I really do miss America, sometimes.

I know I've been awfully heavy on the "Korea is my soulmate" posts lately. I'm not going to try to make excuses for it; Korea has been the peanut butter to my jelly, the macaroni to my cheese, the trash can to my kimchi (that's what I do with kimchi, anyway). I suppose it's not actually Korea that I'm desperately in love with; I could write a whole post on how the Christian ex-pat culture is a perfect fit for the way I tend to make and keep friends, but that would bore you all to tears. I know everyone in my family is freaking out, trying to figure out how they can get me deported to ensure that I will, in fact, return to Ohio sometime before menopause. Don't worry everyone; I'm coming back in September whether I like it or not - to zap through grad school so I can get a better job, uh, here.

That said, there are a few things I miss about America. Aside from the obvious (my family and friends, being able to understand when people talk to me, and Chipotle), here are a few other things you don't know matter until you're not in the country anymore.

1. I can't wait to buy produce in normal quantities.
This one is huge for me. I love eating fresh fruit all the time, but it's really hard to buy that kind of stuff here. I can find nearly anything I want, but not in a quantity that makes any sense for a person living alone. Bananas come in bunches of thirty, grapes are sold in giant flats, and strawberries come in heaping bowls. On the flip side, a small watermelon is 20 bucks and a half a cup of blueberries will run you around 7.50. I miss Kroger.

2. I can't wait to see the stars.
Apparently light pollution is not only a thing, but it's a big thing. I know this is a problem in many American cities as well, but I've never lived in any of those cities, so it feels like a Korean problem to me. When I look up, I just see an endless expanse of... smog. On a very rare occasion, I can find the moon up there somewhere, but I miss being able to lay in the grass and stare at the sky, feeling very, very small.

3. I can't wait to shower without getting my whole bathroom wet.
I don't think this one needs an explanation. I complained about my shower right after I got here, but for the most part, I've adjusted. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize I probably needed to wear plastic sandals in the bathroom when I dry my hair after a shower because standing in a puddle of water and holding something connected to an electrical outlet is actually quite dumb. I'm lucky I never zapped myself, and I'm wiser now, but I'm still really looking forward to having a real shower. And bathtub.

4. I can't wait to use a dryer.
Air-dried clothes are crunchy and wrinkly, and I'm far too lazy to actually worry about ironing them. I'm looking forward to not looking like a hobo anymore.

5. I can't wait to listen to the radio.
If Korea suddenly banned iPods, I'd leave immediately. I couldn't survive a day without that little box of sound attached to me somewhere. I listen to it when I'm walking, when I'm on the bus, when I'm on the subway, when I'm in stores, when I'm grading papers, and sometimes when I get home and I'm too lazy to put it away and turn on my computer. My iPod is my best friend... but it's getting a little old. I've started listening to sermons instead of music because I'm tired of all the same songs. I'm so excited to get back and see what new music is out there to... download for my iPod.

6. I can't wait to have breakfast options.
I'm a creature of habit, so I usually choose a cereal and stick with it for a few months. This method worked well for me when I first got here; Frosted Flakes were all I recognized, so they were all I bought. However, nine months of Frosted Flakes and peach yogurt for breakfast every single day can kind of get boring. I've mixed in Honey Nut Cheerios from Cost-Co once or twice, but my breakfast routine has basically remained the same. I seriously can't wait to eat those little chocolate donuts, Lucky Charms, and Toaster Strudels... all at once.

The fever (I don't have it)

A lot of my friends here have Yellow Fever. It's a pretty common stereotype that all the foreign men in Korea came here to meet pretty little Asian girls, but a decent number of my white girl friends will admit to having a touch of the Fever.

(Before I get too far, I want to clarify that I'm not being racist when I use the term Yellow Fever. Basically it's my way of saying that my friends find themselves sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex who exhibit physical characteristics that clearly have descended from Asian ancestry. That's a lot to say, and it makes it sound more like I'm studying the mating habits of some kind of exotic animal, so I'm going to stick with Yellow Fever. Also, when you're here, people are surprisingly more okay with racial epithets than in the US. I was always so afraid of not coming across as completely PC at home, but here, my pastor refers to himself as a Twinkie - yellow on the outside and white on the inside. Whole different world.)

Aside from the boy at the bank (with whom I am still desperately in love), I haven't found myself attracted to many Asian men. The flip side of that coin is that I love white boys.

Like, a lot.

Maybe too much.

The other day, I was walking down into the subway station when a boy with shaggy brown hair appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Our eyes met when we crossed paths in the middle, and I felt my stomach flip flop a little. The second I was past him, I honestly had to fight to keep my feet moving in the direction I had originally planned to go; every fiber in my being wanted to chase this stranger up the stairs and find out where he was going. Then go there with him.

This wouldn't be restraining-order-creepy if it only happened the one time (and no, I didn't follow him). Sadly, it happens all. the. time. It's like my bar for potential mates has dropped from "at least mostly attractive" to "white".

Is it just me, or is he sexy?

I don't actually ever talk to any of these men I pass in the street because (1) they probably have Yellow Fever and are not even a little bit interested in a white girl and (2) I'm kind of afraid I'd get them back to the States and realize they look like that guy in the picture. It's like being surrounded by Asians has given me a really bizarre form of beer-goggles, and my qualifications for a future husband have suddenly whittled themselves down to simply "speaks semi-fluent English". I'm honestly a little nervous about going back to the States in the fall and being surrounded by average, run-of-the-mill white boys. Someone's going to have to follow me around to make sure I'm not handing out my phone number to guys named Cleetus.

Apparently I've passed along my affinity for the white boys to my students; here's Grace during her very first introduction to Justin Bieber.

I'm oddly proud of the damage I'm inflicting on the next generation of Koreans.

Foreign footwear

The longer I'm in Seoul, the more things stop being new and exciting. Today when I got off work, I grabbed some kimbap, headed to the orphanage to volunteer, picked up manjoo on the way home, then cooked some vegetables because I realized I never eat anything green. Any of those things would have been made into a post seven months ago, but now, they're all just part of my daily schedule. I forget that things are still exciting for everyone back home, and so I haven't been posting about things that in hindsight I know would make people smile.

Like socks.

I've always liked silly socks. I didn't wear white socks until well into college, and even then it was only when the fun ones were dirty. Therefore, when I got here and realized Korea is the KING of amazing socks, I thought I was in paradise.

I bought some socks for friends and family, but for the most part, I just enjoyed looking at them. I could never decide which ones I liked best, so instead of buying all of them, I just decided to wait until spring and go crazy. During the winter, I reasoned, I needed to wear warm fluffy socks, but now that it's warming up outside, I can start collecting every pair of socks I see.

I don't even know how many pairs of awesome socks I'm up to by now. I'm going to post them in groups of ten so maybe you'll forget how many you've seen and therefore not judge me for owning a few hundred pairs of socks.

I think my favorite part is that these are normal here. At home, I always wore funny socks, but I typically ended up being regarded as "completely useless in selecting proper under-shoe garments." In Korea, tons and tons of people wear funny socks. Everyone has at least a few pairs, and since it's customary to take off your shoes in a lot of places (including some restaurants), everyone gets to compare. Well, maybe I'm the only one comparing. But rest assured, friends in Seoul, if ever we're in a situation where we've removed our shoes, I will be, without a doubt, deciding who in the room has the coolest socks. And treating said person with the utmost respect.

Zombies aren't global

There are a lot of things I don't think about. Gum disease. How shoelaces are made. Apartheid. What "apartheid" even is. Exercising.

This week, I discovered another thing that apparently I wasn't thinking about enough: how other cultures portray zombies.

I bet you've never thought about that either. I mean, why would you? Zombies seem pretty self-explanatory, right? Walking undead monster. Check. Trying to eat your brains. Double check. Awesome addition to Michael Jackson videos. Triple check.

Apparently, I really should think about important matters such as this more often.

