An aside on dream guides: I don’t usually remember my dreams, but there’s a few elements that stick with me over time. Anyway, a few years back, I had a dream where I met my “dream guide.” For whatever reason, we were “surfing” down a hard rock creek slide with alligators strapped to our feet. As we are preparing to go down the slide, a tall, blonde boy turns to me, looks me in the eyes, and says “I’m Ben, I’ll protect you.” And I got the distinct impression that this person was important and that he would show up again. Another time, I was having breakfast in the dream with my friend, Jenn, and her then-boyfriend (now-husband) Suyeol. In the dream, Suyeol looks up from his plate directly at me and says, “this is all good, but what about coffee?” and my sleeping self went, “Coffee???!!! Time to wake up!” and I sat straight up in bed like a zombie, thus saving me from oversleeping even though I’d missed my alarm. That instance led us to give him the English nickname Ben, after I’d joked that he was my dream guide. A third time more recently, in the dream I was in a yoga class. After progressing through more and more difficult forms, an old man, bearded and bald, made eye contact across the room and made the chilling pronouncement, “You can’t go back.”
I’m not really sure what that last one means, but I’ve been trying to suss the meaning out for many months now.
2019’s New Year’s resolution was “to become a real adult.” I started off the year with almost no bills and nary a care in the world, and slowly accrued real-world responsibilities like a Katamari ball. That being said, for 2020 I did not have such easily laid-out goals. I had a vision of ending the year in a better position than that which I started in: happier, more financially stable, in a job that’s more fulfilling, in a city that I love to live in.
COVID-19 brought all that to a screeching halt. Trying to orchestrate a move in the middle of quarantine was super depressing, and I can’t stop thinking about all that was lost during this time. Since everyone else was working, and I’ve never made this big a move (house-size-wise) by myself, it ended up that I would drive out every few days to Lancaster to fill up the back of my mom’s SUV (since her car is much bigger), stay overnight and mope in the daytime, order food delivery, and then come back to unload, then do it all again a few days later. It was a very solitary time, but it was made slightly better thinking that at least most of the other people were also working from home and so their lives were at least a little disrupted, too.
The hardest day was the day I moved all of my books. Who needs the gyms to be open when you’re moving all the books you own at once?? Over time, I slowly made my apartment less and less hospitable until nothing but bare furniture remained. Once the actual day to move all of my furniture came, (on my brother’s birthday, unfortunately for him) all that remained was to pack up all of the furniture and take down the nails and clips that had held the wall-art. The next week I came back to clean up and spackle in the nail holes and the ding in the corner my bike made when it fell over. Dropping my keys in the slot of the realty office felt exactly like what it was, the end of another chapter. “You can’t go back” echoed in the deep recesses of my brain.
When I first got let go, I thought that I’d just move home for a little while until I found a new job, but turns out finding a new job when so many businesses are just trying to stay afloat, let alone expand their operations, has proven to be challenging. At first I was just glad to be safe at home from the virus, and we found lots of ways to stay busy. As an introvert, early quarantine was kind of a boon for my mental health, returning to old hobbies and finding some new ones.
Here are my favorite ways to keep busy during quarantine, in no particular order:
Dalgona coffee making – I’m still obsessed. What a delightful drink. However, my “home cafe” experiments have expanded beyond this one drink as well.
Making friendship bracelets – and then mailing them to friends. I’m in love with the idea of all my friends having matching bracelets that I made for them.
Binge-watching Netflix – it’s never been so socially acceptable.
Attempting to cook and bake – emphasis on the attempting.There’s been a lot of Korean food, SPAM-based foods, cookies, and a lemon pie, to name a few.
Reading – I’ve read more books since quarantine started than in most recent years.
Taking online classes – brushing up on marketing concepts as well as getting back into studying Korean with TTMIK.
Staying/ getting into contact with friends – We set up weekly squad chats with friends from college, had a zoom happy hour with some family friends, got back into the habit of just calling people on the phone to chat, and even rekindled a long-dead friendship! It’s not the same as talking in-person, but the happy emotions are still there.
