Angst in Warsaw

I left the porch door open while it rained; a game of dare with the weather. I won't enter your space if you stay out of mine. The result? A thin strip of bleachy-dry, red-porch stone at the threshold of then and now.

The last week and a half are marked by my steadfast takeover of the dining room table. The pounds and pounds of textbooks that I lugged from Ann Arbor to Warsaw have just about grown roots into the varnished woodwork. Pages and pages, ballpoint pens and bloodshot eyes, fevers and headaches, cramps and acute lethargy. And, according to the bathroom scale, two whole kilos.

Fabulous.

I am scratching my way through three online courses that are prerequisites for the Elementary Education Masters with Certification program I was conditionally accepted to several months ago. And I have forgotten about Poland entirely.

The rain smells like pine needles on wet dirt. It smells like the bike ride my parents coaxed me into yesterday. We looped through the forest down at the end of our road, following my dad as he veered down paths I would have missed entirely had I been on my own. Fresh hoofprints kindled forgotten memories of the elaborate childhood fantasy I concocted in which our family bike collection was a stable-full of horses with names and personalities derived from their company logos. Roads have been paved, construction finished. At this point the mansions outnumber the shacks. Unfamiliar dogs barked at us as we cycled past - I used to pride myself on being able to match the dog to the lot.

On this visit I can't afford to appreciate Warsaw like she deserves. And that, very plainly, sucks.

I walked into the condo and it smelled like America.

Do you know what I mean when I say "it smelled like America"? I'm not sure I can explain it properly. It's this unique smell that's fresh and cozy and infused with good memories from my childhood when I utterly idolized this country and treasured those first moments off the plane. It's the smell of clean, carpeted American homes, with closely cut grass and pantries full of Lucky Charms and bread that's impossibly soft. It's the smell of bright Saturday morning cartoons, fantastical meanderings through the Borders young adult section, and breathing in the bounty of Meijer.

That's the smell of America. Coming back to the country after 7 months it is heaven. I started the unpacking process the first night (then it stalled for about 3 days), and was appalled to find that my clothes all had an odd, basementy smell. I attributed it to my suitcases having been carelessly stored while I was in Japan until I found the clothes I had worn the day before. They hadn't been in storage at all and they still had that odd, sour scent to them. Complaining aloud, I tossed a shirt to Evan to see if he could identify the smell.

"That's the smell of Korea," he said.

"What?"

"That's how both of your apartments there smelled."

Korea had a smell? Korea smelled like this? Astonishing how repulsive I found it once I was out of Korea. I decided to forgo the massive laundry load, and the next day the smell had already begun to fade. My clothing has already adapted to American life.

I, on the other hand, have not.

I met Zina for coffee today in Kerrytown. It's the first time we've seen each other since high school and it was really great to see her. After we parted ways I walked over to State street to make a hair appointment. Walking though the streets of my old town was surprisingly nerve-wracking. I can't remember the last time I felt so conspicuous. An odd statement, coming from the curly-haired white girl who just spent the better part of a year in Korea. But in Korea, I was a foreigner - and obviously so. Foreigners can get away with a lot. We're not held responsible for conforming to society because we so clearly don't belong.

Suddenly I'm back in a society I don't stand out in. When people looked at me in Korea, I knew it was because I looked different. I stopped noticing the stares, and when I did catch one, all I felt was a little kick of pride. When people looked at me in the streets today I had no idea why they were doing it. Was I doing something wrong? Were my clothes out of style? Did they know something I didn't?

It's a bizarre form of culture shock that sent me scuttling back up north to hide behind condo doors. Baby steps. Baby steps back into this city that once belonged to me wholly.

Japan At Last!

I spent my 20th birthday in Paris with Evan. We went out for a fancy dinner and then took an impossibly romantic stroll under a fully-it Eiffel Tower and talked about our future for the first time. And he asked me to go to Japan with him. And I said yes.

That was when I started researching English teaching positions. Then Evan decided he'd rather stay in Michigan and I went to Asia without him and the whole things is a comical mess that I'd be glad to rant to you about in person. Just ask.

Anyway, here we are, finally in Japan together. Awesomeness.

