, after all, the one country that might cause me more culinary problems than Korea. (Might - the jury's still out.) It couldn't have been much seaweed, thank goodness, or perhaps it was a different strain that doesn't give me hives and a rash, but I did get sick, and I have had that telltale two-day headache plus a swollen hands and shakiness. Oh, well. At least it wasn't a bad bout. But it does reinforce my belief that there's so very little for me to eat here.

Anyway, back to the psychodrama. It doesn't help when I'm sitting there minding my own business, reading a little War and Peace, and I come across lines like: "Never had love been so much in the air, never had the amorous atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as during those holidays. 'Seize the moments of happiness,' it said, 'love and be loved! That is all that is real in the world--all else is folly. It is the one thing we are intersected in here!'" --p. 405

Come on, people! Give a girl a break, here!

All right, enough blather. I'm off to check out a restaurant/"brew pub" I've heard about that is said to be frequented by foreigners. It's in a hotel, so that is likely true, but I will believe the "brew pub" part when I see it. Those are hard to come by here in Korea!

Oh, I think I forgot to mention that Ding Ding Dang is moving upstairs. We have been occupying the second floor of our building and now will be on the third floor, effective Monday. We will have a shiny, new, paint-smelling, possibly asbestos-leaking workplace with new "desk" arrangements and big windowed classrooms and a fresh start. The remodeling of that floor has been going on for a while but I never count on these things happening in a timely fashion. However, it's now official and real. We all took our things up to place them on our new tables tonight. You see, we don't really have desks. We share classrooms that we rotate through during the different periods, and in the staff rooms we have tables that are divided into small areas at which we sit. In the new seating arrangement I am on the end of a u-shape, and there is definitely more space around the chairs than in our current stacking on top of each other. I will sit by the new guy, the English teacher who allegedly arrives in a week to ten days. I am quite eager for him to arrive, because I am completely sick of covering the classes that will soon have his name on them!

OK, completely exhausted, over and out.

"I ran as hard as I could and still ended up here..."

Today as I walked to work I enjoyed singing the Indigo Girls song "It's Alright[sic]." For those of you who are wondering if I mean I really sang it: yes, I sang softly but out loud while walking down the sidewalk that, if not exactly crowded, is far from empty of a Thursday morning. But what do I care? We foreigners get stared at incessantly anyway, so might as well make it worth it.

The song, which I've loved since first hearing it ten years ago, so perfectly sums up how I feel right now it's eerie! About my emotions, my life, Korea, the madness that is this place, being here, not being there, my personal life, my plans, my job, my future, my past, my present...wow. You go, Emily Saliers. That's all I'm saying.

"It's all right, forty days of rain
My skin stretched out from the growing pain
It'd be nice to have an explanation
But it's all right

And it's all right if you hate that way
Hate me 'cause I'm different, hate me 'cause I'm gay
Truth of the matter'll come around one day
So it's all right

I look at this lifeline stretched way all across my hand
I look at the burned out empty like a plague across the land
And for everything I learn there are two I don't understand
That's why I'm still on a search
Through the weather-strewn church
I'm doing the best that I can
And it's all right

And it's all right, though we worry and fuss
We can't get over the hump, can't get over us
It seems easier to push than to let go and trust
And it's all right

When we get a little distance some things get clearer
Give 'em the space, our hearts grow nearer
I ran as hard as I could and still ended up here
But it's all right

I look at this lifeline stretched way all across my hand
I look at the fires of hatred burning up the bounty of this beautiful land
I know I'm small in a way
But I know I'm strong
And it's my thirst that brought me to the water
When I give it all up then she carries me on
And it's all right
Yeah, it's all right

And it's all right, though I feel afraid
My plans in pieces, plans mislaid
It's the will of the way, the will of the way,
The will of the only way that could have brought me here today
And it's all right. "

-- indigo girls


As I come to the end of week 15, it's starting to really hit me that I am getting a lot out of this experience. This place affects you. I sometimes tend to be blase about things, perhaps for fear of betraying the slightest bit of weakness in myself. But Korea, man, this beast will sink its claws into your chest and rip to shreds anything you had covering up your human heart.

I can't get into all the details of the past week, though I will happily dish in private e-mail to those who want them. I was thisclose to getting the !#$* out of my current Hell Stew and into a greener pasture. (Do forgive the mixed metaphor.) Then again, the grass is always greener...and that's part of what made me hesitate. There's more to it than that.

Man, I have a fiery, burning, fierce, unyielding desire to get to law school as soon as possible and therefore to do all I must to effect that, including paying off debt. In addition to my emotional maelstrom of the last little while, I have been trying to sort out two huge, pressing financial issues: the FAFSA and COBRA. I wanted to have my FAFSA (student financial aid application) done by now, but I've been having major problems completing it on-line, and we've finally determined, Mr. Fafsa Help Line and I, that the Korean-language browsers don't support the application. So he's sending me a paper copy to fill out. How terribly archaic. And COBRA (continuation of my health insurance benefits from my old job) is just so ridiculously expensive that I have had to redo my entire spring budget, and I still am not sure how it's all going to work out.

The people I've found here, and the opportunities, are so very interesting. I am reminded of that continually.