Here's how this all came about. My coteacher and I take the kids to the bathroom approximately thirty-seven thousand times a day. She takes the boys and I take the girls. In the girls' bathroom, there are three child-sized stalls, so three of my girls have to wait patiently while the other three use the bathroom. Since their teacher is "waiting patiently" with them, and I'm the least patient person in the whole world, we usually end up playing.

It started out that I would pretend to be a monster and chase them. Asking why this was my first response to waiting-in-line-in-the-bathroom boredom is futile. There's no explaining things like this. They just happen. Eventually, the girls started lining up on the other side of the bathroom and slowly marching toward me like a band of undead warriors.

They march toward me with their arms raised and I feign indifference until they're directly underneath me. As soon as they're within grabbing range, I stomp my foot really loud and grab half-heartedly at them, which sends them all running in a fit of giggles away from me. Repeat. Normally there's no one else in the bathroom when this happens, so we can be weirder than Al in privacy.

Recently, however, we've been getting caught. A few different teachers have walked in while my zombie army is advancing, and they all look at me like maybe I shouldn't be allowed out of a padded room. JoAnn seems to always be the one who catches me acting like a fool with my littles, and of course, she walked in during one of our walking corpse attacks. I just kind of shrugged because, I mean, you'd think people would be used to the fact that I'm far from normal by now. She laughed for a while, then she told me one of the best things I've heard in YEARS.

Zombies in Korea don't walk. They hop.

According to my sources (aka, wikipedia), these corpses originated in China. The idea was that if someone happened to be buried in another town, the decomposing body would get homesick. When people died away from their hometowns, however, it was often too expensive to transport them home. To avoid dead body homesickness, the corpses were taught to hop home. There are other accounts of the myth (involving criminals trying to scare the police by looking like... reanimated kangaroos?), but this one is my favorite.

Of course, our best friend youtube was there to help us out in confirming this myth. Here's an old Chinese movie with a hopping zombie. Maybe you should turn all the lights on and cuddle a bunny rabbit to avoid being too afraid. Oh, and make sure your sound is up. It's worth it.

I also asked my kids to demonstrate. Obviously.

After I asked them to be zombies for me, I started to get afraid. It's pretty scary being surrounded by three-year-olds every day, but being surrounded by hopping zombies is a whole new kind of terror. I hopped (get it?!) back over to wiki to find out how to vanquish these beings of pure evil, and it told me that all I have to do is write a spell on a yellow piece of paper and stick it on their foreheads. Easy peasy.

You can click on the picture to make it bigger and read what spell I obviously chose to vanquish Rachel.

If you ever visit the Far East, always make sure you have a pad of sticky notes, just in case of a zombie outbreak.

I'm a mediocre teacher

It's story time. I imagine all of you sitting on a colorful rug in front of me, maybe pulling each other's hair or refusing to sit in one place for longer than three seconds. It's annoying. Stop it.

Most of you know that I went to college to be a teacher and also that when I graduated, I swore off ever teaching. When I told my parents I was moving to Korea to teach, the first thing they said (even before "aren't you worried about North Korea?") was "but you hate teaching." It's true. I did. And here's the mysterious why.

During my student teaching, I was overly idealistic. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was going to be the best teacher any of those high schoolers had ever seen. I made all my own lesson plans, despite having a veteran teacher at my disposal with proven-to-actually-work ideas. I stayed up until midnight coming up with the most creative ways to teach things I had never heard of, and I planned out my lessons down to the minute. I was going to be Teacher of the Year before I ever got my license, and my students were all going to become English teachers because of my sheer awesomeness. Until I actually got into the classroom.

Teaching is hard. When you care about the students more than you care about your paycheck (you don't get paid to student teach, so I obviously did), you realize the incredible responsibility you've been given. High school students might think they're invincible, but they're really quite insecure and awkward. They're going through a time in their lives when they're sure they know everything, but as any adult can tell you with complete confidence from the other side, they still have so much to learn. Of course, if you ever tell a high school student this, they'll hate you for all eternity. They're just precious like that.

The first few weeks of student teaching, I was exhausted but happy. I knew I loved literature and I knew I was entertaining enough to make my class as fun as Brit Lit can be for teenagers (so, more fun than a root canal, but less fun than a half dozen papercuts). I enjoyed the new stories and plays I was teaching, even if I did have to stay up all night the night before to actually get the reading done. Some of the kids came in before school to discuss Shakespeare with me, and I had kids who weren't even in my classes saying hi to me in the hallway. My very first lesson, an intro to sonnets, had nearly every student in the class in tears, sharing in each other's pain and connecting with music and poetry. My cooperating teacher leaned over to me during that lesson and whispered, "Don't forget this moment. Not every day will be like this, but the whole reason you teach is to find magic like this." I smiled, but inside I was laughing. My teaching career was certain to be *filled* with days like that!

Fast forward two months, and you'll find me sobbing in the teachers' bathroom. Okay, so rewind about an hour.

One morning, I had a meeting on campus and had to miss part of my teaching day, so my cooperating teacher taught the lesson I had planned. I gave her all the notes, and she followed them perfectly. When I returned, she told me about the lesson and how wonderful and enriching it had been for all the students. Of course, I thought, it's fabulous. The following morning, I taught the exact same lesson with the exact same notes to another class of kids, but with a completely different outcome.

As I started in on the prior knowledge questions, the kids weren't really responding in the way I had hoped. I decided perhaps it was just a bad morning, so I dove right into the story we were reading and started asking how they felt about it. The more I pressed, the more they recoiled; we were getting nowhere. Instead of swallowing my pride and starting over, I shoved my way forward, pelting the kids with questions that didn't make any sense since we hadn't established any of the prior knowledge bases. They said they didn't understand, and I was beyond frustrated because I knew they could; they were just being lazy (in my mind). Eventually, I threw a hissy fit and gave up, stomping over to my chair and refusing to continue the lesson.

My cooperating teacher was shaking with anger, but she handled the situation with fabulous poise. As soon as the kids filed out, she asked me what I could have done differently and why the lesson didn't work. I started crying.

Although I am the kind of girl who cries when I'm angry, hungry, cold, or just because it's a Tuesday, I was crying this time because I had failed. It was my fault the kids weren't understanding the story, and it was my fault I couldn't control my temper long enough to help them. I hadn't respected them, and I felt unbelievable remorse. That was the day I gave up on wanting to be a teacher.

I didn't walk out of the building or change my major; I was too far into college to justify that. That day, however, I started looking for other life paths that didn't include dry erase boards or dead-white-guy literature. In the months (and years) that followed, I planned out a few dozen different lives for myself, and not a single one of them had me in a classroom.

Then I moved to Korea.

I knew before I got here that kindergarten wasn't my thing. I lasted about two months at a daycare before I chose being unable to buy food over working with toddlers. When my boss came to me earlier this week and insisted that I sing a clean-up song every time the kids put their toys away, I made a mental note to just never let them play with toys again to avoid having to sing that stupid song. I'm not sure why I thought I'd magically transform into Mary Poppins when I got in front of a classroom full of really small people, but teaching kindergarten has taught me some things that I'm certainly better off knowing.

Everything that's worth doing takes practice. I didn't want to be a teacher because I knew I wasn't the absolute best on day one. When things take work, I typically abandon them. I'm blessed to be really good at the institution of school, which means not necessarily that I'm smart but that I know how to play the game well. I can have no idea what a writing prompt is asking and still get an A on the essay, not because I'm a genius but because I know how to write what teachers want to read. I'm pretty good at social situations, not because I'm the friendliest or most out-going person in the room but because I know how basic human interactions are supposed to work. I approach everything in life like it's a big game, but I only play the parts I know I'm really good at.

Teaching is different, though, because I'm not very good yet. I know what good teachers do, but I can't for the life of me get it right all the time. I'd say I'm a good teacher maybe 60% of the time; the other 40% I'm faking it (and when I say "it", I mean "absolutely everything"). For the first time in my life, though, I desperately want to get better at something. I want to work really hard at something I'm only mediocre at doing until one day I'm actually great. I've finally given myself permission to fail sometimes, and it feels like such a huge weight has been lifted. Yeah, sometimes I'm still going to suck. Sometimes I'm going to sing "Five Little Monkeys" in different voices for forty-five minutes straight and call it a lesson. But sometimes, I'm going to ask my kids what the days of the week are, and they're going to answer me (in order!) and I'm going to have succeeded. At first those moments will be few and far between, but they'll get better. I just have to keep practicing.

