Renewal

To be honest, Korea isn't always my favorite place (read: I don't like it, but I can make it fun). A friend told me about this great blog, and there was one post that really resonated with me, if you want to read it. The past few weeks have contained a lot of built-up frustration and some really intense anger... and these are not feelings I do well. It's been unpleasant to be in my head, and I have been clinging *very* tightly to the prospect of vacation (which, by the way, begins in exactly 48.25 hours).

Enter this weekend: relief and renewal.

It's amazing what dancing with friends, beautiful dramatic clouds, and heart-to-hearts can do for your spirit. I feel so much better and so much more ready to tackle the next 48 hours/5.5 months than I did when I left work on Friday. :)

Gwangju's Mt. Mudeung covered by clouds. Awesome, awesome clouds.

It really is all about perspective. One of my coping mechanisms has been to break down the future by things that I'm really excited about. For example, this is my thought process right now:

1. JEJU-DO vacation!!!

2. A visit from Ariel in August!

3. End-of-summer day trips and my birthday!

4. Chuseok holiday vacation in September!

5. OCTOBER! FALL! HAPPINESS!

6. November: Harry Potter!!!! more fall!

7. CHRISTMAS/last month in Korea/getting ready for our big Asia trip!

See? Look how nicely that breaks things down! And when I look at that list I put aside the annoying frustrating crap from the Monday-Friday work scene and think about how much stuff I still have to fit into these next few months, and my entire perspective on my time in Korea becomes what I wanted it to be again: focused on growth and adventure. Assa!

A Breath of Fresh Air!

80% humidity on average? no thanks.

smoggy foggy cloudy skies? not so much.

a day in the cool, green shade of a bamboo forest? YES, PLEASE.

Here are some pictures of a looooovely excursion the girls and I went on last Saturday to Damyang's Bamboo Forest. Day trips are definitely a cure for the doldrums. Green life is definitely the cure for everything else. :)

look, only a little bit of Korean-ization!!!

isn't this wonderful?!

it is extremely rare to get a picture with no one in it in this country

dear trees, thanks for the shade. love, kelsey

me, Megan, Bess and Danielle :)

Best ending to this day of green?! A ride in a bike built for four :)

In other news, I will be leaving for vacation in exactly two weeks! Bess, Danielle, and I are heading to Jeju Island, and get this. We're staying in a HOTEL. Stay tuned. 

what does it MEAN?!

Can everyone please just go listen to that man? I mean, being moved by nature is one thing. But this....

this is just something ELSE.

Just Like Home?

There are ways to make living in Korea feel like home. I think foreigners here have mastered that art. Rather than talk a lot about the silly and wonderful ways we find to make a niche for ourselves here, I offer some comparison photos:

these are the fireworks I saw in 2009...

and these are the ones we set off on a roof in Korea on July 4, 2010 :)

This is my favorite brunch EVER on the day I discovered it in DC:

And this is my new favorite brunch in Korea (in GWANGJU!):

ya, that's stuffed french toast. no big deal.

this is how Conrad and I recreated the Count of Monte Cristo (Roman Carneval edition) for ourselves a few years ago, masks, capes and all:

and here is a new way Korea's offered for me to look at one of my favorite stories:

yes, that's a sign for The Count of Monte C-uh-risto: the Musical-uh. Asian style.

Oh, Korea. You never cease to amaze me. 

[Distance] Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

So, I spent a significant portion of my young life getting trucked around to soccer games, often times unwillingly. I also spent a significant amount of time watching it on TV because Dad or Ben (then eventually Mom, too) wanted to watch it. I was not always the most avid lover of the sport. Some people might use the word.... bitter? The whole family loved this sport that I wasn't good at and I just wanted to SWIM! Having a star brother doesn't always help the bitterness go away, either; especially at the tender era of early adolescence.

Well, turns out all those years of soccer games and all the sounds of EPL and Serie A games being watched in my house have become part of me. As I got a little older, I started to be able to handle being different from the rest of my family and start to appreciate the WONDER that is the sport! Which was great, because it is so fun to watch. And this way I can watch it and not constantly mourn the fact that I can't do any of those things! :) A spectator's life can be a good one.

I have a lot of fond memories of the World Cup. The 2002 one in Korea/Japan was going on as I was moving out of my childhood home in Massachusetts, and we spent some of the games getting up obscenely early and watching them in bed with mom and dad, and then when we had moved out we watched some of them on a big screen in the Gordon College student lounge (we lived there temporarily). That was the year the US got to the quarterfinals (wow!), and it was SO EXCITING. Ben even bought a documentary called "Our Way" about the US' team experience there haha.... which I've probably seen upwards of 10 times.

The 2006 one was a summer I was home between college, and I think I watched most of the games. The US didn't make it that far (aka they couldn't get out of group play), but by then I really enjoyed watching the other teams. And I'll never forget the depressed Ben that took off his Zidane tshirt after the infamous head butt in the final game.  Watch it. It's pretty memorable.

