and just like that

for whatever reason i'd had enough of being sick and depressed and vomity and now i feel better. yesterday at taekwondo we (me plus two older cute white belt boys!) learned some fun flips and also received a calendar, clock, and towel. so now i HAVE to be good about going. damn ?. and i watched a ridiculous drama called "love story at harvard" which is soo fake and would soo make my mom happy if she watched it. she really laughed when i told her about it. it follows the lives of 4 / 5 photogenic korean grad students at harvard. as if that kind of lifestyle really needed to be encouraged!

talking to mom was good. talking to chris just now online as he battled the anthropologie customer service department was good.

four more weekends

sometimes i feel like time is moving so slowly, but then i show up to class and i'm like "oh! i just had you guys! what's up with that?!"

i'm a little bit sick, but thank god i can sleep for hours and hours at a time. and thank god un-suk called my TKD place on my behalf and told the mini-master that i was at death's door, so that i could stay home and sleep at 9pm. after having taken a nap from 5 to 7. in some ways i'm grateful for being sick because it lets me attribute all my other kinds of misery to a physical problem! i've lost lots of weight, the thought of food is disgusting to me, i miss my bed and fridge at home, and sometimes i feel like one semester of teaching english was enough to make me a brand new, patient, and tolerant person. and i want no more of it. before the physical symptoms of sickness appeared i just thought it was an attitude problem :^D :^D

meanwhile. this weekend was kind of terrible in some ways; house of sharing was a total bust, which is a very unfair thing to say. ambassador's thanksgiving dinner might have been delicious but like i said, food isn't really doing it for me right now so i have no clue. although there was wine! luckily beverages are still appealing...

doubt vs hope

the dichotomy that duncan established for me last night over coffee and citron tea at cafe i near my house. doubt being perversely empowering and liberating because it allows you to be free from any dependency. you are in control of your negativity. whereas hope can be constricting. so often hope means that you are waiting on something outside of yourself to happen.

so ... yeah. doubt and hope. and what else? this weekend billie and i checked out the kwangju bienniale which struck us as being extremely accessible and for the masses, to the extent that the building itself was a little bit grungy and footworn. but lots of interesting things. who knows ... certainly not me, about art. and i left for mokpo, where people had gotten together for a teaching workshop and dinner at anna's house.

time for class.

flashbacks

yesterday i finally took a deep breath and went to taekwondo. i went to the 8:30 class instead of the 7:00 class, because the 7:00 class was just full of rowdy little kids the last time i went, and i am not feeling energetic enough these days to support that. so i showed up at around 8:15 just in case i needed to take care of any signing up details and i didn't, really, so i just sat on the floor and did some stretching while the 7:00 kids ran amok kicking balls and chasing each other (why is this fun? was i ever a kid?) while i was doing so, one kid who was probably 9 kicked a ball with all of his might into my FACE from 15 feet away. it didn't hurt at all (the ball was one of those inflatable beach-bally balls) but it really surprised me. and i almost started to cry. especially when he didn't apologize or even look sorry - but just ran away. and i realized that i am in a pathetic emotional state right now and need to snap the fuck out of it!

but the rest of tkd was really fun, and stretchy, and i left feeling really good about starting it up again. nb that my tkd master is not as cool as the chuncheon master but could probably be his older, slightly heavier set and dour-er brother. that is important.

and yesterday was also 11/11 aka PEPPERO day. i used to think i hated things like peppero because they only have pocky in the states and i really hate pocky. it's GROSS! but peppero tastes better to me. i think. plus it comes from people who love you. which means exactly four people love me: my vice principal, my host brother, richard feynman (aka my student minjae) and peter kang (aka my student ku-hyun). life is good. also it was veterans day, woo. oh, and i shouln't forget that i did not purchase peppero for anyone. instead i bought socks. and i realized that i don't wear socks with animals on them because it is cruel to keep animals inside your shoe where it smells yucky and there's no sunlight, food, or space to move around. but i will wear socks with flowers or ribbons or stripes on them. for sure.

so soonsung solo

me and 2-3!

the power of stripes!

soonsung, hamtaek, and gyeongju. with my melody!

kuhyun and soonsung scarfin down treats at field day

guk and soonsung. so gangsta! or whatever you call it.

gyeonghyun and hamtaek at field day

gyeongju in front of the class tv...tch tch!

hangil, gyeongju, and kangkyun

no sleep til christmas!

just kidding. christmas is in SIX weeks. and our "thanksgiving" in two! not that i'm counting down the seconds. i actually had a momentary "attitude shift" this weekend as i was riding the bus to the train station. it was a beautiful day, and there were the usual kids and autumn leaves and warm sunlight in play outside ... but somehow it made me feel really positive about korea. it only lasted a couple of hours - but nevertheless, a useful affirmation of our hypothesis that all we need to have a good time here is a cheery attitude! right!

and not that i'm not having a good time :^D i'm pretty well settled into a routine here, and i'm even going to start tae kwon do tonight. distractions are key. like finally planning my winter break travel. applying to more jobs. there is really nothing to make me unhappy here, especially not the fact that i'm losing weight! i think homesickness and a general culture shock are more to blame for feeling kind of bleh right now. and that is something which it will be healthy to overcome. oh, and don't forget the 75% lack of autonomy in my everyday life! actually that's a lie.

but all this talk is really boring. my host brother went to a slipknot concert last night and came back without his glasses but covered in "water, beer, sweat, and tears." and we spent a beautiful weekend in suncheon, checking out sonamsa temple and the suncheon bay (where there were no red reeds to be found but plenty of other kinds). when i came back, there was some intimidating seafood soup on the table and a couple of my host mom's work colleagues were there, shootin the shit. they were introduced to me and asked me the usual litany of questions..."where were you born / when did your parents move to the states / what was your major / how long will you be here / how do you like korea..." and one guy actually was writing down my answers.

first monday in weeks!

so i'm here at school with absolutely nothing to do, and it's the first monday in 5 weeks that i will be teaching. [yawn]. i'm just listening to music and going through my students name cards - never mind that i seem to have lost like five of them from one class, very randomly, and have no idea where they could be.

dave and i were discussing blogs and how they make us sad. or specifically that both of us have gotten really sad while reading my blog, especially from freshman year, and how we feel so old. looking at the pictures i posted last week (obviously not recent pics but just felt compelled to post them for some reason) also makes me sad.

this weekend was great for reflection. sarah came up from mokpo and the weather was beautiful. we watched "how to lose a guy in 10 days" and "before sunset". which to some extent alleviated my recent craziness about boy situations. why? i don't know. i'm sleepy. it's monday.