Belated Blogiversary: Slurring Toward Epiphany

November has done away with itself quickly despite having had an abundance of long days, probably aided by an absence of any typical Thanksgiving to observe and a slew of post-op hours spent waiting for the pain to pass, eyes closed and mind wildly unfocused. Posting anything on the blogiversary proper was impossible as sensitivity to any light source, be it computer screen or morning sun filtered red through clenched eyelids, felt like what I imagine is the reason we warn children not to look directly at an eclipse. Adam lovingly played guide-dog through the weekend, alternately spoon-feeding me limited distractions and finding amusement in my inability to be still (I am a restless patient who is anything but).

I'm still relearning to see, still adjusting to a different blur with the eventual promise of clarity. Much like waiting for a drunken story to slur its way toward epiphany, I hold out for a resolution of keener sight in a sharper world. In a matter of frenzied weeks, our last travels from Seoul begin with New Year's in Cambodia. I'll be meeting the sunrise over Angkor Wat with eager eyes and ready heart, and such a sight is well worth this wait.

Shrapnel into the Ether

I've been writing a lot, albeit (obviously) not here. For the most part, nothing I've secreted away in a notebook - or, in paperless desperation, clumsily typed into a blank note on my phone - has wanted or needed an audience, even one as small as this. Nonetheless, I may as well shake off the dust here with a handful of bursts of thought and send a little unnecessary shrapnel into the ether:

The older I get, the dumber I feel. It seems contradictory to be hypersensitive of such a dulling, but there you have it.

Ginkgo trees are another contradition I'm struggling to reconcile. They are at once beautiful in their golden feathering and nauseating in their miasma. Every fall, they scatter their leaves in their ancient shape, tiny fans scalloping the pavement. They also drop their hell-fruit to be crushed underfoot, reeking of baked dog shit, or vomit rotting in the musty stacks of an old library. Sidewalks and shoe soles will only be safe come winter.

Adam took me to feed some spotted deer in a park. Their muzzles were soft and muddy and I felt the kind of joy I imagine must be typically reserved for Disney princesses when squirrels braid their hair and songbirds hang their laundry. Also, translated from Korean, their name is "flower deer" because Korean can't leave cute things well enough alone.

My anxiety is changing, and I've begun to recognize its old weight in the new guise. For years, it's felt like a bird sewn where my heart should be, with useless, beating wings and a burning for air. Lately, the bird has quieted; rather, it's been favoring the form of a wet stone, rolling just under the split of the ribs, scraping the sternum without the calm of a current. It's the slow turn of a river rock, worn smooth and cold by worry and want for sleep.

I feel myself quieting, too. I've never been one to command a room, but I'd always been able to hold my own in conversation. More and more often, my legitimate comment will go unnoticed to be posited verbatim by another for discussion minutes later, a joke slipped in only to be retold by another and laughed at the second time around. When I assert myself, I sound abrasive to my own ears; if I withdraw, I appear aloof. As a mumbler, I try to speak up, but I always doubt others' will to listen.

I fear being forgotten, and I have picked up the unfortunate habit of ostracizing myself even further when it happens.

I ran 100 miles in about 40 days. Now I don't want to stop.

If you want to pick a fight with me, try pigeonholing me as anything. If you want to make me happy, walk with me where there are trees. Or tell me I remind you of Amy Poehler.

Experience and age are not the bedfellows I believed as a child. Some people will have something to prove at any age, at any cost. I have met people who have covered enough empirical ground to understand that being a fully-realized person isn't a zero-sum competition those around them. Others navigate conversations like their own personal Hunger Games arenas, clutching their insecurities in one hand and wielding half-formed opinions like weapons with the other.

Months from now, I will be surrounded by elephants and I don't yet have a plan for what to do when my mind and body shut down from sheer excitement.

I would trade many things for some good bourbon, some good wine, real cheese, and my cat, but I wouldn't trade my years as an expat for anything.

Kind of a Big Deal

Things have been happening since April.

I flew back to the U.S. for a short visit, which was filled with family, friends, forced cat cuddles, rehearsed answers to inevitable questions, hectic running of errands, walking in good weather and good company, and a LOT of good food. I felt a little out of place and as if the time was spent in a vacuum of premature nostaligia, but it satisfied a need for the familiar and it satiated a craving for the trappings of "home" a little while longer.