And that's Monday

What do spring break and July, July, and August have in common? For teachers, they mean time away from the kids to self-medicate relax. Unfortunately, K-land doesn't see it that way.

Here, the school year runs from March to February. The school takes a one-week break to reset and prepare for the new students, but the teachers don't actually get a break. The thing is, we don't actually have to work either. The Korean teachers have it rough; they have to tear down all the decorations and start basically from scratch to make sure the class looks "fresh" for all the new students. Although we can help with some of that, the foreign teachers (for the most part) have absolutely nothing to do.

I could rant for days about how locking us in the school without giving us anything to do is horrendous for employee morale, but let's face it, you don't want to read about that. You want to read about all the exciting things I did today!

When I came into school, it finally occurred to me that I'd be switching classrooms and that I should probably make mine presentable for the new teacher. This meant I needed to take down the "Merry Christmas" window clings my darling principal ordered that I hang up back in December. Yes, I recognize that it's the end of February and I should have taken them down months ago - which I would have done, if they had actually been window clings. Apparently "wall hangings" and "window clings" function very differently. While window clings peel right off into your hand and re-stick to the paper they came on, wall hangings make you want to kill yourself. I spent more than an hour scratching at the letters, peeling chunks of evil plastic off in confetti-sized pieces. Tiffany so kindly came into my room and mocked me as I tore my fingernails apart scraping at each individual letter. I finally gave up and just pulled the shade down. When the new Opal Class teacher tries to let the sun in, she'll be greeted with a cheery "Merry mas" (with two used-to-be-snowflakes-but-are-now-just-blobs).

After I finally gave up on the window, I packed up my belongings (a pack of markers and two choco-pies) and headed to my new classroom. I cleaned the desk and threw away all the old papers the teacher before me had left, sporadically checking my email or playing with blocks. Tiffany wandered in and out of the room, and I chatted with her about absolutely nothing until lunchtime came.

Lunch is always a gamble in Korea. Sometimes you get cold spaghetti and sweet garlic bread, but sometimes you get whatever the chef had left over in the kitchen. Since the kids aren't at school (and we're bored out of our minds), you'd think we'd be allowed to head out for lunch as long as we returned within a reasonable timeframe, but that would interfere with the status of "indentured servant" they're trying so hard to uphold. Tiffany and I got our trays and returned to the classroom to eat.

I realize that I willingly chose to move to Korea and thus have to put up with their cuisine, and I'm usually quite a trooper, but today... today Tiff and I just couldn't take it.

When we got in line for lunch, Tiffany mentioned that we were having eggs today. As we went through the line, she piled her tray with a particular Korean pancake that I knew contained vegetables and seafood, and I couldn't figure out where she was getting the eggs she was so excited about. Today's lunch contained the immense blessing of fresh carrots and cucumbers, but there wasn't much else to whet our appetites.

We sat down in my classroom, and Tiffany took a bite of her Korean pancake thing. She made a terrible face and stared at me before whispering, "it's not eggs." Confused, I took a bite of mine and told her it was a pancake with crab in it. We laughed about her mistake and she took to picking the pancakes apart on her tray. After I had eaten most of my food, she held up a piece of white meat. "This isn't crab; it's a tentacle." My turn to gag.

We decided eating the fresh veggies was the only safe way to make it through lunch; that is, until Tiffany decided the bumps on the cucumbers made them look like alligators, and she refused to eat any more of them. We started reminiscing about American cafeteria food: square pizzas, "chicken" patties, sometimes-green-ish hot dogs... all remembered so fondly you'd think we were discussing the finest French cuisine. After an hour of picking apart our food and listing every cafeteria food we could remember (oh, no-bake cookies...), we took our trays back to the lunch room and tried to forget about the tentacles.

The rest of the afternoon was spent warning the new girls about the crazy parents and moving desks around. I found a box of chocolates one of my kids gave me, so I supplemented my lunch with expensive candies (always a healthy option). At five-thirty, we were free to go, but we still have two more days this week of desk-warming before the kids arrive.

Lest you think I'm a mean, hateful person who only complains about my job, here's an adorable picture of Dennis:

I'll endure tentacle pancakes any day of the week if it means I get to hang out with this kid.

Something pretty cool

So I know some of you got to this blog thanks to the link on Relevant's website (if so, WELCOME!), and you're probably wondering why the first post you see is linking you right back to their website. Well, folks, I have to get my family to read the article somehow! Scroll down; you'll find something else fun to read :)

Mom! Dad! I'm PUBLISHED!

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/blog/24813-rethinking-community

Is the cup half full?

I've been panicking a lot lately about my halfway point looming in the future. The way I see it, I can process this milestone in two different ways: I'm halfway finished, but I also have half my stay here in front of me. I'm not sure which one of those is the more optimistic view, but considering the fact that the former causes me to nearly have an anxiety attack, I've tended to cling more to the latter.

I can't even begin to quantify how much I've changed since I got here (well, I suppose I did in my last post), and it's entirely impossible to imagine how I'm going to change in the next six months. I was talking to my friend, Kimi, last night about this; a few years ago, we felt like we knew everything. I remember graduating from high school and thinking, "Now I'm an adult!" Then as I learned about life and the world in college, I graduated thinking, "Now I'm really an adult!" I'm coming up on three years out of college, and I've finally realized I know embarrassingly little about functioning in the world as the kind of adult I want to be. Sure, I can pay my bills and cook my own dinner, but I want my life to mean something, and that's feeling like an increasingly monumental task.

Anyway...

I promised last time that the next post I wrote would be about the things I'll miss about Korea when I leave. Most of my closest friends are packing up to leave the country in the next month or so, and that kind of makes me feel like I'm leaving too. Although I don't have to worry about losing any of the things on this list for another six months, I've compiled it nonetheless. You can come back and read it in August if you want (I know I will).

Things I know I'll miss when I leave Korea

Not being able to understand conversations around me. This one is going to be the hardest when I get back. For the more paranoid people out there, I'm sure not knowing what's going on around you feels more like a constant terrorist threat than peace, but I'm here to tell you that ignorance is most definitely bliss. I'm an incredibly distracted person, and having voices around me to eavesdrop upon keeps me from ever getting anything done. I'm going to sincerely miss being able to focus entirely on the person I'm with at a coffee shop instead of  being distracted by the girl on her cell phone behind us breaking up with her boyfriend.

Ethnic foods. At home, I considered Taco Bell a cultural experience, but here, I have access to nearly everything. Within a ten minute walk in either direction from my apartment, I can find Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Mexican (crappy Mexican, but Mexican), Italian, and of course, a million Korean restaurants. Although I tend to stick with what's familiar, I'm seriously going to miss being able to pick up omurice at the Food 2900. I've already decided that my offspring will be the "weird kids" whose mom packs them kimbap in their lunches. And by weird, I mean cultural and unique (which translates to just "weird" in elementary school).

My intimate relationship with my iPod. In college, I used my iPod all the time, but when I graduated, I discovered the real world doesn't have constant background music. It was unacceptable to drive with my earbuds in, and I wasn't even allowed to keep myself entertained while I put books on shelves at the library. Here in Korea, however, my iPod and I are one. Basically everyone here has white cords hanging from their ears, and I have so many opportunities throughout the day to turn on tunes. Any time I'm waiting for the subway, riding on a bus, walking down the street, or even sitting at my desk, I've got music playing. Sometimes this is actually really unfortunate; there are a handful of songs that I simply must sing along to, but I get the sneaking suspicion that the rest of Seoul doesn't find Katy Perry as enchanting as I do.

