Endings and Beginnings

As I write this, I am sitting outside 'Angel in-us Coffee' in downtown Daejeon, drinking a 4,000 won cup of green tea. (This is a rare splurge for me.)

On my last day in St. Louis, Erin and her extraordinary daughters picked me up and we met Bret and Aidan at the zoo, followed by birthday ice-cream at Ted Drew's. Afterwards Mindy, Laura and I went to a wine festival at Forest Park, and the night ended with dinner at Chuy's, which is where we met for the first time, 3 months ago. And circles being what they are, we had the same waiter we'd had the first night.

I was reasonably sure that I was leaving the next day, but having never received the requested confirmation from my school, it wasn't until I phoned the airline the next morning to confirm my flight that it started to hit me, and even then a part of me figured that I'd get to the airport only to be told that the flight hadn't been booked.

Bret took Aidan and I to Fitz's, where I ordered a veggie sandwich only to cry all over it. The ride to the airport and saying goodbye were beyond painful- saying goodbye to someone you love is difficult enough without doing it at the most difficult time in their life. Even as I think about it now I get teary eyed. (Of course, I cry at long distance commercials and puppies too, so it's really not that remarkable.)

California was great, I only had one whole day there but it was wonderful to see my cousins and Trish and I had some thought-provoking conversation, I was feeling a lot better about leaving by the time I left for Korea.

Singapore Airlines is phat. The girls are so beautiful, they take my breath away. It was also my first experience with free alcohol on an airplane- after about 6 glasses of wine and a sleeping pill, I finally managed to nod off- for one measly hour. Still, that's more than I normally sleep on a plane.

I cried a lot on the plane, but when we landed in Seoul, I had this strange sensation of "coming home." It caught me off guard, but I believe it's mainly because I was coming to a job and my own apartment, two things that keep you settled and two things I've been without for too many months.

Much to my surprise, I navigated my way through customs and the purchasing of my bus ticket with no problems. While I was waiting for the bus, I spied two cars drive up and park in the bus lane, and one of them had flowers attached to the hood, signifying that they were just married. The door opened and out stepped the bride, wearing white sneakers with red and blue stripes, blue jeans faded on the thighs, and a white t-shirt peeking out from under a maroon and white plaid button down. Following her was her groom- wearing the EXACT SAME THING.
I was laughing my ass off, this is so typical of Korea- I've often seen couples wearing matching shirts or hats, and lingerie stores sell matching underwear and pajamas, but this is the first time I've seen completely matching outfits. In true Korean fashion, even after the busses arrived and started honking at them, it still took another 5 minutes for the cars to pull away and they caused a major traffic jam.

My friend Hannah picked me up at the bus stop and I crashed at her place, it didn't take very long for me to fall asleep but I woke up early. Thursday I went downtown (where I started writing this- it is now Tuesday afternoon) and hung out, then met some friends. Hannah got me some Birthday Tiramisu, another friend took me to lunch and gave me an incredibly sweet present, and Sarah and I had a nice birthday dinner, but besides that, it was pretty low key, I didn't really celebrate.

Friday Troy's girlfriend picked me up and took me to Troy's apartment, where I'll be staying until the other teachers at my school leave next week.

I've done a bit of walking around my dong (neighborhood), but it's pretty quiet- much slower paced and more family oriented than my old dong. I think there's a small mountain right up the street, which I plan on hiking one morning this week, and there's a walking park down the block. And although I'm way on the outskirts of town, I'm only 5 minutes from the subway- last year it was about a 20 minute walk.

My school is 180 degrees different than my old school, which is exactly what I wanted. Although I'll be teaching about 8 hours more a week, my actual time at school is a lot less than it was (I can leave when my classes are finished, used to be there were days I was finished at 6:30 but still had to wait at school till 9), the classes are much smaller (3-8 kids instead of 10-15), and just a lot less intense. Unfortunately, since Troy and I are the only foreign teachers here, I won't get much vacation time, but my old school didn't give me the vacation time they promised anyway. There's still a lot of typical hagwon BS to deal with, but anything is better than what I dealt with last year.

I had an interesting experience with a jerkwad Korean man. After a brief "conversation" with him on the street, I hailed a taxi and as I climbed into the backseat, the man shoved me over and climbed in with me. I was a bit taken aback, and in this moment of shock, the man shut the door and told the driver to head out. I suddenly realized that this guy thought I was a prostitute- I should have realized this sooner, as the man wore a huge shit-eating grin while we were talking, but Koreans love talking to foreigners so it's difficult to tell if it's an "I'm so happy to be talking to you so that I can practice my English" smile or if it's an "I'm so happy because I'm going to have sex with a big white woman" smile. I tried to be polite and started explaining that I was not a prostitute, and finally started yelling at him to get the hell out of the taxi. The driver finally figured out what was going on and pulled over and the man apologized, handed me a baby pinecone, and left the taxi. The driver told me he was drunk- it was, after all, 11:45 in the morning.

I'm not sure how I feel about being here. I'm so relieved to have a home again (well, almost) and a job and to not be a burden on anyone. However, I'm grieving for the friends I left behind. So far, I've not done much- I stayed home Friday and Saturday night and went to bed early (I've been falling asleep at 7 or 8 and waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning. Whee!) I guess I'm just not fully adjusted yet. And I wish for so many things, but like they say, you can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.