blank pages

I've been home for over a month now. A final blog is in order, I'd like to establish some closure for the year.

Most things in life don't really feel like chapters, there's usually no clear boundary from one phase to the next. But the time before Korea, Korea, and coming home are all very distinct chapters dividing my life.

My biggest fear about coming home was that I wouldn't carry my optimism back with me. But home is better than I remember, and to my relief, not much seems to have changed here. I'm the one that changed.

What was the biggest impact this year had on me? Take this scene, for example:

Random person: “You're an English major?! What the h-- um, what will you do with that?”
Me: “I'm not sure.”
Random person: “Oh, so you want to be a teacher.”
Me: “No way, I'd rather die.”

I repeated this little scene over and over in college, with relatives and meeting new people and such. So the funniest thing to come out of my year of teaching English is realizing that I WANT TO BE A TEACHER! I've started the process of applying to grad schools.

Stay in this lane. Used to be ironic and now it's just... true. You can never have enough irony! So, my friend Colleen and I are apartment hunting in DC this weekend. Next week I'm also starting a new job with a really nice family in the city, another challenge probably worth another year's worth of blogs, but to respect their privacy I won't do it. Six months ago I would have been shaking my head at this plan, but it feels right, so I'm rolling with it.

I'll try to post pictures from Tokyo (worth a whole blog, if I ever get around to writing it) and possibly the cruise as soon as I get ahold of my camera again. I also visited my aunt and took trips to Cape Cod and New York, so I'll throw those pictures in with all the rest. A vacation album, I guess.

Farewell, 2009 – I will remember you fondly.
Hello, 2010 – I have a good feeling about you.

UPDATE
Picasa retired its slideshows for photos, so all my photos from my first year in Korea are here now:
Picasa Photo Albums Archive

the morbid and the beautiful

When we die, we usually leave behind a legal document stating our final words to loved ones and leaving all of our things to certain people or organizations. Imagine you are very old and have acquired many valuable things in your lifetime. Who will you leave them to and why?

After assigning three a month for a year, I was desperate for a new, original essay idea. I figured this was a stretch (and a pretty morbid topic for kids), but it resulted in my favorite, most creative essay yet. One of my highest level students is a really cool girl named Rosa. She and I bond over a love for K-drama hotties and sci-fi movies. Anyway, this is what she wrote:

I’m a 200 year old grandmother. I have three children. In my last moment, they are with me now. I know death is close. I have three treasures for my children. Now my son starts to read the testament.

I have a cloth. It’s the only one like it in the world. When I was young I bought it for 7000 million won. I used it to change into a bird. It was important to me, because I love to fly all around the world. I give it to you, my first child. Please use it very carefully. I never thought I would die, but you, please be a careful man.

My second daughter, I’ll give you an umbrella. It isn’t expensive. I made it a long time ago. If you want to have a sweet dream, open the umbrella. Then you can have a sweet dream. Use it carefully.

Last, I’ll give a box to you, my last son. It is called “the memory box.” I put in my happiest memories. If you want to see my memories, just open it. You can also put in your memories. Use it very gently.

I know there’s no time for me. I always try to be a good mother. I want you guys to be great people. Tell my secretary I loved her. See you in heaven.

countdown again

The road to a friend's house is never long.
Monday after work I got to the airport as fast as I could to meet Terrell at the international arrivals gate. As fast as I could turned out to be a three hour subway ride. But when I saw him for the first time in almost a year, there in the dim, empty airport it was all worth it. I had one of those dramatic, surreal moments where I couldn't believe I was really looking at him, standing right there in front of me, in Korea of all places.

It was almost midnight so we took a cab most of the way back to my place. And he was here for almost a week. There were a lot of differences between Terrell's visit and my brothers' visit. Ryan and Corey mostly came just to see me. They learned a few phrases in Korean and found their way around and were so brave. I was really proud of them. But Terrell took it to the next level. He came to experience Korea and really tried to assimilate as much as he could in the short time he was here. He learned some Korean (with a great accent), wore a face mask to prevent getting H1N1, and even went with me to the jjimjilbang. He also had more patience with me than my brothers did, but I guess that's because brothers are allowed to be needy.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. I decided to forego any attempt at making a traditional Thanskgiving meal, because it could never live up to the home-cooked stuff and all those holiday feelings I've accepted I'm going to miss this year. Also, as the thing I'm most grateful for this year is my decision to run away to Korea, I couldn't resist the symbolism of a sit-on-the-floor Korean BBQ in place of turkey and stuffing. Luckily Thanksgiving isn't a big deal to Terrell, so he understood and supported the sentiment.