Not paying for things. Korea pays for almost everything I need here. They provide health care (kick ass health care), and the public transportation system is stellar. My school pays for my apartment, and as long as I bring a big enough bag to school (and don't let anyone see me), I can have all the free milk and juice I need. I, um, borrow internet in my apartment, and my utility bills have yet to pass $60 in a single month. My phone is pay-as-you-go, but I only use it for texting, so 20 bucks lasts about two months. Granted, my week in Bali set me back quite bit, but overall, my life is pretty much free. I think this is the first time since high school graduation that my net worth isn't steadily decreasing.

People think I'm interesting. This is the most selfish thing on the list by far, but at least I'm honest. I like the attention I get living overseas. Obviously I don't get any special treatment from my friends here. Almost every person I hang out with regularly is a foreigner; thus, we all at some point in the last few years packed up our entire lives into two suitcases and moved overseas. I have friends from South Africa, Norway, England, Canada, and New Zealand, and I would consider every single one of them infinitely more interesting than I am. However, people back home think I'm some kind of rock star. Face it - you wouldn't be reading this blog if it didn't have Korea in the title, and I'm okay with that. I'm actually not very exciting when it comes down to it, but if you're learning a little about Korean culture/insanity by reading the things I write, then we're all better off in the end!

Having access to Asia. The thing I hate most about Korea is the fact that I have hardly any vacation time. I'm in Asia, for crying out loud, and I really don't have the time to explore it! It's like if you found out that you could win a million dollars if you complete a 5K, but then you realize you have no legs. Okay, so it's nothing like that. But it is incredibly frustrating.

Serviceeee. Korea likes to give you stuff for no reason. The last two boxes of cereal I bought came with a laundry basket and a documentary about woolly mammoths. When I (finally) broke down and bought perfume a few weeks ago, the lady in the shop gave me not one, not two, but three free travel bottles of various fragrances. I've gotten countless bottles of free pop at restaurants, and people have tossed extra snacks in my grocery bags a handful of times. The serviceeee that I enjoy the most, though, is when it's entirely unrelated to the product you're purchasing yet it feels so complete, like the snowman plates taped to my toothbrushes.

I'm discovering that the more I write to this list, the more I want to add. Apparently this place is all kinds of lovely! Here's to another six months, K-land!

I'm different now

Author's Note: I'm fully aware that you'd rather hear about how I chased seagulls on the beach than my sappy life reflections. Unfortunately, as my dear friend Angie once said, this isn't a blog about Korea; it's a blog about me while I live in Korea. I love writing stories, but I don't want to look back and only have stories. I'm changing more than I ever knew I needed to, and I want to remember what all this growing up feels like.

As I close in on the halfway point in my adventure, I find myself reflecting even more than usual. Okay, so I'm more reflective than a well-polished soup spoon on an average day; I'll give you that. I've been keeping lists (upon lists upon lists) in my planner of blog topics to commemorate my six-month anniversary, and tonight I decided I'm going to start writing them out. I like making lists, and the next handful of posts are sure to be chock-full of them. I'll change the formatting on the bullet points to spice things up. Don't worry about thanking me; I know you appreciate it.

Without further ado: The Ways Korea Has Changed Me: For the Better.


I wear makeup now.
I never really wore makeup before I moved to Korea. Well, that's not exactly true; I always had powder on my cheeks and mascara on my eyelashes, but I usually put those on without looking in a mirror, so on a good day they were in their proper locations on my face. One night on the way home from work, Tiffany needed to stop at a cute little cosmetic shop to get eyeliner, and she talked me into buying purple eyeshadow. I bought it and kept it in a bag on my dresser for about a week before I decided to give it a shot; the first day I wore it, I was terrified I had put it on wrong. Much to my surprise, people complimented me! It's almost as if makeup makes me look prettier. Who'd have thought?

I'm more independent.
My parents hate this one because it means I don't think twice about visiting Japan sans a chaperone, but I really can't get enough of being on my own. I thought that navigating a ginormous Asian city would be cripplingly terrifying, and it never ceases to amaze me how much I really can do on my own. Right after college, my parents bought me a GPS because I got lost nearly every time I tried to get to Springfield from anywhere but Springfield despite having lived in Ohio my entire life. With that kind of track record, I can see why they were concerned about the prospect of my trying to find my way around a city that has no street names, but look at me go! I've only gotten "I'm-gonna-die-oh-my-gosh-where-am-I?" lost once in six whole months; in fact, I usually face geographic confusion with a sense of mild amusement. It turns out that panic actually doesn't help you find your way hardly at all, while looking at a map and using common sense are almost guaranteed to assist.

I'm more independent, part two.
I remember right when I got here, I wrote a post (this one, actually) where I talked about how beautifully content I was sitting in a coffee shop alone, watching thousands of people walk by the window. I said in that post that one day, sitting alone in a coffee shop was likely to make me homesick and unbelievably lonely, and I'm still kind of waiting on that day. I've discovered in the last six months that I really enjoy my own company. I like hanging out at a coffee shop alone, shopping alone, walking down the street with no specific destination in mind alone; I like being alone. I always kind of had the idea that if you're in public by yourself, it's probably because you're too annoying to have friends (which I suppose I shouldn't entirely rule out as an explanation for my solitude). Don't worry; I still really enjoy being around people and it's unlikely that I'm going to turn into a hermit or anything. I've just come to appreciate myself a lot more, and I don't need people around to make me feel like I'm worth something.

I write things more.
This point feels kind of silly considering I've been quite sporadic in my posting in the last month or so, but I honestly have been writing more things. I'm keeping most of them to myself for now, and I'm going to be obnoxiously cryptic for the time being so I don't have to be embarrassed later on if my writing ends up just taking up space on my hard drive. I've written a decent amount in the past (most of which will never be seen), but I've become more intentional with what I write, and I've been using words to explore life as I try to figure it out. I'd like to take this opportunity to be the first to acknowledge that my paragraph about how I'm becoming a more practiced and focused writer is entirely incoherent. A little dose of humility is always good for the spirit.

I join different things.
In Cincinnati, I was really involved in the Children's Ministry at the Vineyard. When I say "really involved", I mean I used to live with the family who ran it. I'd take my shoes off when I got to church, and I'd taken naps just about everywhere I could find something soft enough to be considered a pillow. I belonged in DiscoveryLand, and I liked it that way. In fact, if you're not a member of my family or one of my college roommates, five bucks says I met you while I was stamping kids' hands or giving a puppet a Texan accent. Therefore, when I came to Korea, the easiest thing for me to join would have been the Children's Ministry, but I decided that would be the one place I considered off-limits. I wanted to challenge myself to try something that didn't come as easily as breathing, and I'm so ridiculously glad I did. Thus far, I've been involved in the Christmas play, the homeless ministry, the orphanage ministry, a human trafficking conference, and a prayer team. I know I overload my schedule like a high school senior desperate for community service hours, but I honestly can't see my life any other way. I love all the things I do, and I just feel so crazy-blessed that I have the time and opportunity to do them.

And now... The Ways Korea Has Changed Me: For the Worse.


My eating habits suck.
At home, I was a decent cook. I never made gourmet meals or anything, but I cooked for myself almost every night, and I was really good with a CrockPot and a toaster oven. Here, I've got two gas burners. That's it. No oven, no microwave, no George Forman grill. Two gas burners. In the last six months, I've gotten a little better at making food that looks moderately edible, but my primary diet still consists of American junk food people have mailed to me. Basically I subsist exclusively on Cheetos and Peanut Butter M&M's unless I pick something healthy up on the way home (like Burger King).

I don't clean, like, ever.
I never really thought I was a messy person, but I never lived by myself either. It turns out my propensity to clean up my messes was really only a ploy to get my roommates to like me. Now that I have no one to impress but myself, my apartment looks like crap. I still have Christmas decorations up, my laundry stays on the drying rack until I wear it (folding is for losers), and I must have decided at some point that keeping dishes in the sink is more practical than, you know, washing them. Every purse I own is in a pile on the floor, and I can't even sit at my table because of all the crap covering it. Every single time I walk in the door, I wonder who the heck left such a train wreck of a mess in my apartment before I throw my bag on the ground and dig out a space to sit on my chair. I really should be more embarrassed about my inability to do anything domestic.