I started wearing jean shorts again for the first time since my early teenage years, body image be damned. My legs, like the rest of me, aren't getting any younger, and if I can't bear to bare my skin now, then when? I'm trying to pay less mind to the matters of thighs and the blues and purples of veins whispering through thin skin.

I've had my first patbingsu of the summer, the cold, sweet clarion call of the season.

Most importantly, I've made a decision. It's kind of a big deal, and it affects quite a lot. After much research, deliberation, and support from Adam and my supervisor/mentor at work: I've been accepted to a teaching certification program, and next month, I begin the first course. It's a big commitment on top of my current teaching schedule over here, but it's also a big step toward a future I really want. Doing this requires a certain sacrifice and a little change of immediate plans, but if all the logistics work out according to plan, I'll be a certified teacher by 2016.

So things are happening, and I'm excited. Here goes nothing, and everything.

Try Not to Blink

Most posts like these hover closer to the turn of the calendar: heralding a New Year, pondering all it may portend while probing the experiences of the one so freshly left behind. Accomplishments are crowed and hopes are cooed, bearing the standards of our midwinter rebirths. The good is grasped tightly in writing so any bad beyond the horizon can't blot it out entirely when the world feels darker and colder. This post attempts these things, of course; however, it requires that I slide the scale a bit. My last and coming year are not framed by the beginnings of Januarys, but the ends. January 25 marks our anniversary of living in Seoul, where we've just signed on for another contract to end February, 2015. My year is therefore slightly shifted from the usual count, and my reflections are skewed accordingly.

'Expect the unexpected' is a trope of the traveler, and, as expected, the past year it has proven it true enough.

I've learned a new language - not enough to hold a conversation, but enough to form grammatically-correct sentences with a little struggle, and more than enough to survive. I learned to read and write a new alphabet in less than a week. I can navigate the subway and direct a taxi with the basics. I can peruse a menu and order the usuals, and while my vocabulary may not always suffice, I can at least amuse those patient enough with a decent accent.

I've tried to embrace the cultures that have welcomed me as a guest, even if there are times I've wanted to fold my arms and click my heels on the off-chance such a transplant doesn't require a tornado and a head wound.

I've visited three countries outside of Korea, four if you count a few steps beyond an invisible line into the negotiating territory of North Korea. Malaysia, Japan, and the Philippines have shown me glimpses of worlds to which I'd never previously given much thought beyond romanticized stories or fingers tracing a map. I've stared like a child at whale sharks and guarded my belongings from unscrupulous monkeys. I've sipped soju on rooftops and tasted corner store sake on my boyfriend's lips. I played darts with an audience of chirping geckos and learned how to shuffle cards like an adult. I've wandered through painted palaces built, burned, and rebuilt over thousands of lifetimes before mine, and I've spent several cumulative hours looking for a place to pee. I've collected prayer beads from cool-tiled mosques, shrines in caves, and temples on the edge of the sea. I've retraced countless steps and found my way before I even realized I was lost. I've confirmed an uncanny ability to know my way around by recognition of subtle landmarks, and I've thanked God for Adam's sense of direction in the face of my hopelessness (without a handy compass or the convenience of tree moss, I've accepted that I will never have those bearings - seriously, where the hell is North?).

My ability to endure spicy foods has grown to a point at which I am not filled with dread to try a bite of something new (and instead, every so often, I'm filled only with mild regret and temporary pain). I saw Basquiat's art and remembered to try to make some of my own, too. I nursed bruises and scrapes from a Spartan Race and hunted mosquitoes with vengeance. I explored with my parents when they came for a surreal visit. I climbed a mountain with terrifying, humbling views, afraid to reach the top, but more afraid not to. I was caught by the monsoon in the park when we lingered too long for the summer sun's liking. I cried under cherry blossoms and laughed in the glow of thousands of lanterns floating through crowded streets. I played in the mud, sang in sweaty bars, and fed neighborhood alley cats in the rain.

