iambic pentameter and other such nonsense

I rarely like poetry. Maybe that makes me a bad English teacher, but I can deal with that if it gets me out of having to know the difference between a pantoum and a sestina. Occasionally I'll get on a limerick kick and send everyone I know a little rhyme, and I once held an entire conversation in haiku (the other half of that conversation is not my friend anymore, most likely because of that incident). For the most part, however, I stubbornly stick to prose.

For some inexplicable reason, I've been drawn to poetry lately. But not just any poetry, oh no. I can't be happy just reading a little ee cummings and going about my day. I like poetry slams.

I knew the concept long before I'd ever attended one; obviously I'd shown performed poems to my students before and I have had some friends that write in the slam poetry style. It's been creeping into my day-to-day for a little while now; from Jacob suggesting we write poems as a form of intercession, to Courtney bragging about the slam at her writers' conference, to Lauren having a competition on her DVR when I got here. I attended a slam in Columbus before I left, and last night Lauren and I made our way to a very artsy pub in Berkeley to watch some amazing poets compete. And now I want to do it too.

I've been writing poetry in my head since we got home last night, although none of it is even close to being worth performing. The thing with poetry is that it's so real; you can't hide behind clever anecdotes or verbosity. Poetry depends on precise diction and syntax, two things I'd rather just avoid in favor of telling lame jokes. When written well, poetry takes you places prose never could, introducing you to emotions drawn with words that feel as real as burning your hand on a stove.

No matter how many times I try, I can't seem to figure out how to write about India (or the end of Korea for that matter). Perhaps I'm just jobless and bored, but I think it would be fun to challenge myself as a writer and see if I can paint in verse what I can't seem to record in prose.

Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to watch videos like this and call it research.

i know you mean well (i think)

I'm on a search for a new city to live in. I've been at my parents' house for a week and a half now, and after my vacation to visit Lauren in San Francisco, I have to figure out what comes next. I know I'm not going back to Seoul, but that only rules out one out of a few hundred thousand in the world. After living in Korea's capital, I really miss my big city, so I pulled up wikipedia's list of the biggest cities in the US. I scratched off a few I'm not interested in and called the rest my potential homes.

The thing is, the more I talk to people here, the more discouraged I get. Every time someone tells me that I need to "just get this out of my system" or that I should "do this while I'm young so I can settle down soon," a part of me curls up inside and hides away. I don't think that my desire to travel, my desire to make friends all over the world, my desire to see cultures other than my own and learn the way the world is so intricately knit together is a virus my immune system is working to get out of my body. I don't think this is some kind of inferior state, a mistake where I'll recognize my folly and come to my senses and have a "normal life." What if this is just me? What if these passions are part of my DNA, what if this is only the beginning of a life that seeks to know the world in a way you can't simply by reading about it?

I know people mean well when they tell me that they want me to live close by. I know deep down that they are just trying to find a way to say, "We miss you when you're not around. Please stay." But when I throw out a city I'd like to explore and it's met with a "eh, how about Columbus?", I feel like they're telling me I'm a failure. I'm not saying that everyone who chooses to live in Columbus is a failure by any means. What I'm trying to articulate is that when people tell me I shouldn't live in San Francisco or Chicago or Bangkok, I hear that I can't. I know they're just trying to keep me close to home so they don't have to drive as far to visit, but what I hear is completely different. I hear that I'm not clever enough, not strong enough, not brave enough, not capable enough, not something enough to handle living the life I dream of. And all it makes me want to do is prove them wrong.

Honestly, I probably wouldn't mind living in Columbus, but I want to move there because God tells me it's the next step on my journey, not because I "can't handle" living anywhere else. I want to know I chose my next city on my own terms, not because I was afraid of disappointing everyone who refuses to drive more than an hour to get to me. When things get hard (as life inevitably does), I want to stand firmly on the conviction that I'm living exactly where God told me to be and not have to wonder if I'm somehow in the belly of a whale.