Yesterday we landed in Tokyo, found our hotel, dropped off our luggage and headed out. WE ate greasy ramen at a local place and then made a beeline for Akihabara because I could not imagine starting our Japanese tour anywhere else. A whole area full of geeks, porn, bright lights and electronics, anime, manga, arcades...it was brilliant. Only in Japan. I even played a dollar's worth of Tekken 6 - as a pink-haired cyborg fairy whose special move was to pull off her head, hand it to her opponent, step back and giggle as the old head exploded like a grenade and a new one grew in. Girls dressed in elaborate French maid outfits handed out pamphlets for their cafes where you can go in and be called "Master." Back alley stores sold "orient dolls," eerily lifelike creations, most of whom were designed to look like little girls, all with odd, innocently-confused looks on their too-real, dead-eyed faces. And it was about 98% men shopping for figurines, comic books, anime-style costumes, S&M gear or blowing coins at the arcade on dating simulations, beat 'em ups, and gambling machines. Only. In. Japan.

Beyond that we didn't do much else of note in Tokyo. We're saving two days at the end of our trip for the real Tokyo tour. We took a bullet train to Kanazawa (well, part of the way), where Maggie met us at (where else?) a Starbucks. Which was offering Sakura-flavored everything! We're missing Cherry Blossom season by a few weeks, which is tragic. I'll have to console myself with a bright pink Sakura latter and a slice of fairy-like Sakura cake.

In the meantime, I'm delighted to be with Maggie again! And to see for myself all the wonders descibe in her blog, like the famous Peter Rabbit toaster and the blessed kerosene heater. Tomorrow we will laugh the rain in its face and explore the hell out of Kanazawa. Now I'm going to huddle beneath my electric blanket because damn Japanese buildings have no insulation and no heating. Good night!

Incheon Airport is Full of Free Wi-Fi and I Love It

Anyone who has ever travelled with me will be aware of the fact that I am extremely stress-prone when it comes to getting to and from places I've never been before. You'd think a lifetime of travel would have cured me of this early on. I blame Rewald-timing. How we're generally late for everything (or nick-of-time), and how that's stressed me out all my life. So here I sit in Incheon airport, 3 hours early for my flight to Tokyo. But that's not the point. The point is that I will be getting off the plane in Japan in a few hours with no idea how to navigate the city, no guidebook, no phone. How adventurous am I?

We finally booked a room for tonight in Tokyo...late, late last night. Luckily its not a busy time of year. How perfectly spur-of-the-moment, don't you think?

If anything, Korea has taught me a little bit about taking risks and embracing my foreignness. Going to a hole in the wall noodle shop instead of clinging to my credit card in the heavily-touristed zones. Getting a little lost and not clenching the entire time. Waiting to see how it all turns out before freaking too far out.

I guess you can all ask Evan how I did when this is all over. I'm sure his response will be "Adri? Cool as a cucmber the entire time." Yep.

JAPAN.

Musings from the Staff Room

Here I sit, alone in the staff room, having been required to come to school even though my Cherries have graduated and flitted away. The graduation ceremony went rather well, I think, despite desperate attempts by my boss to make everything more ritualistic than 6-year-olds needed it to be notwithstanding.

Two days before the ceremony I was informed via casual passing statement that "by the way, tomorrow is your last day of class." And here I was thinking I had all week with my kids, to tie knots in loose ends and soak up all the hugs I wanted. Nope.
So on Tuesday I told the kids to start packing up their things at the usual time. Somehow Evan had the good sense to be FILMING this whole scene. And we played one last round of the "Spider Game" (a variation of hangman that does away with death imagery), where I spelled out Goodbye Cherry Class. And when the class cheered because they guessed it right almost immediately, I completely lost it and started sobbing. And what do my kids do?

Jason: "Look! Miss Adriana's face is red!"

Yes, Jason, my face is red because I'm crying. Luckily my girls were a little more sympathetic. I had a rather difficult time trying to pry Stephanie off me. I hadn't planned on crying. Samantha, the girl whose contract ended a week after mine started, warned me it would happen. Unexpectedly. She also had issues with the administration - but leaving the kids will break your heart, she said.

I'm excited to be leaving. I'm excited to back to Ann Arbor and plan out my future, test the waters, take more risks. At the risk of making myself cringe when I reread this later: being back with Evan is all I really wanted. It just took a move to Korea to make me realize it.