I've fallen in love with teaching and had my heart repeatedly broken by dozens of unfairly-adorable 6-year-olds. I encouraged sarcasm in a couple third graders, fanned infant flames of feminism in a few others, and asked "Why?" a million times.

I've forged new friendships while aching for the ones on the other side of the world. I've seized opportunities across oceans while missing milestones at home - weddings of dear friends, the birth of my nephew, my cat learning patience - and knowing there will be more. Technology helps to soothe the pangs of these particular casualties of my time here, but sometimes the sense of removal is strong and homesickness flairs when I can only celebrate these occasions via Skype. I also feel these things knowing that one day, I will feel the same for my life in Seoul. There is a certain peril with this brand of adventure: the heart-seam-ripping feeling of longing for home and longing for hazard abroad, as if one can be ignored or made dormant while the other is satisfied. This longing exists, dully, just under my ribs, with semi-frequent  bouts of acute immediacy. It has taught me that Home is not where, but with whom (which seems to make things infinitely more difficult), and it spurs a selfish desire to transplant everyone I love to wherever I happen to be.

I've been reminded over and over again of my luck, that I get to share all of this with someone I love in ways I never knew possible. He has taught me more about living - and about myself - than I'm sure he ever intended. I couldn't ask for a better partner (or a better travel buddy, to boot). I wouldn't be where I am without him, physically and otherwise, and I'm excited for our next year together, and the year after, and the years after that.

I've felt unsure more times than I thought tolerable. There were stretches when depression stole the throne, as it does from time to time. I've known discomfort as a constant shadow, and I've let fear drive discovery.

I've been happy.

Altogether, 2013 delivered more than I could have imagined; I'm sure this year has much more in store. I'll look forward to good things - expected and unexpected - and try not to blink.

Cicadas and slumberlust

A flash of sunlight through a wing, a glimpse of glint among the leaves. The heat-spurred chorus of the cicadas pushes past my headphones – music pours into my ears, but the insects flood the stream. The heavy blanket of summer malaise dampens our shoulders and our desires to do much of anything but muddle through until fall.

Here we are: sweat-drained bodies on sodden bed sheets, limp smiles under umbrellas-turned-timpani drums as the monsoon breaks overhead, foreheads never wanting for company with a constant spackling of damp hair. A months-long longing for sleep in the maddeningly inescapable humidity as we wring out a little oxygen from water we breathe.

Through this steamdank haze, an unassuming intensity leans in every so often, clearing its throat in the doorway and sending me flying. The feeling of stepping off a curb you didn’t know was there – that same reeling as if the world slipped out of reality for a moment and took you with it – and the ground, solid and unyielding, interrupts just as you realize you’re falling to meet it in the first place. These breaches through the mundane are basic truths that nonetheless jar me out of placid comfort:

I am very far away.

The people I love won't live forever; neither will I.

We all have a finite number of heartbeats.

The big things, like the little things, don't ultimately matter. Do they?

This season of cicadas and slumberlust offers a warning: In the cycle of song and death, some choose careful dormancy while others burn in passing brilliance. Both paths require sacrifice, and neither is without its unique resistance. Regardless of choice, time delivers us to the same end.

If I ever remember how to sleep - my hopes lay sooner in wine than in September - this strain of memento mori will make a terrible lullaby.

Here comes the feeling you thought you'd forgotten

*****

Ancient fingers on spage-age screens: someone's grandmother (great-grandmother, ancestor), her weathered face cragged and proud like the mountains of her country, hunches in her too-big coat lined with downy memories of colder days. Her feet scrape like gravel while her knot-jointed fingers skim with a surprising deftness along touchscreen technology. She is taking photographs of cherry blossoms - at once old and new, having bloomed and slept and bloomed for centuries, maybe as she has - on an impossibly sleek iPhone. It is not often you see generation gaps closed so easily when two eras rush to meet each other. After all, I am here, raising my eyes and arms in exactly the same way, my veins just beginning to consider the kind of transparency hers have earned.