I watch a lot of TV.
Here's one I actually am embarrassed about. When I worked at the library, I read a few books a week, and I really only kept up with House. However, since coming to Korea, I've gotten addicted to nearly every television show in America. I guess I could blame it on my desperate desire to feel like I'm still a part of American culture, but really I think I'm just lazy and cheap. Reading a book involves strenuous activity, like moving your eyes back and forth and occasionally turning the page, not to mention the seven to eight dollars I'd have to spend purchasing a book to read. It's so much easier to pull up sidereel.com and dramatically collapse onto my bed to watch shows I've never heard of. I am actively trying to fix this one, though, so if you have any books you think I should read, um, mail them to me.

I had about twice as many things on the original list I wrote, but I think if you made it through all that, you deserve a gold star. Next up: things I already know I'm going to miss about Korea.

No pants, the sequel

If you're really good at keeping track of the time zones, you'll notice that it's Friday night as I write this. Normal people go do things on Friday nights, but me? I'm in my pjs watching the second season of Community. That's because I'm sick.

I'm usually pretty whiny when I finally acknowledge that I'm not in tip-top condition. I'll deny being sick (or injured - anyone remember last week's concussion? I don't - bahaha!) until I positively can't stand up anymore, and then it's like the world is ending. I complain about being sick to everyone I see and I can't really be trusted to do simple things, like eat or shower. This time I'm not all that upset about it, though. I only have a cough and a sore throat, but since I'm leaving for Bali in NINE DAYS, I wanted to get myself checked out on the off chance it might be something worse than a cold.

After school, I headed down the main street in Gangnam. Hana and I met Jeanne outside a building once that she claimed was a doctor's office, so I set out in that general direction and hoped for the best. I had no idea if it would be open on a Friday night, but I wasn't sick enough to go to an actual hospital. The plan was to find out whether it was open, possibly get checked out, and return home with McDonald's. Simple.

The doctor's office was precisely where I thought I remembered it to be; unfortunately, it was on the fourth floor of the building. Whose cruel idea was it to make sick people trudge up four flights of stairs? Anyway, when I walked through the door and smiled at the receptionists, both their faces dropped. I immediately realized no one spoke English in that particular office. I approached the desk anyway and said, "Doctor? Sick." while pointing at myself. One of them handed me a form and circled the top portion. Although I have mastered reading Korean, my vocabulary is limited to "thank you" and "really?", so I had no idea what to write on the lines. The other receptionist waved her hands around in the shape of a small rectangle, and I knew she wanted to see my alien card (because that's the only thing I possessed that she could have possibly cared about). I handed it to her and she took the paper away from me as the other woman jammed a thermometer inside my ear. When it beeped, she looked at the number and waved me away to the waiting area.

I waited only a minute or two before one of the receptionists got my attention and directed me into the first exam room. The doctor looked at me and sighed. He said something that sounded like "Hangul," which is the name of the Korean alphabet, so I assumed he was asking me if I spoke Korean. I shook my head and he replied, "What is wrong?" I said "cough" and waited, beginning to regret my decision to seek medical attention. Fortunately, my lungs chose that precise moment to spasm out of control. When I calmed back down, the doctor looked inside my throat and declared it a "tonsillitis injection." Allowing for the translation error on the word "infection," that would be a pretty good diagnosis... if I had tonsils. I shook my head and pointed at my throat then mimed throwing something away. He rolled his eyes and pointed at his throat, which I took to mean, "Look, white girl. It's not actually tonsillitis, but that's my favorite English word. Just roll with it." I nodded and let the receptionist guide me into an adjacent room.

She indicated that I should set my things onto the table before starting to prepare a needle. I took off my coat, assuming she'd need access to my upper arm to administer my shot, but she looked me right in the eye and tapped herself on the butt. You've got to be kidding me. She flicked the end of the needle to get the air bubbles out and waited for me to remove my pants. When I unbuttoned my jeans and offered her my hip, she grabbed the back of my pants and yanked them down, stabbing the needle right in the middle of my buttcheek. When she pulled the needle out, she reached for my hand and wrapped it around a cotton ball then left me alone in the room. Usually when a nurse makes you hold cotton to a recent injection site, she means for you to hold it there for at least a little while. However, when she returned a few minutes later, it was immediately clear that my pants were expected to have returned to their normal position long ago. I sheepishly tossed the cotton in the trash and buttoned my jeans back up before following her out to the counter. She typed a few things in the computer, printed out a page written in Korean, and asked me for 5,900 won.

Most of my readers aren't familiar with the current exchange rate, but that's about five bucks. Five. Last fall when I had poison ivy, it cost me nearly $300 to get rid of it. But tonight, my tonsils magically regrew and became "injected" and I was able to take care of it for less than I paid for the chicken sandwich I got on the way home. Korea may have the worst education system I have ever seen, but they're onto something with health care.

The paper the nurses gave me turned out to be a prescription; I took it downstairs to the pharmacy and traded it in for about thirty pills of all different shapes and sizes. I thought maybe since the doctor's visit cost me next to nothing, they'd screw me on medication, but the pills totaled a whopping three bucks. The lady at the pharmacy told me when to take the pills, not to drink coffee, etc. and sent me on my way.

Despite having diseased yet non-existent tonsils, I'm actually feeling quite well, but I'm still going to use this as an excuse to avoid going out in the cold. I'm proud to have stumbled my way through my first solo visit to a Korean doctor, but I sincerely hope that next time I'll be able to remain fully clothed for the entire duration of the visit.

For the dudes

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: This post was written so that the guys who follow my blog wouldn't get too bored with all the hairdresser talk over here at this post. You're welcome, guys.**

Here's a video of a prank that involves a man's head in a port-o-potty.

And here's a picture of a ham sandwich.

That's the extent of my knowledge about what men like.

In case you were wondering, I'm crazy.

It's been almost a week since I last posted. I've been a little busy, what with fall retreat last weekend and that silly job thing I go to every day, but that's not why you haven't heard from me. I'm kind of embarrassed to tell you the actual reason, but I owe you the truth, don't I?

Two weeks ago, I discovered that my blog has a built-in counter. Google provides me with a "Stats" tab that it took me four months to find (modern day Sherlock right here), and it tells me EVERYTHING about my blog and its viewers. I mean, really, I have your social security numbers and a PDF of your great-grandmother's birth certificate.

When I first discovered this tab, I had significantly more page views than I expected, including regular visitors from Malaysia, the Philippines, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia (to name a few). My teensy mind has had a heyday trying to process this, and I've gone through the following phases:

1. Pride: I must be the best writer in the WORLD! People from countries everywhere check my blog and it is absolutely because I'm a frickin' champion. I have more fans than JK Rowling, the Olson twins, and Big Macs combined! My words are magical and my jokes are superb, and the second I leave here I'm going to publish a book of all my amazing and unique stories! Now if you'll excuse me, Elizabeth Gilbert's agent is on the line.
2. Fear: Wait, I have how many people reading my blog? And one of them found it by googling the keywords "health check + my butt"? Oh my goodness what have I done? What if the school finds out I've been posting videos of the kids? Or if I start getting stalkers waiting outside my building? I need to delete this blog and change my name to something less famous, maybe "Angelina Jolie."
3. Curiosity: I wonder if there are any other people in Korea who had the brilliant idea to write down their experiences? I'm sure I must be the only one, but I'll check just in case...
4. Self-loathing: There are 191,000,000 results on google for "Korea blog". And every single one of them is better than mine. None of my experiences are original; if my family and friends found out about how many other Korea blogs there are, all of them with a much higher standard of writing, they wouldn't need me anymore. A drunk monkey could type a better commentary on Korean culture, and he'd look way more awesome doing it. I'm a failure.
5. Self-pity: I can't believe I even tried to write a blog, and I doubly can't believe people actually read this garbage. I bet the thousands of page views are just my grandma refreshing the page every six minutes. If my friends here found out about all the "new" and "exciting" things I've written about (that aren't new or exciting for anyone who's been here more than five minutes), I'd be the laughing stock of East Asia. I also had to google whether it was "laughing stock" or "laughing stalk" - ie, I'm the most pathetic English major on the planet.
6. Denial: Blog? What blog? Oh no, I'm not the one who wrote that mess. You must have me confused with someone else; my name's Angelina Jolie.

