Absence, Fondness, and when the hell do you use a bare infinitive

It’s time. Time to be the blogger I never really have the motivation or desire to be. At least, not in the moment it’s time to actually do the writing of the actual blog. I just read back some of the stuff I wrote in Taiwan and China and realized, as embarrassing and lame as it can feel to record and share the triviality of my daily life abroad, I’m glad I did it, no matter how sparing or meager my entries. I did a lot of stuff and forgot a lot of stuff. At least some of it came back to me while rereading and that’s kinda cool.

So now, on to the next phase: Seoul. I’ve only been here about a month and already it feels like a lifetime of shit has happened. Upon the first bus ride from the airport into the city I felt a wave of familiarity as the aesthetics of asian life returned to my senses. It felt good to be back. “I made the right decision,” I thought. That thought was scratched however, a couple hours later, after finally setting down my 3 heavy-ass bags in a hot, tiny, cockroachy ‘love’ motel that would be my home for the next indefinite period of time. A less-than pleasant surprise after I was assured by the school in pre-departure emails that I would be able to move into my ‘new’ apartment right away. I knew that would be important in making Seoul feel like home, as all my previous asian ESL adventures were accompanied by Josh, which in a way was like having home come with me. This time it’s just me. A weird, foreign feeling, of course compounded by simply being a foreigner in a foreign country, starting out again without any language or any friends or knowledge of what’s what and where’s what and who’s where and why’s how and all that. You get the idea.

Anyway. Long story short I almost came home about 35 times that first week. I missed Josh an incredible amount and felt like I had a made a huge mistake moving here instead of going to Alaska with him. I’m terrible at meeting new people and making new friends. I sometimes think I need a very specific set of circumstances in order to relax and be myself and just enjoy life and people and stuff. Which led me to wonder why the hell I thought I would magically be able to find that in a city this huge and daunting and unwelcoming to those who don’t take the initiative to make themselves feel welcomed. Does that make sense? At any rate, I’m just shy and people sometimes think I’m kind of a bitch when they meet me for no real reason that I can discern except the prejudices we all have about people just from being alive in society and being forced to make decisions about people everyday out of instinct or compulsion or insecurity or whatever. So being aware of that, I saw 10 months of utter loneliness and missing Josh and regretting my decision ahead of me. I knew before I left that the adjustment period would be rough, but I kept thinking, ‘not this rough’ and who knows, if I had had the money for a plane ticket I could quite possibly be in Alaska right now. But I’m not. And I’m not dissecting that decision and thinking about the possibilities and repercussions, nope, I’m not gonna do that. It’s not too late to not do that.

So now it’s the beginning of October and my life feels so vastly different than it did just a couple months ago. It’s weird how blogs used to be little bastions of real, honest, personal writing, and now they feel so, um, I don’t know, calculated I guess. The share vs. the over-share vs. the under-share. I kind of hate blogs that purport to be personal but hint and and dance around the personal stuff that people (okay maybe just me?) actually want to know. However they are public and usually personal shit involves other people’s personal shit and it’s not that cool to share stuff about other people who might not want their shit shared. So, with that in mind, I will say that Josh and my notion of maintaining a long-distance relationship for the long-term with no concern toward depreciation in the quality of our relationship and difficulty we might face, has not worked out as planned. All I can say about the future is: through a pinhole. We’re looking through a pinhole. That’s basically been my mantra since the idea of moving to Seoul by myself first got real and has been ever since, especially lately.

So, now maybe I should make a header: Stuff You Might Actually Care About Regarding Me in Seoul. I can sum things up thus far: I like Seoul! It’s got good and bad, like all cities, but for the most part, it’s pretty damn cool. I mean, it’s big and city-ish. There’s a shitload of conspicuous consumerism and a huge focus on appearance, which really turned me off at first. But through my job teaching adults one-on-one I’m realizing that most Koreans – at least the ones I talk to – are actually really nice, intelligent people. Although they do work too fucking hard. It just seems so tragic to me to live life to work 10-hour days analyzing numbers at a desk to buy a set of frickin Louis Vuitton luggage or whatever, to take to Hong Kong to buy more outrageously priced designer crap. I mean, is that just completely insane to anyone else? Please tell me I’m not alone in thinking that. Anyway. Other than that, and the pushy-ass old ladies, it’s quite a fine place to live, so far. The subway is cheap and convenient. A lot of people speak English. Korean food is awesome, my favorite asian cuisine by far, and it is possible to eat somewhat cheaply, which is becoming easier and more apparent the longer I’m here. There is a strong drinking culture, which I also like. Besides seeing random businessmen staggering home every night as I take the subway home from work, I really only noticed the full force of it last Friday night. This is getting stupidly long so the flash version of the story goes like this:

Last Friday I went out for an abbreviated drink with some co-workers as it was my Saturday to work and if this job is anything, it’s a sleep-sucking split-shift nightmare (I’m actually really annoyed with the job at the moment, but that’s a whole ‘nother entry). So I purposely left early enough to take the subway home, around 12:30. It being the last ride I had to wait forever and then forever some more to change lines. Then it decided to stop running a stop ahead of my stop. No problem, I figured, I can’t be that far from home I’ll just check the map. The map didn’t actually extend all the way to my destination, but somewhat close. So I plotted out what I thought would be the simplest route home and got to walkin. And walkin. And walkin. And not gettin there. And not recognizin’ anything I should have been recognzin’. And walkin some more. And trying to hail a cab but not gettin one because there were about 500 other people trying to do the same thing. At some point I realized that pretty much every single person around me was completely wasted. From the hordes of still-suited business men to university students to high-heeled princesses and their boyfriends. It was kind of surreal. There was a massive fight in the street. There were jolly singing gangs. There were piles of puke. And still, I was walkin. Finally I looked up and saw the noted Hyundai Department store (yes, hyundai sells pillows here, samsung sells leather bags, and dunkin donuts sells bubble tea. It’s different here!), that’s right near my apartment, only I was approaching it from the complete opposite direction I thought I was going. So, basically, I had a long, sober walk home and realized for the first time how drunk everybody (okay, some people) like to get in Korea. It was a fun ‘I’m in a completely different culture’ feeling. I guess that’s the point of that.

So I titled this blog before I wrote it and just realized I haven’t even gotten to the second and third parts yet. Those you’ll just have to guess, or not care about, whatever suits you. I don’t have an actual good camera yet, which is my excuse for not taking any actual good pictures yet. But, these iphone photos will have to do for now. There’s also been the smallish matter of being quite poor in pricey Seoul, which means I haven’t really been able to do that much here (next Monday = first payday = hell yes). That, and getting used to the grueling split shift lifestyle. Anyway. Thanks for reading and come visit me NOW!!! Especially you.