*****

My mind is a rabbit's warren best barricaded by distraction. I have been moving unrelentingly, mentally and physically, since I have been here. My days are long and my nights mostly quiet - a few hours with Adam, studying Korean, watching mindless shows - before trying my best to sleep. Weekends are time for devouring culture, winding our way through the subway to new discoveries, while reserving the mornings for reaching across oceans of internet to loved ones littered around the world. Because of this routine of bustle and motion, I had pushed down the unruly, mutable part of myself into a place where truer emotions and more dangerous thoughts could be safely tucked into restless sleep. This internal stonewalling works fairly well. With the exception of a few particularly self-aware minutes eroded into exposure by the vulnerability that comes just before falling asleep or waking up, the threat of release is reliably tempered. But with the thawing of spring came an end to this hibernation of the heart.

A few weeks ago, I was running my usual route and, as they usually had over the last few days, my favorite stand of cherry trees slowed my steps and drew me in. I intended to stop for only a moment; I had already taken dozens of photos of these familiar trees. Instead, something lengthened my pause. I sat at the base of one of many stark black trunks in the twin rows, following the lines of branches tapering overhead, bold rivers of night trickling into the pale of early morning. Here, sitting to catch my breath, the world caught me instead. Here, beauty broke a dam.

In that moment, under the trees, I felt everything. Every emotion, every joy, every pain, all the exuberance and grief and nameless churning I'd buried for months spilled out like the petals at my feet. I'd needed for numbness and dumb, mute strength to function in the face of the monumental upheaval I'd invited into my life with moving across the world, and under the canopy of pink, the numbness and strength just fell away. I cried. I cried, bursting back into feeling as I sat on the ground, surrounded by elderly women wearing baffled half-smiles. I cried in my stupid-bright blue running shoes with my stupid-bright blue waeguk eyes blazing in red rims. I cried knowing I and everyone and everything will die, yet these trees will outlive us without care or remembrance. I cried for everything. For, finally, the relief of release.

Gratefully emptied into silence, I looked up and let myself take in the fleeting sight of the blossoms. With their contrast of strength and fragility, delicately demanding attention, these cherry trees deserve all the glory and awe they get. Their beauty is soft and gently riotous - if fireworks didn't roar, but whispered. They are branches of angular shadow and sprawling lace, wading in the shallows of the sky. As I write this, they are gone, ghosts overtaken by the green of impatient summer. But I'll remember them - living briefly and dying with grace - and remember to let myself wake up, to balance the dark with the light, and be okay with the illusory lines often crossed by both. 

The Foreign Becomes Familiar

Now that we're comfortably settling into our lives in Korea, there are quite a lot of things I've learned - at least, as much as you can learn in nearly 3 months. Korea is a beautiful country with exquisite palaces, breathtaking mountains, and endless opportunities in urban discovery; every weekend is filled with as much exploration as we can pack in. As with everything, there is a balance of good and not-so-good, and some lessons weigh heavier in my mind than others. Through it all - and it is all so much - sometimes it is enough to just keep my head above water and finally make time to write. To complement my often-fragmented thoughts of late, here is a fragmented list of 10 things I've learned, through teaching, traveling, or just living:

1. The Seoul subway is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite form of transportation. Depending on the time of day, it is either a smooth, quick, and efficient way from here to there or a harried, nauseating meat-packing facility on rails straight out of a claustrophobic's nightmare.

2. Skype is made of magic.

3. I will never be able to speak Korean nearly as well as my 6-year-old students can speak English. It is mind-blowing to think that my classroom of Kindergartners are speaking and writing complete sentences in a second language when Kindergartners in the U.S. are barely writing their own names in their native tongue. This speaks volumes about America's educational deficit on a global scale. However, American students have a childhood in which they can play outside after school and spend time just being a kid. Creativity is fostered there, but here, creativity is frowned upon as frivolous. Korean children are instead shuttled from school to school, from academy to activity, from the time they are old enough to hold a pencil, and play is a luxury. As far advanced as my kiddos may be academically, their adult-like schedules rarely allow unadulterated time for childhood. Both systems sacrifice something, but in my eyes, I'd rather my child have the ability to balance academics with getting to be a child.