I went to the doctor the other day, and the woman who checked my weight and blood pressure and such asked me if I was excited to be home. I told her I'm excited to start a new adventure, and she said she hopes I get this out of my system before I have kids. With the most polite smile I could muster, I informed her that when I have kids, they'll just have to come with me.

not really for you

I've been wanting to post on here nearly every day since I got back, but there's a little voice in the back of my head that talks me out of it every single time. You're not overseas anymore, it tells me. Your story isn't interesting right now. If your life were a movie, everyone in the theater would have gone to the bathroom or the snack stand for the time being.

But this morning, as I was surfing the internet, trying to figure out what on earth it is people do online for hours at a time, a thought struck me. Do you really write for them anyway? Or is this blog for you?

Oh right. It's for me.

With the blog being my primary means of communication with most of my family and friends while I'm overseas, I've gotten accustomed to the idea that things I post on here need to be interesting, exciting, entertaining. I feel like I need hilarious stories and breathtaking pictures to make my posts worthwhile, but honestly, I'm probably the only one who consistently reads my posts anyway. Well, me and my grandma. Hey, Grandma!

I know it's March and the last thing anyone's thinking about is New Year's Resolutions right now, but I've been thinking about them lately, and, as we just established, this is my blog. So we're going to talk about resolutions. Or bucket lists. Something about goals. Yeah.

The ever-present teacher in me came up with this really cool (note: "really cool" is subjective here) idea for a lesson about being specific in your writing. A car didn't just drive past; a 1969 silver Camaro roared down the windy country road. She didn't just fall down; the pig-tailed girl in the polka-dotted dress toppled out of the tire swing. You get the idea.

This idea of being precise in your descriptions can translate to being precise in your goals. "Go to the gym more" is ambiguous, hard to reach. So are "make more friends" and "travel." The goal is too vague to be practical; it's hard to wake up in the morning and think, "Ahh, today I shall be healthier." What does that even mean?

Our goals should be specific, concrete. Instead of "take more pictures," which is indefinite and difficult to measure, give yourself a tangible goal. Perhaps you could take ten pictures at every family gathering, or find one thing a week to take a picture of.

Yesterday I was in the car with my mom and little sister, and we were talking about bucket lists. My former roommate, Emily, had a "30 before 30" list that she kept in a spreadsheet on her computer (she made my heart so happy), and I always thought that was a fantastic idea. I'm discovering as I sit in my dad's big comfy chair day in and day out that adventure doesn't usually just happen to us; we have to go out and make it happen. Sure, it's challenging and we'll often be stretched more than we thought we could handle. But I'd much rather regret the things I did than the things I left undone.

I'm not going to force myself to write thirty goals for the sake of having a "30 before 30" list. I'd rather have five goals I'm actually passionate about than come up with thirty on the spot just to round out this blog post. I'm sure I'll get to thirty eventually. And I'll organize them all in a spreadsheet. And it will be magical.

Some (specific) things I'd like to do before I'm thirty:
- Perform an original poem at an open mic night
- Read a book in Central Park
- Hold hands and skip across the Great Wall (is this legal? eh, being in chinese prison can be a goal too)
- Teach at an underprivileged school in my licensure area
- Get five new stamps in my passport
- Perfect one recipe from each country I've lived in
- Memorize a book of the Bible
- Attend a conference or convention about something I'm passionate about once a year

Oh, and I suppose one of my goals is to finally write about my time in India. It'll show up here eventually, once I figure out how to boil three months of watching God do amazing things into a handful of paragraphs on a backlit screen.

home, ish.

I've been awake for three hours, and it's not even six am. Oh jet lag, you think you're so funny, but I assure you that you're not.

I'm home, I guess. Back in America anyway, but I can't quite decide if that's home. I've lived in five different cities in three different countries in the last six months. I'm in Colorado Springs right now, tomorrow I'll be in Springfield, and less than two weeks from now I'll be in San Francisco. Then, who knows.

I know for a fact I'm not going back to Korea (right now). I don't know how or when I'll get back, but that little peninsula has stolen my heart and I know I can't stay away forever. Much to the delight of my parents, I'm staying in America for the time being.