It's quite hard to formulate a coherent blog post when your mind is tumbling around like wet gym socks in a dryer (man, I wish I had a dryer). I considered turning my blog into something "for the masses" and writing about more of the business side of my adventure. I'm sure if I hadn't had a friend to explain everything to me as I went through the application process, I'd have followed random foreigners' blogs too. I could write about the different kinds of schools, what types of restaurants to avoid when you're not with a Korean, and what songs you can put on your ipod to keep yourself from bursting into tears on the subway. But I'm not very advice-y. I tend to write about life as I see it, and my life is messy and hilarious and (if I'm being honest with myself) pretty average. I don't know how long she's had it up, but I realized today that the tagline on my friend Angie's blog says "it's not a blog about korea. it's a blog about me... while i live in korea." Amen.

This blog isn't really about Korea. Sure, I've told some stories that wouldn't happen in the States, and honestly, most of you probably wouldn't be reading if I didn't live in a foreign land where tiny octopi are considered a delicious contribution to a lunch tray. There are hundreds of other places on the internet that you can go if you want to learn what it's like to live in Asia; this blog is about what it's like for me to live in Asia. Some things are horribly commonplace and some things are pretty special to my adventure, but it's all just my life. This blog isn't going to become any bigger than it needs to be because it's already far bigger than I ever dreamed. And I'm not going to stop writing it, no matter how many other Korea blogs out there have already covered my material. I'm not writing for them; I'm writing for me.

I'm reading a book called Bittersweet right now, and there's a little excerpt that I love. Shauna Niequist (who is fabulous, by the way) talks about art and how many people there are in the world who are creating and how we can get lost in the shuffle.

     The world doesn't need another band, per se. It doesn't, strictly speaking, need another book or another photograph or another album. The general world population will survive without one more stage production and one more gallery showing.

     This is the thing, though: you might not. We create because we were made to create, having been made in the image of God, whose first role was Creator. He was and is a million different things, but in the beginning, he was a creator. That means something for us, I think. We were made to be the things that he is: forgivers, redeemers, second chance-givers, truth-tellers, hope-bringers. And we were certainly, absolutely, made to be creators. 

So there you have it. It's funny; I knew conceptually that moving to Korea was going to teach me a lot about myself, but I don't think you can really know what that means until you're in the middle of it. I expected to "grow and stretch and change", but I don't think I ever thought about what that would look like. I find that I'm constantly bombarded with things to consider: business ethics, culture shock, morality, standards of education, my own brokenness and incompetencies. I thought my blog would be a place where I'd post pictures and tell funny stories before they slipped out of my mind, but it turns out my little website is where I rummage through this world of sensory overload and learn what it means for me to become a part of it.

And you're just crazy enough to read about it.

Two month mark

Two months after I moved in with the Wilkinsons, I got a job at the library.

Two months after I started at the library, I started working at other branches on my days off.

Two months after I started the job at the day care, I quit.

Two months after I started the job at iSqFt, I quit.

Two months after I started the job at Amend, I started applying for jobs in Korea.

Two months after that, I moved to Asia.

For those of you who haven't yet caught on to where this is going - I've been in Seoul for two months.

*taps fingers on desk*

The past week or so, I've been fighting a general discontentedness. I mentioned it to my friend, Angie, yesterday, and she told me that most people go through a bout of homesickness/depression/what have you every three months. She said the first one hit her a month early, and it sounded to her like that's what  is hitting me right now. The more I considered it, the more it seemed to fit; that is, until I realized my own pattern.

I can't keep doing something for longer than two months.

I'm not throwing in the towel, and if you offered me a ticket home, I wouldn't take it (sorry, Grandma!). I still adore my job, my friends, the subway system, street food, you name it. But I'm just feeling... I don't know... meh. (yes, "meh" is the best word my college-educated mind can produce. thank you, miami university.) I'm in a routine now, and I'm really, really terrible at routines. I don't like when things stagnate, and I've been here just long enough to start to feel antsy. Every day, I get up at the same time, take a shower (washing everything in the same order), eat the same breakfast, walk the same route to work, and wrangle the same group of kids. I don't want a new adventure or a new life; I just want to be excited by this life again. I don't get lost trying to find McDonald's anymore, and I haven't pulled out my "100 Things to do in Seoul" book in weeks. I can read Korean now, and I finally have enough equipment to start preparing meals at home. Things are starting to steady out, and I'm not good at steady.

This is the part where I get nervous. What if this is all there is? What if my life follows this same pattern every single day until I die? What if I never meet new people or see new things or travel to new places? I'm struggling against the urge to flip my life upside down again. I could break my contract and go teach in Thailand, or sign up for a DTS somewhere in Africa, or go to seminary here at Torch. I'm in the middle of Asia with only two suitcases worth of possessions to my name; I could literally go anywhere or do anything. The thing is, though, I don't actually want to leave. I'm happy here, like that deep-rooted happiness where you can fall face-first into a pile of manure and still think "man, my life is good." I'm growing and changing literally every single day, and if Paris Baguette isn't my soulmate, then I don't know the meaning of the word. For this season of my life, I belong here - I mean really belong - and I wish I could stop fighting against it.

Due to my "meh"-ness, I spent today robotically completing my tasks and teaching my kids. After school on Mondays and Thursdays, I teach an extra class for kids who used to attend Gate but are now in elementary school. Usually it's the most painfully boring part of my day, but today was a little different.

While I was teaching, one of the boys kept peeking inside his backpack. I finally asked him what he was doing, and his eyes got huge, as though he truly thought he had been invisible the whole time. Jokingly, I asked if he had an animal in the bag. The kids all laughed, but David just crept lower in his chair. "Seriously, kid. What do you have? A mouse?" He shook his head. "A turtle?" He stared. I stared. "David, do you have a turtle in your backpack?" He nodded. "Like... a live turtle?" Another nod. "I'm... going to need to look inside your backpack."

Yep, the kid legit brought a reptile to class in a ziplock bag. And I was worried my life was getting boring.

In the meantime...

I've been posting about all the fun and exciting things that I do, but as I settle into life here, I'm finding that I do fewer and fewer exciting things. Rather than post less often, I'll just write about the mundane.

Last night, I made soup.

I'd been looking forward to Friday night all week. Not for the reason normal people look forward to Friday nights; I was planning to stay in, write some non-blog-related things, and watch a movie. Every single night for the last week and a half I've had something to do, and I was so excited to have a night to myself.

I stayed after school for a while to make sure everything was ready for Monday. Usually, I bolt out the door the second I'm allowed to on Friday afternoons, but that leaves me with a mess of a Monday morning. I took my time and finished my work before heading home.

When I got to my apartment, I threw on a chick flick on my laptop and decided I was going to make dinner. I've cooked in my kitchen an embarrassing number of times - like four in two months - so I thought I'd put on my domestic hat for an evening. I stared at the cupboard for a while. Cheetos? No. Granola bars? No. Oreos? Well, maybe as a cooking snack. Munching my cookies, I finally resigned myself to the fact that I would need to break into the one can of stupid expensive chicken noodle soup I had purchased "for an emergency." (I don't know what kind of emergency requires canned soup as a solution, but nonetheless, I was prepared.)

Turning on the gas stove is always an adventure; I never know if I'm about to blow myself up, but the flame started without issue. I set the pan on the burner to heat up and reached up into the cupboard. As my hand lifted in the air, a voice ran through my mind. "You don't have a can-opener, you dummy." It probably wasn't God since God doesn't call me a dummy, but I gripped the can and prayed for a pop-top. Hallelujah! When I pulled the little tab, only a small part of the can opened, like the opening on a can of pop. I looked inside, wondering how the noodles and vegetables would fit through the tiny hole before it hit me: I had bought a crazy expensive can of broth.

