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.