Online workouts – discovered something my mom’s been saying for ages: online workout videos are THE SHIT. I’ve been almost better for working out at home than at the gym, and I don’t even have to put shoes on! My favorites during this time have been Kukuwa Fitness, ALLBLANC, EMKfit, MadFit, and Chloe Ting!
Writing letters and postcards – how delightful it is to receive a physical piece of mail or a package from a friend, especially when our contact with real people is so limited these days? I’m already planning out Christmas presents
Doing puzzles – we did one. Just one. Mom picked a circular puzzle and it was pretty infuriating.
Playing Animal Crossing – after trying to download an emulator to try to play Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp on my computer, it occurred to me that I could just download it on my iPhone like a normal person. It’s been the longest-running phone game I’ve ever played so far!
We spend a lot of time together. We watch a lot of movies, Great British Bakeoff, and make popcorn all the time. We get takeout a lot more than we ever did, which I think is delightful but my dad is not so fond of. I send so, so much mail, in that I used to never send letters or physical art pieces to people just for the fun of it, but now I do it with surprising regularity, because save USPS.
I know that the imposed lockdown chafed on some people immediately and after all this time, it’s wearing on everybody, but keeping those close to us safe and healthy is more important than entertainment or socializing in-person. I’m still totally floored by the amount of people refusing to wear masks, as if almost 250K people haven’t died because of our refusal to take COVID seriously.
On a positive note, things may be looking up! Biden won the election, and once he takes over we can expect that he and his administration will actually listen to experts to get the virus under control & we can get back to our ~normal~ lives soon.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do, but it’s definitely not this.
I told someone all of that recently and they said, understandably, “…and you decided to stay?”
Hmm, well.
Yes.
It’s possible that I would be much happier elsewhere, doing some other work. It’s possible that I’m really not cut out for any of this and by this time next year will regret this a lot. But it’s equally possible that some other place would be worse. Or most likely, another place would just be different, with its own ups and downs. So why not take a chance and really make something of my life here? Happiness isn’t going to fall into your lap when you change locations. You’re not going to suddenly find the “right” place where everything works out. Some places are certainly better than others, but basically you will always have to fight for what you want.
About a week ago, after moving house from my old place to my new place in my favorite neighborhood Hapjeong, I took a break from organizing my things to catch a few drinks at my friend’s favorite bar, which happens to be right across the street from me now. It’s amazing to live in the cool neighborhood you once had to take a long journey to reach. At that time, my house was just a big empty furniture-less, wifi-less box. While it was everything I had wanted, it was more than a little depressing at that stage. So naturally I went out for drinks.
The bar is literally underground and run by surfer-aesthetic people covered in tattoos with raggedy long hair. It smells like incense and smoke inside and you’re careful not to speak too loud because you don’t want to interrupt the vibe to be heard. It is Curtis’s favorite bar, but last time Julia and I went, we got absinthe (and I had forgotten that I don’t actually like the taste of absinthe). Curtis and Julia used to work with me at the old school, but for different reasons, they both left early. So here we are celebrating getting out of our kind of toxic work situation and heading in different directions. Any gathering of this sort requires a great deal of shit-talking about the former job, speculation on what’s going on now with the new coworkers, and what all the old coworkers are going to do after their contracts are up. At one point, Curtis commented to me something to the effect of, “You know, it’s pretty amazing that you seemed to be pretty unfazed by all the shit that went down.”
All the complaining and shit-talking, I would participate in it, maybe, but overall I didn’t really let it get me down. Perhaps it was literal ray of sunshine, Maxine, who kept us all afloat. Perhaps it’s a love for country (here) that the other coworkers lacked. Perhaps it was the thought of a new job that kept me going on in spite of it all.
It’s been a pretty wild ride this year, and it seems like it’s not likely to calm down in the next year.
Midway through January, I probably took one of the most interesting trips of my experience here. I had not made any cool, high-flying plans to go to other countries for the Lunar New Year, or Seollal, vacation, which is wise because travel in this part of the world at that time of year is a nightmare. But I’d had a vision to go to an island. I found a travel group that was going to Geoje Island, the largest island in Korea after Jeju Island. I like these travel groups because they take the planning aspect out of the equation, giving you options to do whatever you like or just lounge about or go drinking or whatever.
I almost didn’t go.