Opening the can set off a timer in my head. "I have to make something with this broth before it goes bad! And I bet I only have an hour!" The thought didn't occur to me to put the can in the refrigerator until I had more ingredients; I needed to make soup, and I needed to do it now. I pulled down a bag of macaroni noodles and started heating up some water. I'd make noodle soup! But I didn't have any chicken. I looked at the stove for a while, trying to decide if it was worth it to turn the darn thing off and go buy chicken. I finally conceded that it was, turned off the gas, and headed to the mart next door.

Ah, the mart. I purchase my milk there once a week, but other than that, I never really go inside. It's full of things I don't recognize, and while the man behind the counter is delightfully friendly, he doesn't speak a lot of English. I walked in and scanned the veggies first. "Chicken noodle soup needs carrots and celery!" I told myself. I found a massive carrot the size of my foot and a cucumber (because vegetables that start with the same letter all taste the same, apparently) and went down to the meat freezer. There was very little to choose from, and none of it looked like chicken. I pulled out the cheapest one and went to the man at the counter. "Chicken?" He shook his head no, so I went back and got another. "Chicken?" This time, he shook his head and waved his arms, as though my question had been the most serious thing he'd dealt with all day. Not having any other options, I held onto the meat and went back to the vegetable case, hoping this time there would be a magical bag of pre-chopped soup veggies I could just dump in a pan. That's when I heard some English.

Tiffany smiled and asked me what I was making. I proudly displayed my ingredients and told her I had a can of broth at home and was going to make soup. I could see her calculating in her mind whether I was serious. "So, you're gonna make soup with broth, a carrot, a cucumber, and some unidentified meat?" I debated for a second whether telling her that I planned to chop the carrot would make the "she's an idiot" expression go away, but I settled instead on saying that I also had macaroni at home to add. Tiff started taking things out of my hands and putting them away while she told me what I should do instead. She told me to walk to another mart, one that had a bigger selection, and get actual chicken, two potatoes, two packets of cream soup, and shredded cheese. After she ran through the recipe twice, I asked her where the other mart was. She was kind enough to not call me hopeless to my face, which I appreciate.

Remembering the open can of broth on my counter as a ticking time bomb, I practically ran to the other mart. I walked to the back and got my chicken then headed to the vegetable area to find potatoes. I know enough about cooking to know that red-skinned potatoes are better than regular ones, so I tried to find those first. There were three bins of grown-underground somethings: one held regular potatoes, and two held red blobs. Unfortunately, none of the red blobs were potato-shaped. I picked one up from each bin and considered them for a moment, imagining how disappointed I'd be if I got home and discovered I had purchased a radish or something equally not a potato. Choosing to be safe, I grabbed two plain potatoes and tossed them in a bag. I found the cheese and cream soup mix and headed home.

At home, I followed the directions just as Tiffany had given them to me, and after about an hour, I sat down on my bed with a steaming bowl of potato soup. I curled up with my blanket and finished How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, insanely proud of my ability to create something edible, even if it wasn't my own idea in the slightest. Tiff came up to check on me and my soup a little bit later, and I ended up heading down to her apartment to eat cookies and drink plum wine until we were both ready to pass out - about midnight.

And thus ends my thrilling Friday night in Korea.

Culture shock

I recently skimmed down my blog, looking at all my most recent posts, and I was a little disappointed. People keep sending me messages about how much they enjoy reading about my adventures and my exciting life, but most of my most recent posts are kind of depressing, or at the very least, really deep and thoughtful. I haven't written about phallic-shaped soap or impromptu adventures in flea markets for a couple of weeks now, and I don't feel like my blog is much "fun" right now. In fact, I'm in the middle of writing a post about how Korea's education system actually makes me miss Dubya's horrendous excuse for a learning plan, and it occurred to me that I might be hitting a bit of culture shock. That's fine; I knew it was coming, and my frustrations with the school definitely count as being "shocked by the culture." But I was reading a friend's blog this afternoon, and she mentioned hitting the negotiation stage of culture shock, and I got confused. A quick search on Wikipedia provided me with something, well, shocking.

There are stages of culture shock.

Like, documented, and stuff.

Like, other people follow the same pattern I'm going through.

(It never ceases to amaze me to discover that I am, in fact, normal.)

I really shouldn't be writing this post right now; I'm supposed to be making lesson plans for a project my kids are doing next week, but I'm so flabbergasted that I had to write about it. I thought culture shock was just that moment when you see a dog wearing boots or cough drops sold as candy, but it turns out it's a whole process! Mind. Blown.

According to Wikipedia, culture shock occurs in four phases:

Honeymoon phase: There's certainly no argument that I experienced this one. From the second I got here, I fell in love with Korea and all its quirks. I loved the over-priced coffee, the smelly and confusing subway, the kimbap... everything. I loved it all, and it loved me. Korea and I seemed made for each other, and it was beautiful.

Negotiation phase: This is when the rose-colored glasses come off and you realize that things aren't the way you're used to. It's when you go to the grocery store and can't find any normal looking eggs or soup without fish parts, and it starts to annoy you. I think I'm hitting this phase, even though it's early (according to wikiwisdom). The school was cute, but now it feels stupid and obnoxious. I'd literally fight someone for access to a Wendy's, and if I accidentally walk into one more of those damn hole-in-the-floor bathrooms, my head might explode.

Adjustment phase: Apparently this is the next one I have to look forward to, and trust me, I am. This is where life starts to feel normal - not over-the-moon exciting, but not pull-my-hair-out frustrating either. I'm just hoping I hit it sooner than six months in; I don't know if I can be grumpy that long.

Mastery phase: I may not be here long enough to actually reach this nirvana-like state, but it's the end goal. It's the phase where you really feel like you belong, like you understand the culture and it understands you and you fit together.

Hopefully my blog posts remain somewhat entertaining as I stumble my way through learning a new culture. You can rest assured I'll document it all - the good and the bad - with astounding exaggeration and as many pictures as I can.

(Random thought: I wonder if marriage follows these same phases? It certainly sounds plausible. Just wait til I get married, folks. The blog's going to be hilarious... and probably the cause of my divorce.)

Twenty-four

Today is my twenty-fourth birthday. It is also my twenty-fourth day in Korea. I think that's kind of nifty, don't you?

To honor this joyous occasion, I've decided to create a list of twenty-four things I've learned in the past three and a half weeks about myself, Korea, and life in general. I'm sure six months from now, I'll look back on my "wisdom" and just shake my head at my naivety, but that's okay. I'm living in this day right now, so on this day, I'll make a list.

24. Public transportation is convenient and good for the environment.
23. "Qook Show" is an electronics store, not a play about Korean cuisine.
22. I kind of like living alone, but really wish I had a couch.
21. Korea smells funny.
20. ALWAYS carry an umbrella.
19. If I could marry a bakery, it'd be Paris Baguette. And we'd have beautiful little pastry babies.
18. No matter where you go, all people want is to figure out life and find some meaning in it.
17. I'm much too tall and too loud to ever really fit in here.
16. For the most part, people genuinely care about each other. Even strangers.
15. Alcohol + packed subway car = domino effect!
14. Discrimination pretty much blows.
13. Carry more cash than you think you need. Like twice as much.
12. When you leave the country, you find out very quickly which relationships you value the most.
11. Americans abroad aren't typically representing their country very well.
10. Eating on the floor is only fun for a few minutes. Then your feet fall asleep.
9. Living in Korea gives me an excuse to explore and find exciting things, but the more I do it, the more I wonder why I never bothered to live this way before.
8. I value my iPod above every other object I own. Including my passport.
7. It's better to say "thank you" too many times than not enough.
6. Take the time to get to know why people are. Not just who. Why.
5. Just because something looks like chocolate doesn't necessarily mean it is chocolate.
4. Drying your clothes on a rack takes a ridiculously long time and leaves everything wrinkled. Better to just never wash anything, really.
3. Euchre isn't nearly as popular as it should be.
2. I'm braver than I ever imagined I could be.
1. If given the choice between being safe and making a good story, always pick the story. I'm starting to think that's what life is for.

