3 AM: I have returned from whence I came, to the ROK, Republic of Korea.
It's so good to be home! I opened the door to a slightly sour-smelling apartment (one apple left in the fridge for too long), but aside from that it was clean and perfect and My Place.
Honestly, after making-do with my environment for 2 days of travel, I was overwhelmed with how just exactly right for me me place is. It was like it was made for me--which it was. :-) I walk in and I see my rows on rows of pink bookcases, my ethernet plug for perfectly reliable internet (a thing in rare supply in east Texas, sadly),my treadmill for my exercise habit, my cozy bed with its real covers and pillows, my cabinets full of baking supplies and my walls covered in sweet notes from students and friends--it's home.
It's the one I made. I could make another, but this is my first one. I lived by myself for two years in grad school, and still this feels like the first house that was really mine, that I bothered to settle in and occupy. I'm so grateful to God for this lovely place. How blessed to be here.
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2:30 PM
Classes went okay! We're just in biding-time mode, watching movies and chatting until the graduation ceremony next week. I missed my boys so much. It is incredibly good to be back with them.
After lunch, HH and BY came to see me, plus Daehoon and then Deokryong, Hyunho, Hyo, and Donggu from 2nd grade. It was grand to fall back into old conversational patterns, where I'd ask HH and BY what they did for the break and get a clever, detailed account from BY and an "I guess I did some things" from HH. By this time, I find his inability to talk about vacations hilarious, and me and BY both got a good laugh out of his lack of verbage--HH laughed at himself, too.
The boys are trying to figure out how to help me get access to a comic book set that I'm really interested in--I watched the Japanese anime over the break and was instantly obsessed, so now I want to read the comics in their Korean translation. I could order them in English, but I think it'll be better for me to read the story in Korean.
BY says there's a rental store across from the train station which rents out manhwa (comics) by the day, like a Blockbuster for comics, but I can't take that option because you rent by the day and I read much slower than that.
So it looks like I'll be buying the comics off the internet. I also explained that in college I had a huge comic collection and I kinda like having a complete set. HH doesn't understand because he collects absolutely nothing, but BY somewhat gets it because he collects board games.
Minhwe and Gyuchan came by to see me. They were darling and Gyuchan told me about how he's going winter-swimming with his family this weekend. Apparently this is something you can do at some islands off the west coast?
SY, my dear friend, went to New Zealand over the break and she told me that she thought of me often on the trip. Something about being in a country where she didn't speak the language, where the movies were all in English, there was no way to know if the shopping prices were fair, and she always seemed to be messing up her dinner order because she chose the wrong words when ordering.
She said to me in Korean, "The whole time I thought, "It's this what it's like for L all the time?"" She said that New Zealand was lovely, but the language part was stressful and it made her mindful of what my life here is like. How sweet! I was totally touched that I was on her heart.
More on my stay in a Japanese hotel later...
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5:40 PM
On the way home, I was mistaken for a mannequin.
Two mannequins had recently been set outside a clothing store near an intersection. As I walked up to the traffic light and stood next to one life-size doll, I noted how for just a second, I thought they were people. Then it was my turn to confuse people, because as I paused at the light, I felt someone pet my hair.
I turned around and saw it was a middle-school girl, who freaked out completely when I turned around. She was with about 8 friends, and after much laughter and explaining, we had a lovely conversation in Korean. Turns out, these girls are all 2nd-graders, and they are also all dating my 2nd grade "bad boys". Every girl wanted to be assured that I knew her boyfriend and that I thought they were each handsome, clever, special, and tall fellows. I did. :-)
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