furdge a durdge

originally posted Sunday, October 15, 2006

dude, i had just written this amazingly thorough blog then i deleted the whole fucking thing. i am a fucking wee-tard. so i guess this is the re-creation (as opposed to the recreation). i apologize for it lacking the depth, wit, and pathos of the post it is replacing.
so i think i've calmed down a bit after the initial hakwon news. saturday afternoon (after i got the email from jules) felt like a dream state. i really was in shock. and all i wanted at that point was to party til' i puked with jules and roar. sort of difficult since they're in missouri. i ended up wandering around the old town of suncheon with mike and scott, which was fun enough. but i really wanted to celebrate, and no one here understands the significance that was this email from jules. i dunno. ultimately saturday was just depressing. i'm still not used to the idea that i don't get to see my two favorite people on a regular basis. i'm not homesick even, but i definitely wish i had some effortless friends here. but soon enough jules and rory will be living in china which is a lot closer than missouri and we will retroactively celebrate by drinking something potent--mao tai? soju? the blood of a virgin?--and it will be good. god this all sounded so much more eloquent in the blog i deleted.
i ended up making really awkward conversation with some koreans i didn't know--replete with pantomiming and truncated engrish/botched konglish. and what i learned from that is that i really enjoy things that are low maintenance-- relationships, friendships. i realize i sound like a bitch right now. but it's the truth. i like to tell myself that the beauty of some things is in the struggle and in things being difficult and trying, but i think maybe i just had a lazy week. or just a lazy saturday. and yes, i realize i'm not making much sense right now. i'm tired. not that being friends with koreans is something i am not willing to put any effort into, but just making friends in general requires an effort that i'm not sure i have. i'm really not good at it. i prefer to be sought out, not to do the seeking. there are lots of foreigners here and we all live in the same cluster of apartments. and i guess we should feel some inherent comraderie as we are all strangers in a strange land. but what if there's not that comraderie? and there are lots of mizzou people here, which means we all hang out. which is good and bad. i'm glad they're here but it gives us all an easy out. it allows us to not have to test ourselves as much, and a big part of the reason i came here the second time was just to prove that i could. i think it's going to require a consistent effort on my part to make sure i pursue authentic korean things and don't just gravitate to the easy foreigner things. eating and drinking, for example. i must go eat with koreans and drink soju with koreans. it's imperative. and, yes, i know i'm contradicting myself because i know going the foreigner route is the easy way, yet i want to go the difficult way. i know. ramble ramble ramble.
anyhoo, back to the hakwon. that whole experience made me really nervous about going to visit chuncheon and even about coming back to korea in general. my reputation there was ruined and there are a lot of people who would never admit it, but judged me because of the accusations some korean asshole had thrown at me. i didn't even unpack my bags from korea when i got back stateside until two months later. unpacking seemed like an all too real reminder that i was back to the doldrums of my columbia, mo existence. it also seemed to reinforce my defeated feeling. i must note that i'm a person who thinks everything is symbolic. even relative insignificants (like say, the unpacking of suitcases) i tend to weigh down with meaning. and i enjoy making myself cry. romanticized melancholy, or whatever. i was quite content to be depressed and inconsolable for the first few months after chuncheon. life in korea is very simple, despite the language barrier. it's an easy (and profitable, i might add) way to push those larger issues--what am i doing with my life, what do i want my future to look like, what's the big picture, blah blah blah--off to the wayside. coming back from korea early, i wasn't prepared to face those looming existential issues, which made the shock of the situation even more shocking. so now i'm back, and happy to admit that i am again avoiding the big picture, content instead to just revel in the daily minutiae. so that's that.
besides the good news of saturday, friday was my best day in korea. and it wasn't because of work, or drinking, but it was because of motorbikes. i had the extreme pleasure of riding two different motorcycles. and the whole time i sat there just grinning like a fucking idiot. a fucking idiot who "lacks poise and grace" i think were the exact words. no matter. i would like to gracelessly and poiselessly ride motorcycles in south korea many more times.
i learned a new word the other day, in the same vein as schadenfreude. the new word is "der weltschmertz." it means world ache. them's good eats.
okay, i give up.