The thing is, friends, America's pretty big. I've made a list of about fifteen cities I wouldn't mind living in, and the best plan I can come up with right now involves driving coast to coast sleeping on couches until I find the place that fits me next. Even though I'd drop this plan in a second if God changed his mind and sent me back to Seoul, I'm actually getting a little giddy about the prospects. I honestly don't know what comes next. I know I'm staying with Lauren in Cali for three weeks, then - nada. No plans, no agenda, no path.

I'm a big planner. Every time I've come up with a new passion, a new life plan has come with it. Decided I liked writing fiction? Bam - my imagination's already got me doing book signings and interviews on Ellen. Stumbled into teaching kindergarten overseas? Bam - started planning how to start a school in (arguably) the most hostile country in the world. Found out about modern-day slavery? Bam - dropped out of grad school before I even started to do a Justice & Mercy DTS and actually tried to get Not For Sale to hire me on sheer zeal. I, um, like planning.

But this next season, it appears that God's tying a blindfold around my eyes and whispering, "Just trust me." One of the girls on my team prayed for me a few weeks ago, and she felt like God was telling her that the passion I felt for Korea is nothing compared to how much I'm going to adore this next step, that I don't even know what love is yet. I'd be lying if I said I'm not a tiny bit thrilled. The only thing I like more than planning is brazen adventure.

So tomorrow morning, I'll hop on a plane back to my parents' house. I'll be there just long enough to maybe unpack a bag before I head off to the west coast to build blanket forts and tear San Fran apart looking for decent Korean BBQ with my favorite Lolly. Three weeks later, I'll fly back to spend Easter with my family, and that's as far as I know.

I'm unemployed, homeless, and ridiculously in love with Jesus. Let's go, God. We've got a story to write.

wide open future

It’s really no secret that I want to go back to Korea. More than once I’ve thrown a minor hissy fit in my prayer journal about how I want to be in Korea more than I want to breathe. Yes, I recognize that’s extremely dramatic. I’m just that kind of girl I suppose.

I had everything worked out on my plan to get back. I had applied for a great job at a Christian school, and I’d daydream as we drove down the road about being on a bus in Seoul. I planned out what my weekly schedule would look like, which ministries I’d be involved in, how I’d steal Taesun back from stupid Kelsey. I knew what date I was leaving and where I was spending the holidays. I knew what restaurant I’d go to my first night back.

I’d been checking my email every couple of days waiting for an opportunity to interview at the school I wanted. Everyone on the team knew my plans, and a lot of them offered to come visit me when I get back. A few days ago, I finally got the email I was waiting for, but it didn’t say what I needed it to.

The job I wanted was filled in house. I could always go back to my old school or even find another hagwon job, but I’ve been feeling lately that God has been telling me that my Korea adventure is over. That door closing was the sign I needed to confirm that I won’t be returning to the country I’ve come to adore in the fall. No more Seoul metro. No more Paris Baguette. No more OEM. No more Namsan. No more Jubilee. No more noraebang. No more Korean BBQ. No more underground shopping. No more homeless outreaches at Seoul Station. No more Food 2900. No more peace signs. No more Korea.

When I read the email that said the job I wanted was filled, I tried my very hardest to put on a strong face. I read the rest of my emails, signed off without responding to anyone (or wishing my dad and sister a happy birthday; sorry bout that), and headed downstairs to try to watch tv with my friends. I made it about three minutes before I ran out into the yard and fell apart.

If you don’t love a place like I loved Seoul, then you probably think I’m nuts. Not getting a job isn’t that big of a deal; I’ll find another job in another city and life will go on. But I’d become so convinced that I’d be seeing Gangnam again in just a few months, and having that ripped away from me was more than I could handle. I can’t remember the last time I’ve cried with such desperation. I was an absolute mess.

After I’d been outside for a while, a little frog hopped in front of me. I knew immediately that catching that frog would make me feel immeasurably better, so I wiped my eyes and chased him around the yard. He hopped under a bush and out of sight, so I gave up and decided to go inside.

I ran through the tv room hoping that no one would notice I was crying, but my room ended up having a few girls in it. I crumbled onto the bed without explanation, sobbing into my pillow. After a few minutes of the girls rubbing my back without having any idea why I was in such hysterics, I lifted my head up and whispered, “I’m not going back.”