I have also had days on which I hated my job/my employer/my thirst/the dirty floor of the school/the smell of food in Korea so thoroughly that I've thought I must be insane to be working here when I could be eating cheese enchiladas (although with no job) in the U.S. It's been hard (and it has NOT made me feel at all like posting to this blog) to be considering escape. Escapist that I often am, the Soul Asylum lyric comes to mind: "Shake me, I've painted myself in the corner of an escape artist's dream." I don't actually want to flee at all, but I want things to be different. I suppose that's the story of humanity, though.

In the past few days I have contemplated, contended with, discovered, and agonized over a year's worth of decisions and emotions. I feel I have looked into a mushy pile of soul and stirred it up to see what emerged on top. I think it just boggles the mind to be now sitting here, Thursday night, with such a powerful feeling that I am heading into the future, into my life. You know? My LIFE! That despite or because of the turmoil, things work out, and they don't just fall apart.

You see, you should be glad I haven't been posting. It would all have been like this, or worse.

"And it's all right..."

Beware the Ides of January!

Well, duh! I should have warned myself. It's no *wonder* I've been feeling so ornery, frustrated, cranky and, most of all, restless this weekend. It dawned on me as I sat in Starbucks on the second floor of my big Kyobo Books store at Jungangno: today is my 100th day in Korea. That's right, 100 days!

Well, "dawned on me" is not entirely accurate. I was in fact sitting there doing a little tally of the days: how many I'd been in country, how many I'd taught, how many I had left to teach, and how many I had left in country. I actually don't mind the number of days staying here; I'd stay here for a good long while enjoying myself immensely if it weren't for this job, and it was really the "teaching days" number I was after. But in my count I discovered that Sunday, January 15 was my Day 100.

One hundred days could be an even more significant number than 40 days! It is so amazingly neat, 100. Bold and round, 100 declares itself and 100 inserts itself into your consciousness; 100 is significant. We strive for 100. It is wholeness. Furthermore, it is a shift in the numerical landscape, from a two-digit sum to a three-digit sum. And if it's not the last time there is such a numerical landscape shift for me in Korea I will be quite surprised, as it is a good long while before 1000 rolls around (by which time I should be handily on my way to being a 3L!)

One hundred. It means 100 moons have journeyed across the Korean sky on my watch and 100 screaming trucks have cruised through my neighborhood of a morning blaring messages of commerce, community action, or maybe even, "Die, you Western swine!" for all we know. I have eaten 100 light (my word), insufficient (their word) breakfasts (fruit and bread with coffee or tea), 100 pathetic attempts at lunch(from Lotteria fast food cheese sticks to snacking on crackers) and 100 hard-won dinners of questionable vegetarian status. I have closed my eyes 100 times and laid down my head only to open them and recall myself to Korea.

This 100-day stretch is the longest continuous time I've been outside the U.S. It is also probably the longest stretch in years that I have not left a tip in a bar or restaurant (tipping is frowned on here) nor heard a commercial with a sing-songy jingle for some American product. Even on CNN International, Asia edition the English commercials are decidedly not sing-songy. And they tend to be for products of global business, with ethereal music or sitars. "Thai Air, smooth as silk to Moscow," a voice breathes. And while the American Forces Network provides me with my fill of insipid spots, PSAs and the like, there's no paid advertising. Just the umpteenth reminders that hypothermia is dangerous, terrorism is a threat, and human trafficking is wrong.

I once spent almost this much time outside the United States, that time I about didn't get back in. But I believe that, all told, that trip was 93 days or so. This 100 is a new world. Presidential administrations are judged on their first 100 days. Wars are fought in 100 days. From popular song charts to test scores, 100 is a monument to achievement and completeness. Now, I must pause to consider what 101 will bring.

Things I Hate

Whenever I say "Things I Hate" I am of course alluding to Anastasia Krupnik and her fantastic lists in the intermediate reader Lois Lowry books.

I absolutely detest spit, seeing other people spit, hearing other people spit, etc. When I watch baseball I will avert my eyes if they have a close-up on someone whose jaws are moving. In all of the movie Flatliners the one scene that makes me cringe and shudder is when the boy drools on Kiefer Sutherland. I mean, I really, really hate it, and many of you already know this quirk about me.

Well, I've certainly picked the wrong country to live in on that account! Within days of arriving I noticed that people here spit. A lot. On the sidewalk, just in a walk to work, there are several major encounters. It's so bad I've started in the last few weeks voicing my feelings, such as, "OH please don't please don't" as they're hacking, hocking, and preparing, and then "That is really disgusting" after the deed is done, or sometimes I throw in a few more angry and vulgar comments. Who cares, no one understands me anyway. They probably think I'm congratulating them on an especially nice one. It is foul. Bogue. Nasty. And it is everywhere. Sometimes even in the subway and such.

I also roundly dislike the after-smell of kimchi that lingers on people. I thought it was body odor for a while, but I finally caught on.

Other things I dislike I just avoid, like: the street vendors where everyone double dips, triple dips, quadruple dips, and so on in one communal sauce, which I think is a fantastic way to spread Hepatitis; the meat in every tofu dish and general lack of vegetarian food in restaurants; the motor-scooters that drive on the sidewalk...but the spit and the lovely aromas just hit me with no warning on a daily basis. Good times.