On Friday morning we went to the Folk Village, which is hands down the best place to take visitors. I have great memories of taking the boys there, and going with Terrell was just as memorable. There are a bunch of small restaurants and a large outdoor cafeteria to grab authentic Korean meals or just snacks. Terrell and I were in the village long enough to do both. We strolled around endlessly, never running out of things to see and talk about (we had a lot of catching up to do, after all).

That evening, we unexpectedly pulled an all-nighter that I would rather erase from my memory, Eternal Sunshine style. In a nutshell, we got really lost. Six hours, one molestation by a cab driver, one feeding of an orange to a different cab driver, several frantic phone calls and one miraculous discovery of trains running at 5:30 AM later, and we made it to the USO just in time to catch our tour bus to the DMZ. However, Terrell will spend the rest of my life reminding me how badly I handle stressful situations in a foreign country.

A couple weeks back I toured the War Museum in Seoul and learned a lot more about the Korean War than I had known the first time I saw the DMZ. So this weekend I had a whole new appreciation for what I was looking at and got closer to North Korea than ever before. But my favorite part was still the tour guide, PFC Coleman, an adorable soldier fresh out of AIT. I think we must have been his first ever tour group. It was a foggy day so we didn't get to see much. I'm really grateful I went on a clear day my first time.

The tour ended around 3pm, and we were home by around 5, passed out from exhaustion. I still wanted to cram in a little more Korean culture for Terrell before his flight on Sunday, so we decided to walk around as much of Hwaseong Fortress as time allowed. When we got to the top, I went up the steps of the last lookout point, the one I'd been saving for my final visit to the wall. Looking out at the foggy view from the top, I felt an amazing sense of closure. I think I'll always wish we'd had the time to make one last go around, for both of our sakes.

For the ultimate Korean experience, we decided to squeeze in an abridged trip to the jjimjilbang. Terrell was (understandably) too intimidated to do the full-on naked scrub, but we spent time together in the saunas, restaurant and lounge. That's what I love most about the bathhouse anyway - getting to just hang out there with my friends, wearing our matching uniforms. Then, after a relaxing chair massage while sipping lemonade tea, it was time for my amazing friend to leave. I waited with him at the airport-bus stop and was sad to see him go.

clocks stopped long ago, ya'll

Cellar door. The most beautiful words in the English language? I don't know. Flight home sounds quite beautiful to me right now. I land at Reagan at 8:45 p.m. on December 26. When I look at the itinerary, it's a surreal feeling.

I have 40 full days, and only 28 days of teaching, until my last day. I leave Korea on Christmas evening. I'll have two layovers, because decent flights home that week are expensive. But my school is paying for it so I can't complain. I decided to make the most of the layover in Tokyo. I chose a flight that gives me 22 hours to leave the airport and explore the city. I'm a little worried about how expensive hotels are there, but overall I'm excited to visit Japan.

Next Monday my friend Terrell, who I've mentioned a few times here, is flying to Korea to visit! He'll be here for a week. It's great timing, because it gives me an excuse to visit all of my old favorite spots one last time before I close this chapter. We booked a trip to the DMZ, so that will be the last major thing I do here. If you remember, the last time I went to the DMZ was a beautiful summer day. This time around the weather will fit (and I'll see the JSA). It will be the perfect end to my year in Korea.

I've changed my mind so many times about my next step. I've finally told myself to stop worrying about how its million implications will affect my future and to just run with it. I'm sure you noticed from lack of updates here that I haven't been doing much in Korea lately. I've been coming home from work and hitting the books, trying to figure out the smartest move. Just like how I did a lot of research before deciding to come to Korea, I'm doing a lot of research before deciding where to move next.

Right now I'm really keen on Austin, Texas. I've read in article after article that Texas hasn't been hit so hard by the recession, and you can apparently still find jobs there. At first I was just disappointed and ignored this possibility, figuring I could never be happy in a red state. But in a moment of total desperation I decided, as a hypothetical, to choose which Texas city would be the lesser of three evils: Houston, Dallas, or Austin. This was a brilliant idea. Turns out Austin is, shockingly, a liberal city! In fact, it's one of the coolest cities I've ever read about.

My dad has this to say: "Glad to hear that you decided not to go to South America. Things down there aren't exactly safe these days. Austin, TX sounds like a good place. Will give me an excuse to come visit." Gee, Dad, tell me how you really felt about my plans to move to Argentina.