It was time for dinner, so I had to make myself presentable enough that the rest of the team wouldn’t ask too many questions. I snuck out into the circle and stared at my feet while everyone else was eating, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.

When the meal was over, I headed upstairs to see if anyone would play euchre with me to get my mind off things, but the boys I was looking for weren’t around. I checked every level of the house and every room, but they completely disappeared. I had given up and was heading back down to my own room when the four people I was looking for scrambled up the stairs. They all had the most joyful looks on their faces, and the one in the front shoved a small plastic cup in my hand. I looked at his hand, then all their faces, then back to his hand. Why would I want an empty plastic cup? Couldn’t they tell I’d been crying? I thought the only way to get them to move would be to take the cup, so I reached out for it.

That’s when I saw the little frog in the bottom of the cup. And I knew it’s going to be okay somehow.

Paradigm shift: men wear skirts here

The last two weeks have been a lot of transition. We traded a small mountain village for a huge city; a freezing climate for a sweaty one; a team we had come to feel very comfortable with for a decentralized group we’re still trying to get used to. We have different roommates, different clothes, and an awful lot of mosquito bites. But God is good, all the time.

Our new location is wonderful and annoying at the same time. The food is different, the house is different, the people are different, the activities we do are different. Since I was so obsessively in love with Seoul, I assumed that I’d feel the same way about being in this big city, but that has not been the case. It’s not that I hate where we are; I just could never see myself living in a place like this long-term. It feels like nothing is easily accessible, and there simply aren’t enough Koreans here for me to feel at home.

One of my favorite things that we get to do here is working in a preschool. The slums we’ll be working in have hundreds of thousands – did you read that? hundreds of thousands – of people living in them, but there are only enough classrooms for two to three thousand children. One of the things the team here has been working on is setting up daycares for families in the slums so the parents are free to go out and find jobs. The slum we’ve been working in this past week has a WorldVision office, and the daycare had some gift boxes from Operation: Christmas Child. It’s surreal knowing that the kids we sing songs and play games with are the same ones that people in America see on commercials and have pictures of on their refrigerators. The world seems smaller, yet somehow America has never felt so far away.

The daycare is one of the most fun places I’ve ever been. Since I’m the only one who has any experience with preschool kids aside from the leaders, I was basically tossed in the room with a hardy “you got this!” It’s a teensy bit different teaching fourteen in my class in Korea to the forty-three we’ve got here, but the same basic principles apply; the sillier I act, the more they pay attention; the more they pay attention, the more they learn. The rest of my team stood around the room and helped when I asked for it, but it was mostly up to me to implement any kind of structured lesson. And I loved every single minute of it. When I left Korea, I thought that would be my last opportunity to teach little ones; I love that I’m getting this tiny reminder of how much fun it is to sing songs and be silly and call it a “job.”

While we're here, we'll also have the opportunity to work at some other really exciting places, like an AIDS orphanage, a leper colony, a restaurant, and a few other slums. I haven't been on any of the teams that have gone to those places yet, but I've heard really cool stories from all of them. Life is a little bit slower here; rides and translators don't show up until an hour after they said they'd arrive, but I'm learning to hold plans loosely and just see what comes next. I don't want to miss out on this season because I was constantly checking my watch.

In other news, I’m going to get glasses soon. When I was in Korea, my vision started to get blurry, so I asked a friend of mine to take me to the optometrist. Every test the doctors did came up just fine, and they sent me away with some eye drops and a question mark. Whenever my vision has started to blur in the last eight months, I’ve put in my drops and told myself there was nothing wrong. I’ve noticed it a lot worse here, but I’m stubborn and didn’t bother mentioning it to anyone. The other day, we were rehearsing for a skit where I play a nerdy bookworm (I think I was typecast), so I borrowed a pair of glasses from one of the girls on the team. The second I put them on, the whole world became clearer. I ran through the house, reading labels and looking out windows while my friends all wondered how I could have possibly not known that I needed glasses. I’m really stinkin’ excited to get my glasses and not have to walk up close to things to be able to see them anymore. Luckily I discovered this in a country where glasses are less than thirty bucks a pair; if I had to pay hundreds of dollars of them in America, I’d just go right on not being able to see far away.

