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home is where the kimchi is...

i had a great time yesterday in pusan but today was in a car accident on a nearby island. nobody was hurt, but my korean co-worker (who was driving) was a bit shaken and will now have a lot of $$ to pay the guy who hit us (it was her fault for running a red light and it was her parents' car which she is apparently not insured to drive. *sigh*). tomorrow i resume teaching and am feeling a bit unenthused (primarily because i still feel like i don't know what i'm doing), but i need to keep reminding myself that this job is enabling me to be here and will bankroll both this year and possibly further travel and/or debt diminishment... both china and japan are reachable destinations from here for around $200 roundtrip and i can't wait to visit them both!

after an initial 10 days of passionate enthusiasm on the part of both my tastebuds and my mind for kimchi, white rice, and seaweed, i'm weary of them now and crave things like baked tofu with nutritional yeast, baked sweet potatoes, almond butter, oatmeal, and 85 percent dark chocolate. fortunately, i had the forethought to buy an enormous tin drum of nutritional yeast and schlep it here in my suitcase, so the baked tofu dream is completely attainable once i purchase a toaster oven (ovens, as well as clothes dryers, are not part of daily life here). sweet potatoes are available also, so there is hope for a homey meal. oatmeal, almond butter, and dark chocolate are unavailable, however.

i've been here two weeks now and have started to have isolated moments of homesickness (primarily related to things like food or my cat, ms. lola p. digger who now lives a charmed life in the country with family friends), but overall am still glad i came to korea. it's beginning to feel less unreal being here, which is good. especially today sitting for 2 hours on an oil-stained couch in the office of the garage where the car had been towed to in the accident's aftermath. aside from the fact that all the signs and reading materials were not in english and that everyone around me was speaking animatedly in korean, it smelled and felt just like any other garage in which i've tediously waited post-car-breakdown and tow. this moment of absolute mundane/routineness kinda cemented for me the fact that i really truly live here.

also interesting to me on this whole 'foreign place becoming home' transformation-front, was how last night, as the bus i was riding on approached tongyeong after-dark, i felt like i was coming home. it was an acute sense of relief that flooded my body and pulsed with the passing of each street light, identical to how i feel when i spend time in nyc and then return after-dark via train to new haven. tongyeong and new haven are about the same size population-wise and are both 2 hours from huge metropolitan cities, and both seem like sleepy little hamlets upon returning from the big city. i noted, without any irony, to jonathon, my travelling mate for the day, that the last (and only other) time i had approached tongyoeong from pusan it had been exactly 2 weeks prior, but that my feelings were so entirely different now.

nearing tongyeong two weeks ago at nearly midnight, i felt lost on a deep internal compass/circadian ryhthm level. that first fateful saturday night i was riding in a minivan driven my now-boss, mark, on the heels of a 24-hour-plus journey and was in the midst of awkward getting-to-know-you small talk including inquiries as to my blood type (in korea blood type is treated almost as the zodiac in terms of ascribing certain personality traits to an individual and my boss needed to make sure i was not 'type-o' which i'm not. but when he asked me out of the blue about my blood type i had no knowledge of this korean belief system, and so it immediately conjured images of blood transfusions and such things one doesn't like to contemplate in a foreign country.).

i think travelling really teaches/reminds one about relativity in an incredibly healthy soul way. last night returning to this recently-alien place felt so utterly like a welcome homecoming it shocked me and made me laugh in a really good cathartic way.

of course tonight i saw the weather listings on tv for assorted locales, and nyc and boston were both listed and i felt a small pang of far-away-ness. but man-oh-man it will all still be there in a year and were i there now i'd be lusting for foreign experiences....

before = after