4. To force myself past the Ick. While the majority of my Kindergartners are heart-wrenchingly adorable and achingly sweet, it doesn't make up for the fact that their bodily fluids occur at times and in places you wouldn't expect, and this is made worse by the kids' inability to keep their hands (and mouths) to themselves. I even concocted "Touchy" the Alligator, a visually-reminding friend I drew on the board with a big toothy grin. Each time I saw/received inappropriate touching, I erased one of Touchy's teeth. This character has evolved into a tiger who loses his stripes, mostly because I got tired of drawing an alligator and I prefer the alliterative aspect. Now, if the touch is accidental (like a kiddo wanting a hug and his or her hand inadvertently lands on a boob), I'm not going to promote body shame; I simply move the hand away without a reaction. However, when a kid grabs my hand and puts it in his mouth, or a girl comes up behind me to squeeze my ass, giggling, or a particularly snotty child wipes her nose before grabbing my hair for a yank, I calmly explain why we don't touch that way while gagging or screaming "Why?!" inside. This system has lessened the amount of snot and saliva I encounter on a daily basis, but that still hasn't stopped the putrid parade in its tracks. I'm still figuring out the best self-therapy to deal with the most recent incident in which I thought one of my Kindergarten boys was approaching me to sit on my lap, only to start rubbing his junk on my knee. I am coming to terms with the fact that I may never recover and will just physically recoil whenever the memory resurfaces.

5. When you eat nearly all of your meals with chopsticks, a fork can feel surprisingly heavy and unwieldy. How quickly the foreign becomes familiar.

6. Not to compare myself to the typical Korean woman. While I am by no means overweight, I do not have legs like a deer stretched on the rack, nor a waist appearing to be sucked in by forces akin to a black hole, nor wrists delicate enough to snap under the pressure of a firm handshake. As much as the American social conscious is preoccupied with image and struggles to deal with the omnipresent, media-fueled pressure to attain an idealized, packaged beauty, Korea seems to transcend such consciousness into virtual obsession. It's inescapable: I can't go one subway stop without seeing an advertisement for plastic surgery in which the (perfectly lovely) Before is transformed into an altogether unrecognizable After with features verging on the cartoonish - any "flaws" have been molded into an acceptably narrow jawline, exaggeratedly rounded eye shape, or tucked-away ear placement deemed pretty by social standards. All personality and traces of real life are erased and and replaced by blank, uniform "beauty." Worse, it starts  young - I have been told by more than one 6-year-old that she is not pretty because her eyes are small and that she doesn't like sweets because they will make her fat. Six years old. My heart breaks when a child can't enjoy a piece of candy because it has been laced with fear and shame. It devastates me even further when they tell me I am beautiful or have pretty hair, because in race toward "pretty," they see Western traits as something to achieve rather than celebrating themselves as they are. Why are these 6-year-olds even aware of this pressure to be thin and have uniform faces to be... successful? Attractive? Worth love? In a related vein, the fact that I even have an ass at all is probably going to be a problem when it comes time to shop for pants.

7. I am not and probably never will be okay with the smell of silkworm chrysalis sizzling away on a street vendor's griddle. I love so much about experiencing new cultures and the accompanying foods, and I never want to be that person who gags at another culture's common snack, but the clouds of steam billowing from cooking worm pupa just reek of death and dishwater. I'm really sorry, guys. Gross.

8. Cherry blossoms. I get it now. The yearly frenzy over the trees is totally justified, and I will do my best to explain in a post next week.

9. If I start thinking about space, I can and will spiral into an existential depression. (Okay, this one isn't entirely new, but I relearned it.) The parameters of the human brain can only handle so much, and my mind especially cannot emotionally handle such functions like entertaining ideas about the universe, real or theoretical, because: What lies beyond the edge of the universe? There has to be something, right? How can nothingness exist? Oh my god, what is really going on inside that nebula the size of 15 Earths stacked on top of each other and black holes are what?! I can barely handle philosophies about existence on THIS planet, much less a whole universe, because I will never stop thinking about them and will eventually lose my mind when answers run out. Case in point: Adam recently showed me the Planck mission's map of the universe, charting the lights and limits of space, and I nearly imploded.