I almost missed the bus leaving at 6am from Noksapyeong. Every other person thought ahead and took a taxi but I thought it would be cute to take the subway. Luckily, they held the bus.
We arrived in Geoje after traveling for most of the morning on the bus. I’d entertained thoughts of just letting the bus leave without me and going back to bed, but I’m glad that they held the bus for an extra 20 minutes. Geoje Island is a starkly beautiful place, even in winter when we went. We were told it would be much warmer than Seoul, and while it was marginally warmer, it wasn’t, say, shorts weather as I’d expected. But the warm sun felt good on your face and it was a nice break from the biting seoul winds which rip down the long straightaway streets like a hurricane. The landscape looks a lot like New England in the states or maybe Nova Scotia, big pine trees and rocky beaches. We didn’t get to properly enjoy many of the things Geoje is popular for because kayaking and ATVing are more summer pursuits and it was still quite cold when we went. Nonetheless, it was nice to be able to get out of the city for a while and make some new friends.
On Friday after the rooms were distributed we had South African vetkoek (fat cake), which is basically a fried donut-like roll with curry inside and spicy fries on the side. I had never expected to learn so much about South Africa on a trip in Korea, but as the tour group owner was South African and my roommate, Hilary, was too, I inadvertently learned a lot about the country from them. We ate on the bus while we were touring round the island. We saw a beautiful black-stone beach where all of the stones were polished smooth and flat. The sound that the waves made as they rushed over the stones was so surreal that I never wanted to leave. Each stone was a perfect skipping-stone or paving-stone; they didn’t even look real. Nature is so cool. After that, we also saw a windmill, which is apparently very famous on the island. We had the option to “hike” down to that windmill (in all, a 20 minute walk and not at all difficult) and then got to play on the sea cliffs a little. I met some new friends, and we talked about the struggles of teaching and what we were planning to do for the next year. Things are a lot less nebulous for you when you like your school and/or are head teacher.
When we returned from the island tour, we had also consented to go on the sunset cruise. This, too, I almost bowed out of because I’ve been on probably one too many “sunset cruises.” Again, I’m glad I decided to go anyway. We took the bus to the marina and then boarded two boats. To be honest, they were small little fishing boats, but they got the job done. While a bunch of guys from a Saudi company took the bow of the boat, we made ourselves comfortable at the picnic table at the stern. It was freezing cold in the wind but we all had concealed soju and beer in our jackets, so that kept us warm. Our boats darted in and out of sea cliffs and pillars and through huge flocks of seagulls resting in the water. The sunset was fantastic. On the boat, we made friends with some Irish teachers, Diarmuid and Rachael, and had lots of laughs. I’m always a little wary about these kind of trips, that I’m bugging the people I’m with, but these guys seemed pretty genuinely kind, which I feel is rare. It’s even rarer to open up in the first day of a trip to people you’ve never met.
That, I felt, was the highlight of the trip for me already. When we returned, it was time to braai (South African for “barbeque”). It took ages to set up, as there were many people to coordinate and lots of different moving parts, and we were all starving. We ate all of our sides and drank our convenience store beers in record time, while waiting for the preparations to be complete. We got mussels and scallops and shrimp, but my problem is I don’t like any of these things. I made a deal with the Irish friends and still got them (on the offchance that I might actually like them… I didn’t.) and then gave them the shellfish I couldn’t eat (which was all but one of them). I keep trying and keep hating shellfish. I consoled myself by telling myself that there was steak coming! We had pretty big steaks that we were all allowed to grill over the open fire. We were basically barbequing in one of the minbak (bed and breakfast) garages, all open-air. It took ages to grill the steaks, as maybe 15 people were vying for space on the small and inefficient grills. Not to mention, many of our steaks were frozen. We couldn’t see in the dark, so we took our chances with food poisoning as we ate the steaks. We kept making trips down to the maejeom (convenience store) for more soju and beer as the night progressed. The group attempted to teach me how to play “King’s Cup,” a drinking game to which every single player had been taught different house rules. We also had a ludicrous amount of rum and coke, rum being left over from the enormous orange vat of “jungle juice” the tour group had prepared for the braai. There were stunning overtures of friendship and promises of future visits to home countries made. Everybody is so much more earnest and generous when they’re drinking. As we stood warming our hands over the dying barbeque fires, we watched some fireworks over the beach. Someone in our tour group was setting them off.