Maybe I'll convince Corey to move out there with me. We all know my little brother is bored to tears in his small town. So, my next big decision will be whether to rent a two- or a three-bedroom. Oh, but before that, which American New Years party to attend!

the world of the buddha

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion...If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism. —Albert Einstein

My Korean friend Amy is a Buddhist. She invited me to do a temple stay with her last weekend. I jumped at the opportunity, because I knew going with her would be a more authentic experience than a huge group of foreigners thing at a temple in Seoul. The farther south you go, the fewer English speakers there will be. Which is why my memories from that weekend involve a lot of freaked out Koreans mouthing “waeguk” and doing double takes on their middle-of-nowhere front porches as they saw me ride past in buses and taxis. The temple was pretty remote, it took a lot of effort to get there.

We went to Daeheungsa temple, nestled among tree-saturated mountains in the southwestern limits of the country. I found myself praying to a chubby guy made of bronze, in an intense form of bowing that involved touching my head, both elbows and both knees to the ground, then standing straight up again. Repeated 108 times. One. Hundred. Eight. It's a beautiful thing, but painful. There's a venerating part where you flip your palms up, giving Buddha a place to stand on either side of your head. After around bow number 75, my sweat accumulating on the silky pillow, my heart beating in my ears, I'm pretty sure I could feel him there. And it was incredible to get into the rhythm, to forget everything but the cool night air, a blurry flicker of lanterns, the haunting sound of monks chanting, the reverberant bells fading into nothing.

The evening after the bows, after eating a modest dinner of rice and vegetables and soup, after washing the dishes to earn my keep, the world's coolest monk invited us to drink tea with him and stay the night at his home on the top of the mountain. His name was Moeon. He wore monk clothes and screamed inner peace (or was it indifference?). Monks are pretty stolid creatures, I expected that. I did not in my wildest dreams expect what happened next. Moeon had not only a cell phone, but an SUV, which he wordlessly herded us into for a steep ride through the forest.

His house and guesthouse were built in traditional style. The steps leading from the guesthouse to his made perfect seats for stargazing. And the stars were everywhere in the unfathomably dark sky of the mountaintop. I couldn't take my eyes off of them. I also couldn't get over the fact I was drinking tea humbly poured for me by a man who devoted his whole life to enlightenment.

“You have the most amazing view of the night sky. Do you ever look at the stars?”

“Yes.” He could speak some English, but he was speaking Korean now, with Amy translating.

“What do you think about when you look at them?” I had to know.

A seriousness washed over his eyes behind the Ghandi glasses. His answer: “What's your name?”

Wait, did something get lost in translation? “Um, Amanda.”

“Amanda? Amanda? Do you know your name?” It seemed really important that I should firmly acknowledge my own name.

“Yes, Amanda!” Wait, is this a trick question? “Amanda? I'm... Amanda.”

“What was your name before you were born?” Oh, I get it, this is some kind of riddle. “What will your name be after you die?” He was speaking quickly, as though this were now some commonplace sentiment, as though I'd asked him about beansprouts. Amy was translating rapidly, and I was trying to look him in the eyes and hang on every word he said, because in that moment he looked so solemn and wise. He pointed to the heavens. And I was reminded of the little joke he made as the SUV pulled to a stop after our bumpy ride. “Welcome to heaven,” he'd said. Do they even have heaven in this religion?

But looking up at the stars framed against his roof, that curve so familiar after ten months, I understood his answer. It was such a scary feeling, imagining the immensity of time and the universe, my tiny place in it, and then looking up and it being right there, like looking into the mouth of a merciless monster, all those stars like teeth, and at the same time, strangely enough, the feeling of meeting a celebrity, someone I'd seen so often in pictures, but never in real life. I never see the stars. And now I know they're terrifying, especially on a cold night at the age of twenty-three.

The next morning was spent hiking to the top of a mountain called Duryusan, to a shrine so intimate in its simplicity—an earthy floor of sanded wood, unpainted beams, delicate paper shutters on wooden grids—where I meditated with my friend near an ancient Buddha engraved in a massive stone. I let go of a lot of things up there, sitting with my legs barely crossed on a soft gray pillow, the breeze carrying the smell of incense and autumn, birds chirping. Nature. This is all we were ever meant to hear and to feel.