10. A job can be both stressful and satisfying. My days are long, requiring diligence and mindful dedication. You cannot mindlessly pass your workday when you are helming consecutive classroom hours of Kindergartners, second-graders, and third-graders until 7:30pm three days of the week, then grading and developing lesson plans until 5pm after morning Kindergarten on my 2 "short" days. You must be vigilantly adaptable, always engaged, and constantly thinking ahead.

BUT.

I see the difference I and my fellow teachers make every day. I work with people who genuinely care about what they do and about each other. My students actually WANT to learn, and (for the most part) like to listen to what I have to teach them - even when my sarcasm takes over. I was tapped to provide sketches for a new grammar textbook developing in Adam's research and development department, and when it is printed, I will have a credit as a published illustrator. For all my teaching, I am always learning. I have access to free Korean food for lunch and dinner if I want it. My demanding schedule and extraneous duties are compensated for with a rent-free apartment and a generous paycheck, and I'm watching my savings steadily swell. And when I am crying with co-workers over devastating news from home displaying the worst depths of humanity and have no idea how I am going to smile for my Kindergartners, I can walk into a classroom that evil has left untouched and all it takes is a hug from one of my kiddos as I sing them their favorite Muppets song to remind me of the overwhelming goodness that exists to mend shattered hearts.

Seoul Searching

Less than 3 weeks in, and here we are. Very much alive and mostly well, safe and relatively sound. We're finally in Korea and it's not feeling quite real just yet. Trying to write has been incredibly difficult when organizing my thoughts is akin to collating glitter in a sandstorm, and posting something intelligible here even more so (unstable, hijacked internet connection notwithstanding). Bear with me.

After a nondescript 13-hour flight, we arrived at sunset on a day that seems - in the receding fog of sleep deprivation, adrenaline, and feeling jarringly alien - to have been years ago. We promptly began a brutal adjustment period in which our jet-lagged bodies fought for appetites and struggled to break the exhaustion-driven pattern of 4-hour naps and restless nights. Sleeping still has its kinks, but then again, I've never really managed to work them out in any time zone. We were immediately embraced by our of small community of coworkers before even setting foot in the school, and over the boisterous rounds of cheap beer and soju, I don't know the last time I've felt so instantly welcome and seamlessly knitted into the fold.

Not everything has been seamless, of course. Several of my own stitches have been rough and exposed when attempting what, at home, would be the most mundane of tasks. Perfect example: navigating the grocery store alone brought me to tears once I escaped the crush and noise of it all (for someone who is prone to panic attacks in Costco, this wasn't entirely surprising; rather, it was expected and still a nightmare). In my smaller, older neighborhood, where our blue eyes and American laughs attract overt stares, the markets are filled with aggressive ajummas pushing their way through the masses on a mission. (A stone's throw from our apartment, I wandered the open-air Dunchon market, littered with bins of gleaming tentacles and roasted chestnuts. I had let myself get lost in the sounds of sizzling vegetable pancakes and clamoring vendors when I was physically moved by a surprisingly strong old woman, no taller than my elbow, on her way to her desired buckets of  squid and dried corn. Had I not gotten a glimpse of her white perm brushing past as I fought for my balance, I would have thought the stalls were haunted.)

Taking the subway into the heart of the city to undergo our visa-required physicals was an unusual, intimate-yet-estranging ordeal. Much like I would imagine a very friendly Area 51 laboratory tour, our visit entailed an hour of being led through several floors of medical offices in a robe and slippers, passed with oddly-personable efficiency from nurse to doctor to nurse to doctor, from white room to sterile white room, one rapid-fire test and blood draw to another. If you ever want to feel like you've been sent to the future where you don't speak the language and even the Star Trekkian door-opening technology surpasses your logic, get an alien registration physical in Seoul.

Some of the smallest victories are our biggest accomplishments: purchasing the correct garbage bags (Seoul has a very strict waste disposal system), figuring out how the shower works (forget a bathtub - the shower head is connected to the faucet, so you just shower in the middle of the floor between the toilet and the sink), demystifying the produce section of the market, making tea on our tiny gas range, fumbling through Korean directions for the rice cooker, buying paper and pencils to be able to make art again.