ANYWAY. All of this to say, watching this world cup here in Korea has been really fun in a lot of ways, but it makes me miss my family a lot, and it makes me wish I could be there to talk it all out with them. My dad has this way of being 100% calm about any and all events and maintaining a good analytic attitude, while Ben can't sit down the entire game, but has to run a soccer ball around the inside of the house several times during the game. Oh, and there's Mom yelling at all the players by their first names.... that's wonderful, too. :)

Watching the Korea/Greece game in downtown Gwangju

I will say this for watching the world cup here: it is SO FUN to be in a country where everyone loves the sport! It has provided endless class discussions about the world-uh cup-uh, loads of entertainment seeing all the glowing red devil horns and red shirts everywhere, and a fully alive atmosphere whenever we've watched the games. I love it! I even appreciate in a small way the fact that we've had to stay up till 6am several times to watch our team play.... and knowing that I'll be doing it again for the final game.

The Korea/Uruguay game was aired in a stadium in Busan

Also, I'm excited for the event to be held in a time zone close to my location next time... thank goodness this thing is only every 4 years!

Some Reworked Words of Enthusiasm and Support

The following is inspired by a national anthem battle I had with one of my students today while encouraging them to cheer for the US tonight, now that Korea has safely qualified for the round of 16. She was, however, unwilling to lay aside patriotic feelings that I assume were residual from her pride in their early morning win today vs. Nigeria. That's legit. Anyway!


Dear USA Squad,

O! Say can you see by the [dusk]'s early light,*
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's [first] gleaming,**
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the [goal posts] we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the [score board]'s red glare, the [shots] bursting [through the] air
Gave proof through the night, that our [hope] was still there!
O! Say does that star-spangled [soccer squad] yet win,
O'er the land of [South Africa] and the home of the [2010 World Cup]?

ANSWER: YES!!!!!!

Also, if Korea can do it, so can we. Thank you.

Much love and support from Korea,

Kelsey

PS-- Mr. Francis Scott Key, please forgive my abuse of your rhyming scheme and meter. It's for a good cause!

*tonight's game is at 11pm!
**it was an early game that we first watched

Blogging Fail

Wow, for a while there I thought I actually had a chance at consistency with this whole blogging thing. Fail.

So, it's been... a month? ish? since I wrote. It's been a good month overall! For basically the entire month of May I was being plagued by a nasty cough which in the end turned out to be bronchitis, but even that had some cool plus sides to it-- the main one being that I was able to have a SLEEPOVER at my boss' house. oh yes. This sleepover also involved sleeping in one of my students' rooms... now there's a weird dynamic in class. ("Teachah, you know the ______ you saw at my house? Teachah, you know the fish I have in my room?" etc. insert confused looks from other students)  It was a good experience over all, though. It let me see a more human side to the sometimes not-so-wonderful workplace personalities of Mr. Kim and his wife Mrs. Park.

Side note: I am very confused about the last name Park. The Korean reading of it has no R! Where did it come from?! Can someone please explain romanization of languages in different characters to me? :)

Since then, though Gwangju has been a fun place :) There's been a lot of fun nights dancing with the girls, movie-watching on the roof with Bess, soccer-watching with friends and coworkers, and making plans for the next few months!

A few weeks ago we took a day trip to a beach about an hour northwest of Gwangju on the Yellow Sea. As always, getting outside of the city involves hilarity when we try and navigate in a country where we are illiterate, but we managed to pull it off with help from some random foreigners and friendly workers at one of the bus stations we ended up at. :) Kim-bap, clear skies, shadow-dwelling Koreans, and responsible sun-screen application (minus the tops of my feet) made this a pretty good beach day. I'm still looking for some better water to reeeeeally swim in, but there's the whole summer ahead of me!

Oh! A few big milestones!

1) I have officially stayed out till the light is up.... TWICE! One was completely inadvertent-- we got sucked into the wondrous black hole of norae-bongs (karaoke rooms!), and the second time was 100% intentional. The USA vs. England game aired at 3:30am here... that was a doozy. Not the best game, but a really fun atmosphere with all the foreigners and all the excitement.

2) This is officially the longest I've ever been away from home/my family (as of June 18). Whoah! No crippling moments of homesickness yet, so I'm feeling pretty good about it. Although do NOT get me wrong... I miss my family a ton! But I like to think that their support and the past few years of living away from home are doing a good job of keeping me positive and in charge of the way I view the time away from them. :)

3) While I was sick, I went for TWO FULL WEEKS without coffee! I was cured of my headache-inducing addiction. :) However, I have returned to regular consumption, but hopefully this time it won't get a vice-like grip on me!

4) I have also decided: I'm going back to grad school! Now begins all the lovely processes of GRE-taking, applying, etc. But I'm 100% confident that it's what I'm supposed to be doing next, and I can't wait to get started. So far, I'm looking at American and NYU, both for a MA in International Education with a focus on International Education Exchange. Woohoo!

5) I got my first massage! IT WAS TERRIBLE. Asian massage therapists are brutal, invasive, and angry women. My back was demolished by their hands of death, and I was sore and bruised for about 5 days. Danielle, Megan and I went one afternoon, and it instantly became one of those hilarious and painful stories we'll tell for ages. Ridiculous. Never again!

At the risk of only being capable of writing in list form, I think I'll stop here. With two more list-form world cup-loving messages:

1. USA! USA! USA! USA!
2. Korea Fighting! Provided you don't have to fight the USA! In which case, see #1.