Thanks Korea. I have a better idea of what I want. I'm a little better at handling the scary, unknown things in life. And I've collected all this great friend-making practice (making friends is hard!!). Time to move on

The End of An Era

It really is, isn't it?

In about 7 hours Evan's plane lands and everythign will change. I'm sitting in the staff room with a few knicked moments, and felt the need to publicly nostaligize over everyone. It's what Heather, Beka and I did last night at Woodstock, remember the early days when we would be the only ones there, trying to guess whether the barman was single and whether he looked his age or not.

Those depressed months barely register now. My life has done a 180 and I barely noticed. I can't belive I only have 2 weeks left. I couldn't be happier, but I'm left with that well-worn feeling that this ending, like all the endings that have come before it, should be more momentous. Like I need a ceremony to mark its passing, like I should take more care to write detailed and angst-filled journal entries marking all my "lasts." Like I need to apprecaite every little thing that happens and thus slow down time.

But I really can't be bothered.

So today I'm going to hug my kids and yell at the just like any other day, eat my yummy school lunch, collapse on the couch between classes, go get my coffee at the same time I always do...and then go pick up Evan after work.

Just like that.

So, Then What Happened?

Happy New Year, everyone! Lunar new year, that is. Year of the Tiger.

Rawr?

This weekend was bubbling in awesomness, starting with Maggie's arrival late Thursday night and ending...well, not ending yet.

Let's see, what did we do? She came to school with me on Friday, and provided excellent moral support when I got an email telling me that even if I get accepted into my Education grad school program, I'm missing three prerequisite classes... :( Then we went out for a raucous Itaewon night, starting with drag queen bingo (that's bingo, called by the oozing-fabulousness Nevada with her pink feather boa and her memory-foam boobs).

We wandered through a part of Seoul known for its still-functional ancient houses, and looked at jewelry in Insadong on Saturday. Then we met with Nam Hee, Ah Young and Tack Youn for a yummy

dinner of budae jigae (after I pestered all of them over numerous text messages for kimchi jigae this was the compromise we reached). We laughed, reminisced, sighed, gossiped, all over ramen stew and later, tea and coffee, staying out later than any of us had planned.

Sunday morning saw a scrumptious brunch at the Flying Pan in Itaewon. The reviews of this place did not lie. It was one of the best non-Korean meals I've had in Seoul. Maybe one of the best meals, period. Maggie and I, with our innate ability to sniff out any Starbucks in the vicinity, holed up in one to wait for Min Jung to come visit, and thus the cycle of ASW reunions in Seoul ended. Well, for the people we cared about, anyway.

Tack on two days of shopping - the kind of shopping that leaves you warm and satisfied, and excited to go to work the next day if only to show off your finds - and you have a perfect 3-day weekend. Top it all off with one final girl's night at Woodstock: mugs of Cass, a winning streak in Rummy, requesting all the silly, singalong music we love so much and giggling the night away...

I think I'm ready for Evan to come now.

Snow Boogers

Yesterday it was so deliciously warm I walked home from the subway instead of taking the bus and grinned most of the way. You would be grinning too if after months of shivering you were strolling down the neon studded main road in Janandong with your coat unbuttoned and orchestrated video game music shuffling through your ipod. No, trust me, the music is an integral part of it all. Just try it some day.

Anyway, Seoul is a bitch, so the next day it decided to snow. And since the ground is still warm I walked to work today through something that looks like what I imagine would be coming out of the Snow Queen's nose when she has a cold. Stewy, lumpy, grey and goopy mush as far as the eye can see. My jeans are soaked through the ankle, I was late to work for the first time ever, and I arrived in a rotten mood, cursing out Seoul as if this was her fault and not some slanted effect of global warming.

BUT. Today Maggie arrives! Maybe the weather is her fault. I'm supposed to meet her at good old Caffe (sic) Bene, where I hope to dear god that I will manage to finish something of my law school application. Oh the adventures we shall have over these 2 and a half days. I can see Seoul just stumbbornly sticking with the awful weather. Out of spite. This is what happen when people try to leave me! - she says. Or maybe in our love/hate relationship I've just hated her too often. She a sensitive soul, no pun intended.