On a grander, more impressive scale, we learned to read in about a week and are well on our way to learning what some words we pronounce actually mean, too. Our vocabulary is blooming through study and stumbling immersion. We've nailed the subway, stand a fighting chance in a taxi, and can order take-out. I'm getting used to a lack of personal space and I've accepted that I'm not in control, and won't even feel such an illusion for a long time.

I've fallen in love with the Olympic Park, a 10-minute walk from our apartment and across the street from our school. The first warm day we had (at a downright balmy 36F), I walked the park for over 3 hours, following winding paths through the trees, discovering gardens, excavated tombs, and sculptures, and chasing the many bunnies, pheasants, cranes, and feral cats stalking the grounds. The photos will warrant their own post here. Even frozen and winter-browned, the park is just beautiful, but I can't wait until new leaves feather the naked trees and the icy streams thaw to a familiar music. I plan on ending many summer days there.

Beyond the Park, exploration of Seoul is endless, but we officially began playing tourist at Gyeongbok Palace a short subway ride away. The main palace of the Joseon Dynasty is breathtaking, a quiet bastion of history surrounded by skyscrapers, hushed in snow even amid the nearby thunder of drums and dance celebrating the Lunar New Year. Gyeongbokgung also merits its own future post.

Not all discoveries have been pleasant, if felt more acutely. As my contract doesn't start for another 2 weeks yet, I am alone in the apartment while Adam is at work, and it is hard to ignore the isolation and the fact that I am without my furry shadow. I miss Eliot terribly, especially when I encounter one of our neighborhood's many stray cats, dirty and aloof, I don't dare approach. I miss my friends and family. I miss Seattle fiercely - my old apartment, my Capitol Hill, my old sense of home. I'm slowly making this apartment our own, but it's not easy given our lack of decorating resources beyond my own drawings and the unwieldy furniture provided, plus inherited artifacts of the previous tenants. Optimism will go a long way in this.

The coffee is awful, as the instant variety is virtually the only kind available in stores, but there are plenty of coffee shops brewing from real grounds in the area that can sell us beans once we manage to get our hands on a French press. I miss cheese and peanut butter and my favorite fruits - I dream of Trader Joe's and Seattle's farmers' markets - but my muffin top is slowly deflating into a pancake flop as we de-Westernize our diets, so I'm not complaining much. I am usually cold and stranded beyond meager communication on stolen wireless, yet even more stranded when I force myself outside and find myself alone in the crowd. My saving grace is the little things, like reading for hours in the weak sunlight, the feeling of my bare feet on the heated floor, and the excitement of learning a new word or three. I even found strawberries at a new favorite grocer: an un-looked-for reminder of bright things and the sweetness of summer. This kind of humble promise - and Adam's patient love - keeps my head.

I still can't believe I'm here, and that I've only been here a few weeks. Time passes so quickly, so slowly, I'm a blur. I am mindful of the Lunar New Year of the Snake ushering in our time here: we are shedding our skins, our senses on fire, blinking our eyes open in a different light of the same sun. I'm excited, I'm scared, I'm eager, and I'm uncomfortable - as I should be - and it's okay; it's messy, it's hard, and I love it. My arms are flung open: our adventure has begun.

The Shock of New Air on Naked Growth

Tomorrow, Adam and I leave for a year on the other side of the world.

Embracing the unknown (or at least letting it embrace me when the scary begins to overtake the exciting) is a rare and powerful means of experience, and I need to remember that now more than ever. Frightening, yes; after all, feeling the tremors of terror over the thrill isn't weak, but human. Who is the person who feels no doubt, no great discomfort when uprooting themselves to a new patch of land? Whether my feelers are thick-strong and long-sleeping in California or sprouting in Seattle, earnest and easy, I know there will always be the shock of new air on naked growth.

(Enough with the plant metaphors; I am no tree.)

Like others before me, I will shake and reel and learn and live and throw myself into the world, where I will breathe color and light into the stories that will one day be all my own. Adam and I will find our footing and lengthen the strides of our baby steps one day at a time. We will struggle with a new language and discover a new life, but love won't be lost in translation. And in a matter of hours, it begins.

The next post you see will have been written in a new hemisphere and in travel-numbed awe.

Half a World Away (Happy Blogiversary)

Happy First Blogiversary, friends.