I'm judging myself right now for posting this. I hate when people my age (or younger) pretend they have life all figured out. I'm not saying these past three weeks in Korea have made me some kind of self-actualized guru; I merely want to acknowledge that I've learned something and that I'm continuing to learn. It's when we stop trying to make ourselves better that we start to fall apart.

This has been "Life Lessons with Nikki." And now, back to your regularly scheduled antics.

Things that make me smile

I'm a kid. If you've ever met me, or if you've read any other post on here, you probably know that. During college, Mocha, Lolly, and I would play with silly putty during class, and my only run-in with the law involved a dozen or so photographs of belly buttons and butt cracks. It's been four years since Disney, but Ben still picks on me about the time we watched Wishes from behind Cinderella Castle and I spun around like I was being flushed down a toilet, trying to see all the fireworks at the same time. I know I'm a "grown-up" now and all, but I'll argue until I'm blue in the face that childlike joy is as Biblical as prayer, and I strive to find it in everything I do. Korea is no exception.

For the past week-ish, I've been keeping a list of things that I enjoy about Korea. None of them were really long enough to create an entire blog post about, but I think I have enough of them to stick them all back-to-back and pretend they have a unifying thread. Without further ado and in no particular order - things that make me smile in Asia!

1) Automatic lights. In Korea they're really energy-conscious. The first morning YJ picked me up to walk me to work, he pointed at my AC unit and said "off." I instantly pictured myself walking into thick, humid air after work and groaned, but I did as I was told. He must have noticed my displeasure because now he doesn't trust me at all; he'll frequently ask me if I remembered to turn off my air and my hot water. The one benefit I've noticed to the ridiculous levels of energy conservation is that lights turn off when you leave a room, which means they turn on as soon as you step into a room. When I leave my apartment in the morning, there are no fewer than six individual auto-lights that turn on as I walk down the stairs, and every single one makes me feel like a Jedi. It's what I imagine it would be like to have a ninja for a personal assistant - sneaking through the stairwells before I reach them then darting out of sight. Sometimes I chase the imaginary ninja, and by the time I get to the bottom of the stairs, I'm giggling like crazy. My neighbors must think I'm a lunatic.

2) Pringles. I understand very little in the convenience store. I think I've been purchasing milk for the last two and a half weeks, but I can't be sure because "maeil" doesn't produce anything on google translate, and it's the only word in English letters on the carton. I can find the Ramen noodles, but I can't read anything on them, so I'm too nervous to make a purchase lest I end up with spicy anchovies or something. I located Frosted Flakes because Tony the Tiger is apparently a universal character, but other than that, there's not much I can buy. Except Pringles. Pringles are EVERYWHERE. They're on prominent display when I walk past nearly every convenience store, and they line the shelves in the E-mart. They're one of the only American foods I've found that aren't "Korean-ized" (Kit-Kats are "KicKers" here), and I smile every time I see them. Why Pringles, Asia? Why not Doritos or Lay's? Or Tostito's? Or Cheetos? Or any number of other junk foods you could have adopted into your culture?

3) Not smiling in public. I have unreasonably good manners. When I meet new people, I sound like a southern belle desperate to be courted, and I threw a bit of a fit when I discovered there's no direct translation for "please" here. Therefore, when I walk down the street, I tend to smile at everyone, and everything, in every direction. That's completely counter-cultural in Korea; if people even look up from their various electronic whatevers, they almost always have a snarl on their face. (Okay, maybe not a snarl, but a look of indifference, which is as good as a snarl to someone like me). I find this to be ceaselessly amusing, so I grin even more than usual, practically forcing people to notice me. On the other hand, the one night that I was ridiculously pissed off (for unwarranted reasons that I'm now pretty ashamed of), I felt like I fit in perfectly. I didn't feel the normal societal pressures to look like I have everything together when in the presence of others; I stomped and grunted and threw a tantrum the whole way home, and no one regarded me any differently than when I smile.

4) Seeing other foreigners. According to the Korea Times (are you shocked that I read that? Me too, actually), there are 870,000 foreigners in Korea, over a quarter-million in Seoul alone. Yet most days, the only ones I see are the other teachers at my school, so I get embarrassingly excited whenever I cross paths with another non-Asian. I can spot them from blocks away now, and by the time they approach, I've already scripted out a heartwarming reunion between long lost family where we rush into each other's arms and reminisce about how much we miss Wendy's. By the time the person actually reaches me, however, it becomes clear that they have not memorized their lines in my little fantasy play. They trot right on past, leaving me disappointed and grumpy in their wake. If I were in any city in the US, I wouldn't think twice about these strangers. But here I feel like I'm supposed to know them for some reason, like if we don't acknowledge one another, we're breaking some kind of rule about American patriotism.

5) Manners mode. When I put my phone on vibrate, the phrase "entering manners mode" flashes across the screen. I don't have anything clever to say about it; I just really like it.

6) Subway salesmen. I was not excited about public transportation. The only mass transit vehicle I've ever enjoyed spouted out "Por favor, mantenganse alehado de las puertas" at every stop and landed me at the official home of Mickey and the gang. Here, however, I have to take either a bus or the subway if I want to get anywhere outside of Gangnam, and sometimes I do. Tomorrow I'm going to explore Hongdae after work, and Saturday I'm taking a deck of cards and a map and attempting to locate my euchre partner in Anyang. Luckily for me, the subway is far more delightful than I could have imagined. It's way too crowded and I always, always fall down when it takes off, but for some unknown reason, I feel like I'm being treated to some kind of rare field trip every time I step onboard. I stare around at all the walls and pretend I can read the poster that has jumping teenagers on it while I wait for the salesmen. During peak hours, people wander down the subway cars, selling things you never knew you needed but honestly can't remember how you lived without. So far I've only been on the subway less than half a dozen times, and I've already seen flashlight-fans, shopping bags that fold into strawberry-shaped packets, and drain cleaner. I get excited every time I know a subway is in my future, and I've actually considered riding it in circles just to see what kinds of treasures will be offered to me.

7) Couples outfits. It feels like Asia is divided up into pairs. Everywhere I go, people are holding hands or linking arms, and it makes me awfully lonely. I do recognize that my blatant lack of a significant other could be the fuel behind my inability to see anyone else walking alone but me, but unfortunately, it doesn't help me tune out the cute little Asian duos that line the sidewalks. Of course, as with everything here, there is a silver lining: couples outfits. That's precisely what it sounds like: couples who dress completely identically from head to toe for no obvious reason other than to look silly. The only logical conclusion I can come to is that even Asians have a difficult time telling one another apart; therefore, they wear parallel clothing on the off chance they get separated from their significant other and need to locate him or her in a crowd. I can't imagine who decided this phenomenon was a good idea; why on earth did the first boyfriend in this particular fad agree to participate? Is there no Korean equivalent to the phrase "I'd rather not look like a douchebag"? Regardless, it brings me unknowable joy to walk past a couple who matches from top to bottom; I like to imagine my amusement is inversely equal to the boyfriend's misery.

8) Piercings. Korean culture is not very accepting of body piercings or tattoos. When my school sent me my contract, the principal included a little note about the dress code: "Tattoos and piercings are not allowed because in Korea they are the sign of the gangster." I was afraid I'd stumbled into another job where I'd be covering my ichthus with a bandaid every morning, so I was delighted to find that other teachers in my school are equally rebellious. A handful of them have tattoos, and at least three of the teachers have facial piercings. On Tuesday, Kat and I decided to go out for Thai food, and came back with nose rings:

When I came into work yesterday, Hana stared at my face and said, "Oh my! Why would you do that? Now you look cheap!" I tried to convince her that I actually looked quite badass by doing this:

She replied, "No, no, no. You look cheap and easy. Oh dear. Your face has bling bling now." This reaction is actually good news; if this whole teaching thing doesn't work out, clearly my bling bling face has me right in line to become an Asian hooker. I wonder if I need a different Visa for that kind of work?

This post has nothing to do with Korea.

See?