Question for all of you adults out there. Is this really it? The rest of my life will just be a patchwork of exhaustion, coffee, grumbling, coffee, weight gain and more coffee? Drinking to forget your day job, cursing the sunrise, watching your motivation to do anything productive with your free time flitter through the pore of the TV screen? This sucks. I want to go back to college.

Maybe Maggie will be able to slap some optimism into me. It's hard to reach on a day like today. Even when adorable 6 year old girls shyly present you with a Valentine's gift of a box of chocolates adorned with a homemade card. Ok - that did manage to make me smile.

Sunday Night At the Beginning of the End

Why can't I stop eating? Inhaling food at an alarming rate I can see my fabulous Seoul skinnyness melt away piece by piece. This is the price that must be paid for being able to fit into my bras again. This is a sign I'm not depressed anymore. Let me rephrase that. It's a sign I'm no longer in that thick, endless abyss that made me such an arrogant sufferer - you know, the only one on earth in that kind of pain etc etc. Depression...comes in many shapes and sizes?

Yesterday I got a glimpse of what life with my kids would be like if were weren't caged in by windowless plaster and peeling, foamy, wood-patterned flooring and roles of wallpaper to make it look like they cared about the sky and those pastel. plastic. tables. They were fun and excited and affectionate. They could run when they wanted, they could be outside. Children need to be outside. The British School had a rule that everyone had to go outside during recess unless they had a doctor's note or it was raining. We hated it, and concocted various way to evade the teachers on duty and hide inside. But it made all the difference, when I see these poor kids, stir crazy and confused...you know, technically there are windows in all of the classrooms at the school. They're all papered over, our white boards stacked, hung or nailed over them.

Apparently, in Korea, windows are a distraction to young children.

Anyway, out and about, my children were transformed. I had been afraid this graduation field trip would be ten hours of squirming under the scrutiny of parents (who were all invited to tag along). But I barely interacted with them. None of them speak any English, and aside from some smiles and a few snatched photo ops, Beka and I were left to our own devices. We went to a noodle museum where we helped make and then eat a delicious cold noodle dish. Then a stroll around a picturesque dam with a sidewalk dotted by street food shacks where the father of one of my boys insisted on buying us a bag of deep fried minnows (scooped out from their fishtank and dropped into boiling oil right there in front of us) and an entire bottle of makkali - rice liquor.

At lunch we had dak galbi - a dish Chuncheon is famous for. We took off our shoes and nested into the floor around several circular tables, the dish already mostly cooked and steaming. The men all sat at the middle table with our boss, the women sat with the children, and Beka and I sat with the boss's wife, his son and Hee Kyung, our school's awesome odd-jobs helping hand. This all happened extremely fluidly. The men whipped out the alcohol faster than I could fold my legs in my tight jeans under the table. I marvel at these cultural differences, even as I walk away from them.

The end is near. And I wanted it to pass clear of cringes, clear of regrets. Turns out I'm not so good at avoiding those. I'll just hide in my kids until my escape route is clear. A 5'6 white girl with curly hair and curves? Crowds of 6 year old Korean children are the perfect place to disappear.

Bubbling Fat

1 month from today I will bid my hagwon goodbye forever. Never to see one of those turquoise plastic desks again. The thought makes me giddy.

In other news, my first complete grad school application is done and done. The world around my sighs with relief, but all is not at peace. There are 4 more to go.

Right now my neck is cricked from sleeping the wrong way on my bed, which is a mutant piece of furniture. The headboard is something from a zombie princess castle - made of two shades of pink velour all rouched and quilted and fashioned to look like a crown. The mattress is as hard as the floor. Good for my back, I suppose. My stomach is gurgling unpleasantly with an overdose of street food. Yes! I finally tried the Korean street food. Three pieces of seaweed-wrapped glass noodles soaked deep-fat-fried several times over. Yum? The food stand seemed to be a display of steaming oil in vats of various shapes and sizes depending on the delicacy that was soaking in it. Heart-attack corn dogs, anyone? Diabolically delicious pastries pressed flat into a sheet of oil and left to steep? The paper bags in which my treats were handed to me dissolved into a mess of greasy parchment.