It's been quite a year. I haven't posted as often as I would have liked, nor have I made much progress toward establishing what exactly this blog is, but having a space to write and share of myself has been refreshing, especially after so many years without. Even if I can't be sure who is reading or if there's even an audience who cares outside of my parents, it still gives me room to breathe, whether I'm at my most eloquent or my least coherent. A Blog of One's Own might not be quite what Virginia Woolf had in mind, but it does the trick.

Since I started writing here a year ago, a lot has changed -- in fact, had someone told me last November where I would be today, I would have assumed that this someone was crazy, or at the very least, that one of us had been drinking. Last week, I hinted at some big news, promising that today I would "post something Blogiversary-worthy and wear some fancy shoes." Well, I've slipped on my shiny, 4-inch heels, so here's my news.

Adam and I are moving to Korea.

In January, we will be making the 12-hour flight half a world away to begin a year in Seoul working for an English school for children. I will be teaching immersion classes ranging from preschool- and Kindergarten-aged children to fifth grade students, all based on the American elementary school model. While I'm in the classroom, Adam will be working primarily in research and development for the school's textbooks and curricula. My contract doesn't begin until a few weeks after Adam's in February, but the school has been amazing enough to work it so Adam and I can fly out together; I'll just have a couple extra weeks to get acclimated, playing homemaker and taking exploratory runs around the neighborhood in the cold, eyes wide and mind blown open.

Our certifications in TESOL, our quiet head start on paperwork -- before we even had interviews -- back in September, our lifelong loves of language and travel and adventure - everything has been leading up to this. To anyone feeling like we've been exceedingly quiet and unduly keeping secrets, please don't feel unimportant -- we simply didn't want to risk very public disappointment had plans fallen through (and Adam only just put in his notice at work today). The littlest hiccup could have blown this ship off its precise, delicate course; honestly, it still could. Between getting fingerprinted, applying for and awaiting results on FBI background checks (good news: we got them back Monday and neither of us has a record of arrest! Surprise!), collecting official transcripts and letters of recommendation, getting diplomas notarized and mailing documents across the country and back for various government apostilles... we're still diligently peeling back layers of red tape. If everything goes smoothly enough, we should receive our visas from the Korean consulate come Christmas. We won't know the exact date we leave until we've secured our visas; until then, we're learning a little Korean and busying ourselves with the gradual task of packing up the few belongings we'll keep from our beloved apartment then getting rid of the rest.

(One thing's for sure: preparing to move to the other side of the world challenges my notions of materialism and puts the details of daily life into perspective. As I get older, I'm growing more sentimental about collecting memories and becoming less attached to Things. Some Things have significant sentimental value - books I just can't part with or souvenirs of time and life that I love and know I won't really be able to find again - and those are the Things I will keep. Everything else can be replaced when I'm ready to settle into a sense of home that feels a little more permanent.)

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

All in all, I am excited. Scared, anxious, overwhelmed, and excited. I am absolutely heartbroken to be leaving Eliot behind for now, but Adam's brother and sister-in-law are generously welcoming him into their family while we're gone, and I know he'll be happy and well-loved -- that is, if he survives my sobbing, snot-covered cuddle-squeezes when I hug him goodbye. I will miss my furry baby terribly, just as I will dearly miss my family and friends. I will miss Seattle something fierce and everything about it that makes it home, but I am hopeful that after a while, we'll start to feel a little at home in Seoul, too. And I know we'll be returning to Seattle someday, and to our loved ones, furry or otherwise.

Ready or not, life is only going to get crazier from here on out. The holidays are upon us and our departure date will be here before I know it, but in the spirit of Thanksgiving (tomorrow already? How did that happen?) and my first Blogiversary: thank you, everyone. Thank you for reading, thank you for holding me accountable, for holding my hand, for letting me word-vomit all over your interwebs every so often -- thank you, thank you, thank you. I'll keep posting here as this adventure unfolds, and next year, I'll be blogging Gangnam Style.

So Happy Thanksgiving, friends, and Happy Blogiversary. Here's to throwing off the bowlines, sailing away from the safe harbor, and hoping you'll come along to help me anchor this unmoored life.