Violence, lust, and other hard things

I don't want to write today. I want to sit in bed with my journal and watch the sun roll across the sky. I want to be in my classroom today, singing that cursed lunch and snack song they made me sing three times a day. I want to know tonight I get to see Taesun and ride the subway back to Gangnam with my iPod in. I guess today I miss "home."

I went to a Korean restaurant for lunch yesterday, and I nearly cried when I saw hangul on the menu. My friends spent the whole meal trying to convince me to go talk to the woman in the kitchen, but the only word I could muster up the courage to say was "thank you." We left and I took a picture as we walked away.

It doesn't help that I've had a hard week. As Jen says, the "grace goggles" have come off, and we're starting to become annoyed with the little things we used to find amusing. I remember when that happened in Korea, and I know that if I push through, I'll enjoy it here again. But right now, I'm frustrated, cold, and awfully lonely. I know I'm here with fifteen other people and it's nearly impossible to have a second alone, but just as I was after those first few honeymoon weeks in Korea, I'm lonely for people who know me. I'm lonely for people who know that mandu is infinitely better than momos, for people who know euchre is the best way to pass the time, for people who know Miami isn't just in Florida.

The kids at the camp are getting more comfortable with us, and that means they're acting the way they do with each other. It's beautiful that they know us and anticipate when we come to spend time with them, but with familiarity comes violence, apparently. I started to notice it earlier this week when I had a baby on my lap. A teenage girl was standing beside me, and she decided to show me how to play with the baby. She swung her arm back and slapped him across the cheek; when his face turned, she slapped his other cheek. I smacked her hand away and told her that wasn't nice, but I doubt she understood my English. She laughed and tried to show me how to play again, but I pulled the baby away from her. I didn't have much time to explain why, though; I had to rush across the path to stop a little boy from throwing rocks at his friends. The next time we went to the camp, my stomach fell out when I saw a little girl shaking a tiny, tiny baby to get him to stop crying. This world is so broken, and it hurts so much.

Time outside the camp hasn't been much better. Having been outside America the majority of 2011, I'm somewhat familiar with the stares that come with being Caucasian. As a group, we've had entire tour buses pull over to take pictures with us, and it's not uncommon to have people pretend to pose for pictures but really angle the camera to capture us. For some reason, this week I've lost my patience. We went to a temple next to a beautiful waterfall to pray, and I sat on a low stone wall a few yards away from the group. Two men approached me and asked for a picture, and before I realized what what happening, I had a line of men waiting to sit beside me. Each one inched closer than the last, and after very little time they were practically sitting on my lap, wrapping their arms around me. I frantically tried to catch the eye of our translator or someone on my team, and finally one of the girls saw what was happening and started pushing the men away from me. A handful of the ones who were still in line followed us away from the temple, but the men in our group stayed behind the girls so they couldn't get close to us. I noticed every glance that lingered a little too long on the way back to town, and I wished I could just melt straight into the road.

Please don't read these stories and make up your mind that this nation is terrible. My frustration with the culture doesn't in any way mean these people are less deserving of the love we came to show, of the medical care and English lessons and prayer we spend our days freely giving out. It just means I can't love as unconditionally as God can, and I'm learning to put myself aside so that others matter more. It's a tough road to walk, and I'm sometimes a terribly slow learner.

We have had some moments this week that I'll cling to forever. One of the girls in the camp chased me down to draw henna designs on my hands with a marker; when she turned her own hand over, I saw she had written my name in the center of her palm so she wouldn't forget it. We spent New Years Eve watching one of the most delightful movies I've ever seen, and when the calendar page finally turned, we gathered around a bonfire and danced for hours. Lemme tell ya, these people can dance. There are moments almost every day that freeze time for a second, and I recognize how incredibly lucky I am to be here in this place, with these people. Just like we have to do in every situation, I'm choosing to focus on the beauty instead of the frustrations, to focus on what can one day be instead of what is right now.