I gobbled down more than I should have as I sat in the staff room writing up next week's plan. We're covering the scintillating theme of Transportation. Now, which half-assed paper craft am I going to impose on those children next...?

Now the routine has REALLY settled in

Last Wednesday Marina and I went to Itaewon for an open mic night that has become a pseudo-routine for us. There we were, in this tiny bar with our mugs of mulled wine, ready for some entertainment that came with its own unique brand of coziness, accessibility and camaraderie. The one of the stand-up acts decided to target us. And he targeted others too, but he made jokes out of them that even they had to laugh at. All he did for the two of us girls was repetitively call attention to the "two uncomfortable-looking girls in the middle of the room." And it became painfully obvious that we were the cygnets sitting in the middle of a close-knit family of ducklings. It was like we were extras on Cheers; everyone knew everyone except for us. Why this guy felt the need to heap attention on to that fact - especially when there was nothing even resembling a haha attached to it - is beyond me.

Culture Burnout. Andrew Mueller got the phrase stuck in my head and I've been on the lookout for it ever since. It's crept up on me in minor ways: don't ever let me get started on a rant about how SLOWLY everyone in the country walks, and how they like to carry out their SLOWNESS in the middle of the sidewalk so there is no way to get around them because you won't be able to shut me up. But knowing my time here is coming to an end takes the edge off just a little. People around me are starting to feel it though. There are certain steps that come with the life shift we've all made. At first you're wide-eyed and excited and surprised you don't feel more homesick. Then you hit what you assume is "the routine settling in" and the homesickness comes. Then comes what you assume to be "the routine REALLY settling in" as the homesickness fades, life become life and you feel lonely pretty much all the time. Only now is the routine actually settling in, when you stop thinking that it's finally settled in, and you realize that you've been so lonely because the majority of the friends you've made aren't actually friends at all. They're people you met once and exchanged phone numbers with, or people who've gone out with a few times but wouldn't dream of seeing sober, or friends of friends you don't feel comfortable contacting without the go-between.

Now, I'm not complaining. Too much. I have at least 5 people I could comfortably text right now to see if they want to do something. Granted, that includes my 2-headed roommate Beather. But if one of them isn't up to doing something, the other might just go along with me anyway.

Look at me, counting my friends. That's what it boils down to here. Only now that we're six months in, were counting "real friends" as opposed to drinking buddies or coworkers. I suppose it's a natural defense mechanism for the alienation we all feel. I still don't mind the staring. Sometimes I make a game out of staring back. That was really fun while I was walking home from work yesterday, my mood shattered beyond recognition by an abysmal last class and the dukboki place where I had been hoping to have dinner refusing to serve me for some reason lost in translation. Waiting at the crosswalk an old guy in a car pretty much had his eyes up against the windows staring at me. I channeled all of the power of my trollish mood into glaring right back at him. Scared the crap out of him.

We take our victories where we can, Korea.

Meanwhile, if one more person, while observing my frequently voiced cravings for Korean food, comments on how much I'm going to miss the cuisine when I'm back in Michigan I'm going to turn on my Cyclops eye beams and vaporize their heads.

There are Korean restaurants in Ann Arbor. I think I'll be just fine.

Bipolar New Year

After bursting back into Seoul in full-fledged honeymoon mode - 2 months left, craving Korean food and missing my kids - the glittery, angel-fluff clouds have cleared and reality is settling back in.

I spent yesterday with Aunt Becca, more or less, who's in town on a whirlwind business trip. Her Grand Hyatt hotel is the swankiest place I've seen in a while. I ate french onion soup and sole (I filleted it myself!) and creme brulee and several glasses on Chilean wine, and we talked for four hours straight and it was surprisingly cathartic. I guess I really don't talk about myself all that much here. At least about things that matter.

Three days ago I was happy as a clam. Now my mind is saturated with the kind of thought clutter that weighs down the joints and clogs up motivation. Instead of writing grad school essays I'm worrying about gaining back all the weight I've lost. My energy dissipates into the Seoul skyline, my creativity is a creaky old swing in some abandoned playground. And I can't find the inspiration to do anything about it in this insipid daily life of mine.

2months2months2months2months2months2months2months

With a mantra like that it's easy to forget that I don't have a clue what I'm supposed to do once I'm out of here.