Needless to say, it was a night of far, far too much drinking for me. I can maybe only do one good night of drinking a week, and that was it for me. I was really sick the next day, partially from drinking, partially from staying out in the night air cold all night, partially maybe from food poisoning. Saturday was rough.
Since Saturday was Lunar New Year, we had the traditional breakfast of japchae, sweet potato noodles in a sesame oil and soy sauce dressing, ddeok guk, flat circle rice cake dumpling soup with seaweed and beef, jeon pancakes, and kongnamul bean sprouts. My stomach was not having any of that. While the other kids went ATVing or to the spa, I was hoping that a walk in the fresh air would cure my condition. It took most of the day but it eventually worked. I walked down the beach and up to the pier, hoping that I could get a climb on some of the cliffs. In my kind of sick state, though, I didn’t much trust my ability not to fall down and hit my head, so I ended up not climbing anything. I had been reading Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons at the time, so while I got a mocha at the sunny and peaceful second floor of Don Quixote Coffee, I read and enjoyed the sunshine. I thought it would be unbefitting to fall asleep in the café, so I ended up going down to the beach for a nap. They only give out one key per room in the minbak, you see, and I was not the lucky key-holder that day. After some sleep, I felt marginally better and met new friend Shane at the GS, where we ate ice cream and those “Nacho” brand chips.
We headed out to Jisimdo, one of the outlying islands from Geoje, after that. I had the feeling that on a nice summer day, Jisimdo would be a bustling hiking area, and missing the ferry back to Geoje would be no big deal, as there were many guesthouses and cafes and restaurants dotting the hillside. As it was New Year’s Day, none were open that day, so we had to be sure to catch that last ferry back. Shane and I walked around, exploring the old Japanese battlements and trails. We had picked up long bamboo spears somewhere and were swinging them around dramatically as if we were in some old samurai anime. Near the end of that adventure, I did get really dizzy. Maybe it was dehydration or still food poisoning, but I was feeling really bad as we were getting on the ferry back. Back at the accommodations, I took yet another nap and was restored to full health!
On Saturday evening, we were scheduled to go “bar hopping” in Okpo, which is the main town area in Geoje. I’m always wary of stuff like this on trips here, because—while it might be cool and novel to go out partying for many, who might live in remote little towns that don’t even have a single noraebang to boast, or if not, then on military bases—it’s not all that novel or cool to someone who actually lives in Seoul and not outside of it. I’m made even more wary when they describe it as a place with “lots of foreigner restaurants.” As it turns out, the “suggestions” that they made, everyone either ignored or only listened to one single one, the one for the Indian restaurant, so 60 of us shuffled in all at once to this restaurant on Lunar New Year night when the restaurant only had 3 on staff. You can probably guess where this is going, but basically we were the last to order as the staff ignored us for upwards of half an hour to even take our orders and then it took another 2+ hours for our food to come. Somehow we bullied our way into a discount. I’m glad for friends who can take matters like these into their own hands. I’m the sort of confrontation-avoidant person who would never say anything and just lose two hours of their life with nothing to show for it. We were expected to go out and drink at the little bars surrounding Okpo after that, but after all the waiting, I had no desire to stay in that area for even one more minute. Plus, I was averse to ingesting any more alcohol that weekend, unfortunately.
We woke up Sunday to clouds threatening to rain and headed to breakfast, which was “the full English,” always a treat. We emerged from the minbak after breakfast to find a steady downpour. The weather was just nice enough that I just walked over to the area where the cafes were to wait out the rain, if I could, and if not, to wait until it was time for the bus to go. I hung out in a café and ended up meeting the Irish friends, who had come in for brunch, having missed the tour group’s breakfast. We shuffled back to the bus after that, stealing the ideal seats in the back, elevated so we could see all the way down the aisle easily. The bus stopped after a few minutes to pick up the tour group members who had gone to Geoje seaworld that morning and then we headed on to Seoul. We hatched a plan with the Irish friends and American friend Colton and his girlfriend Yoojin, to go out for dinner (huge bags in tow). I’d suggested, since we got out at Noksapyeong station, that we go to one of my favorite café-bistros, Fat Cat, but it turned out to be closed. We instead got burgers bigger than our faces at a place called Burgermine (there are about 3-4 burger places within spitting distance of Fat Cat if you ever happen to go and find it closed) and made plans to see one another again.