Some monks were sweeping the steps that led from their hermitage up to the temple. With one of their homemade brooms, Amy encouraged me to sweep for them as a way of saying thanks. We fed their dog some treats, bowed (bowing to everyone all weekend was pretty awesome, by the way) and made our way back down the mountain. After a jjimjilbang-syle shower, which involved hand washing my monk clothes on an old school washboard, after the bows and the hikes, the questions and the thinking, I felt, um, purified.

long story short

I wanted a perm. I wanted to come home in two months with pretty, curly, long hair. I was afraid to get even a trim all year because of the language barrier and the difference between my fine hair and the hair of Korean women. Oh, the irony.

After the curlers came off, we discovered my hair was fried. Think Hermione Granger times about a hundred. So, without saying a word of warning to me, the stylist just started chopping off all my hair! You can imagine what went down, the deep sighs, the pointing frantically at pictures, the frustration, the tears. That was the hairdresser, not me. I was in shock. I actually didn't cry over it until I was shampooing my hair in the shower this morning.

I was in the salon on Sunday for almost five hours. In the end I felt terrible for the hairdresser. All I kept thinking was, "Put yourself in her shoes. If you don't stay calm, she will just freak out and end up cutting a bald spot in the side of your head." I got four or five haircuts before we finally settled on this one. My first and last trip to a Korean hair salon.

Here are pictures from yesterday and today. As you can see, I'm figuring out ways to style it. I can't bear to look at the back, let alone post a picture of it. The back is bad. I'm starting to get used to it. I'll admit, it's kind of fun playing with it in the morning. Will be investing in a lot of cute clips and new hair products. When life gives you lemons...

this must be the place

I wake up on a cloud some mornings, completely in love with Korea. Those days I never want to leave. Other mornings the most optimistic I can get is to just hope for that feeling to please come back, like it always does, out of nowhere, from causes I can't pinpoint. So elusive, that feeling. After the events of the past few weeks, I have a feeling it's not coming back.

My school has inadvertently given me the sign I was looking for, and so when a couple of girl friends from home invited me to join them on a cruise in early January, I said to myself (and to them), "Hell yes, that is precisely what I need."

So I will be in America for the holidays, and I will at least halfway-seriously be looking for a way to make a life there after the cruise, when I get home. If I round up, I'll be a reappointed American girl in ten weeks, back where I belong again.

America America AmericaAmericaamericaamericamerica

So bipolar in my homesickness. In other news, I just finished recovering from a long and eventful four-and-a half-day weekend for Chuseok - that's only one of two Korean national holidays, pretty big deal. On Friday I went to Everland, the country's biggest theme park. Here are the highlights:

-Foreigners get a discount, just for being foreign.

-Face painting. A rainbow butterfly covering half my face. Lots of stares. No regrets. Nothing else can make you feel like a kid again quite so easily.



-Halloween themed rides. Korea loves its 3D/4D/5D rides. (There's a 4D roller coaster simulator right next door to my favorite coffee shop in town, and there was a 5D horror show at the 63 Building this weekend - more on that below.)

-America Land with streets that brought me back home for the short time I strolled through them.

-Zootopia. My favorite moment of the day was six little birds eating out the palm of my hand.

-Terrifying and fantastic wooden roller coaster. Notice the singular use of the noun, the ride on which took place at the very end of the day, the very last minute, to prevent a day of woozing and spinning.

It was a blast. Maybe that's why it has been so difficult to get back into teacher mode this week. Or maybe it's the changes my school has been making that I don't really approve of. I hope that comes off as bitter.

On Sunday we went to the 63 Building, back to the aquarium I hadn't been to since forever ago when I was still a baby in Korea. It just made me think of how far I've come. I've come so far. So far I've come. Did I mention it has become particularly obvious to me that I have come quite far - very far away, in fact, from the place in which I started? December 2008 me would walk right past October 2009 me without so much as a polite nod of the head.

And after the aquarium we checked out the Wax Museum, which was finally affordable because foreigners got half-priced tickets this weekend. (Foreigners are treated so well here, my students had difficulty imagining the plight of immigrants in America - a discussion topic this week.) I got some obligatory silly poses in, my favorite being a doting shot of me with my boyfriend, Barack, the American flag waving behind us on his podium. There are tons of pictures from this weekend. I didn't bring my camera along for any of it, but I'll steal from friends and post an album eventually.



And it goes without saying, I'm sorry for not writing in such a long while. There are excuses but they're the same ones that never stopped me in the past. I could have written about:

-Rearranging furniture. "Hey, look, my desk is in the living room now!"

-Or planning lessons. Oh, wow, this new game based on a grammar point might just make teaching the be verb for the hundredth time bearable. "Okay class, for the ten thousandth time: is for one thing, are for more than one thing, two or more things, many things!".

I don't mind if that comes off as bitter.