The weather is finally getting BETTER!!! This week it's been in the . . . . wait for it . . . . . wait for it . . . . . . . . FIFTIES!!!!! Hoooorrraaaaayyyy . . . ugh. Get warmer already. This is torture because I hear from Mom and Dad that they're wearing shorts and t-shirts all week and the temperatures are in the eighties. Nice everyone thanks for reminding me how much I'd like the weather to improve.
That being said it is improving, just not as quickly as I'd hoped. Throughout this long cold winter I've imagined this magical day smiling from beyond the horizon. A day the sun steps out from behind a cloud drops its lawn chair down and stays for a while. A day when these chilling Siberian winds finally exhaust themselves and slink back to Russia to be miserable and drink vodka flavored antifreeze. A day where I can step outside of my house in shorts and confidently slip on my rainbows for a stroll down to vegetation clad Yangjae stream. Every now and then I've caught a glimpse of it. There was a week in early March where we thought that day had dawned, it was in the sixties and the forecasts were promising for the coming week, but the next day it snowed. Then again later in March, high fifties with expectations of climbing temperatures got our hopes up, I wore shorts! But the next day it was thirty four, sleeting and in my shorts I furiously shivered, marvelous.
I've just about given up hope that I will every be truly warm again. I remember the Gambia, 85-95 every day no matter what, to wear anything but sandals was a ridiculous idea. I remember Ocean City, to hot to stand in the sand on the beach so we had to sprint from the dunes, drop our stuff in a large enough spot and race down to the water front to cool our toes, often times we wouldn't stop there. I remember Florida and the Keys, getting the sunburn of my life while relaxing under palm trees surrounded by sapphire water and good friends. Well wait, now I remember that there are places in the world that don't taste this bitter winter I've known for the last five months. Maybe I should go there.
Okay.
Natalie and I have begun planning a trip to Thailand. South East Asia seems like the perfect place to go to me. The process of shaking off the grip of these last few months is an ongoing one which will probably take until I'm sweating everyday at work, but until then I intend to dream about swimming in water that is the only cool thing besides my drink in sight.
I’m excited.
Traveling around the area is something I had thought to do while I was here but had forgotten when I realized how limited our vacation days are. Of course now we’ve breathed new life into that idea and we’ve just booked a flight to Thailand. We will stay for about three weeks. We have several destinations planned out which I think will culminate with a trip to Angkor Wat in neighboring Cambodia. Since I’ve known about this sprawling temple complex in the jungles of Siem Reap I’ve wanted to go and I’m so happy that I finally pulled the trigger on going. We have a few other places we’re going but that’s the big one. I’ll update you when the plans solidify but I’m definitely going and like I said I’M EXCITED.
Until then though I am stuck imagining myself somewhere warm as it seems the weather here will never breach sixty. This winter has been a tough one as I’ve mentioned before but it has been a good one. I’ve decided that it is much easier to get to know yourself if you take a truly objective look at yourself when you are at a low point. I’m not saying that I’ve been struggling my way through a deep and murky depression for the past several months but it has certainly not been the happiest of times. This has given me a lot of food for though about what I need in my life, and what I don’t need in my life. It has changed my perspective on quite a few things and I believe that I’ve come through it of clearer mind than when say, I dislocated my elbow in November.
I’ve known for a long time that perhaps the most important thing in my life are the people around me. Despite this I was still surprised to find how pivotal a role we’ve each played in our lives here. All of us have had a tough winter and I’ve had to help almost every person around me in some way or another, and they too have had to help me. It’s odd how much of a family we’ve grown into despite our numerous differences and the issues we have with one another. I guess this is the expat community that everyone talks so much about. I think that people strike out on these trips thinking “This is my time” or “I’m ready to take on the world” but in reality there isn’t much I about it. Everyone needs someone, something, and when you recognize that it’s always good. This is always our time no matter who you are or how you perceive yourself. You find the others like you and you all prop each other up.
The odd thing is when you find the people unlike you. Here I have a pretty insular family of about 12-15 teachers I’m close with. That isn’t much. I’m of the opinion that it isn’t enough. At home I have hundreds of people I call friends, thousands I recognize as acquaintances, and the possibility to meet thousands more. Here I am as much an island as I’ve ever been. The group is small and I’ve found myself in an archipelago of similar islands floating on an inland sea of the surrounding land mass. Our group is one small island in the sea, and yes we congregate with the other islands, they are all very similar to us. We can talk about the same things, the fast food we miss, the bands we’re listening too. The shore however is different, too different sometimes. Much of the time it seems as if there is no common ground, which carries the metaphor, but the metaphor is wrong. The sea can appear insurmountable, but as a foreigner you can easily swim to shore and meet our hosts, interact with them closely, and when you do the differences melt away. The sea is an illusion we place between us and the people who live in work in this city everyday, an illusion based in differences. In the last eight months I’ve been realizing how exaggerated these disparities actually are. Of course there are some pretty basic things in which we are most certainly dissimilar, but the more time I spend with my Korean coworkers and the soccer team the more I realize how alike Koreans and Waeguks actually are.
I still can’t understand any Korean and I’ve just about given up hope on ever picking out a word in a Korean sentence, but I know enough about people to follow the general direction of a conversation. My Korean friends talk about the same things we talk about. This is no great revelation I know but if they’re talking about the same things we talk about then they must be thinking along the same lines. My experience of the break room at school rests heavily on this. Parallel conversations occur in two different languages throughout the time I spend there. The same can be said of soccer matches we discuss the same things there that any soccer player would at a game in the states; the latest European soccer news, who’s the better player, Messi or Rooney, why my team is better than your team etc. etc. It’s interesting to recognize this and to be able to understand without understanding at all what’s going on in the conversation next to me between two 37 year old Korean men.
When they don’t talk about soccer they’re talking about their families, their jobs or the meal we’re having after the game, and while I don’t know what they’re saying I can usually piece together what they’re talking about. The break room is the same. It seems so simple now because we have a very similarly structured society economically and so the things governing the people’s lives here run pretty parallel to the things that govern our lives. I won’t go into specifics because I feel like I’ve gone on forever, but perhaps I’ll continue my ruminations in my next entry, see ya later.
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