In between saying goodbye that time and the next time I saw them two weeks later, I had interviewed for the next year’s jobs and begun the narrowing-down process. My future was a lot more certain after two weeks. We had hookah, drinks upon drinks, and stayed out until the train started up again at 6am.
It’s been about a month since then. I haven’t been avoiding the friends, per se, but it’s hard to commit to staying out until 6am. My old lady soul protests to it unless there’s copious amounts of food or coffee involved. My life is a whole lot more certain now that it was even a month ago.
Spring is a good time to reflect about old things dying and new things beginning. That’s why I’m kind of grateful that the school year here starts in March. It’s the perfect time for a new beginning. The anger and stress and bad feelings all die with the cold weather and peace returns on the calm spring wind.
Near the end of the old year, not only were all of the students acting up like crazy—perhaps on some subconscious level understanding that they’d never see most of us again—all the teachers were going crazy, too. Everyone leaving became lazier and more spiteful. Things seemed to speed up exponentially as the new teachers came in from Canada, Australia, America, and we had to attempt to fit a year’s worth of our learnings about how the job works into a few days at most. The social scene at the end when everyone is leaving is fun, tragic, and hectic. Everyone tries to fit all of their “lasts” into a single week. It’s i n s a n e. It’s so sad because some of these friends you know you might never see again in this life (in person, that is), at least not without the huge difficulties of crossing oceans.
It’s sad saying goodbye to humans who mean a lot to you. It’s also sad saying goodbye to places that mean a lot to you. I’m so incredibly grateful that I don’t have to say goodbye to Seoul for another year. As I took my run last weekend, I was struck again (as I am nearly every day) by how beautiful this city is, how lucky I am to live here. I’m already becoming sad at probably having to leave it, and that’s 11 months in my future.
In the meantime, I moved into my new job, the after school working only 5 hours a day in Dangsan-gu, just a short one-stop ride away from my home right next to Hapjeong station. I found a perfect little loft (being short, lofts are perfect for me) which is exactly equidistant from Hapjeong and Sangsu, which leaves me situated in literally my favorite neighborhood in Seoul. I’ve almost completely decorated the new house, which is fun but difficult, being an adult, y’know, but now the space really feels mine. I do almost all my own cooking and have to manage my own affairs much better, now that my boss or coworkers aren’t right there to solve all my problems for me. Every problem seems magnified when you can’t just lean back in your chair and ask 10 people who have had the same problem before. But I think this year will be a tremendous year of growth. It’s also a bit lonely so far. I’m great at making friends, but I’m horrid at going out and finding friends, especially given the language barrier. So we’ll have to learn to break through that.
Looking forward, I’ll continue to better manage the new house, find some Korean lessons so that I can really get more out there in the community, and keep discovering more and more about my neighborhood and my city. I’m so happy and excited to be here for another year, loneliness be damned.
A toast to embracing the loneliness, using it as medium to create something new everyday.
Today is #설날 (Lunar New Year) Special Day at school and I also finished reading 2 books. Happy Thursday. pic.twitter.com/8DgyZAmt39
Back from a stunning short vacation on #Geoje#거제도 Island. Sad I can’t bring my cold-ridden ass to go out drinking tonigh but c’est la vie pic.twitter.com/Mw1ZWHArCz
Today was International Day and at this rate (aka having 5 interviews within 24 hrs) I’ll have a contract signed by the end of next week pic.twitter.com/V9aUbGfzf9
Did not mean to take my sketchbook & backpack out clubbing with Geoje Island bros all night last night but that is indeed what happened.. pic.twitter.com/ODA7IM2Gta
Graduation ayer. I never cry at the times I’m supposed to but nonetheless I’m still sad I won’t get to see my lil buggers again. pic.twitter.com/X02CCvkr1f
seoulraps 