Familiarity breeds contempt, and other eternal truths.

It's been ages since I updated this for real. I have about forty-five minutes before I need to get my laundry, so hopefully I can write something productive.

I find it difficult to believe, but I've been in South Korea for a month now. The first couple of weeks really seemed to drag, but now, faced with the prospect of leaving Tasankwan Kisuksa (dormitory) and Chuncheon in a little over a week, my feelings are a little more inscrutable.

I think an entry like this is probably inevitable, and it genuinely surprises me that I've managed a month before feeling this way, but I just had a full half-hour bitch session with Dana about Korea, and it was actually really gratifying. I've managed not to dwell on any of the few things about Korea that aren't, say, perfect, but yesterday I just felt really negative. Thankfully, I spent most of yesterday sleeping, but that also meant being up online until 3:30am when I finally got tired again, and then sleeping today until 11:00.

So, in short, a quick list of things that are not ideal about my current situation. Perhaps, by just writing them out, I can see that they aren't that big a deal, and perhaps you can even make suggestions.

1. I suspect I'm really just tired of living in the f-ing dorms. Thank God, I really love my roommate to pieces, so the room situation isn't that bad. But I'm tired of the air conditioning not working, and the mosquitoes coming in from God knows where and biting me in my sleep, even though we keep our window shut, which keeps the room utterly stifling hot. I'm tired of crappy communal cold showers.

2. This should proably have been number one, because I think it's the major problem: I'm so tired of the heat. It's Florida weather, quite simply, which I hate in Florida, but it's about 3000 times worse because there's no good air conditioning anywhere and I have to walk everywhere. Connected to this is that I'm tired of the limitedness of my wardrobe, and that I have to re-wear clothes which are smelly and gross after one day.

3. I should interject here, before complaining about the food, with the realization that it's not that things suck here. Some things do, but I can accept when things suck. What sucks is the realization that these particular things would not suck at home. For example, the food here isn't that bad. I've mostly adjusted to it without problems, and I never go hungry. What makes it suck is that if I were home, I wouldn't have to be eating this. Granted, I will lose a lot of weight thanks to this, and that removing the temptation of Taco Bell may have been the only way to do it, but I would give anything for a meal I really really look forward to. This was mostly brought on by three days in a row where every single meal in the cafeteria was just awful and fishy. I suspect I'm going to have to force myself to start eating fish, but, for fear of sounding whiny, I don't want to.

4. This is something I wasn't going to mention, because I thought I'd done a good job of avoiding it, but I might as well get it out. I'm living with 69 other ETAs, and I spend a lot of time just wanting to kill about 10 of them. I mean, I knew that a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship wasn't nearly as prestigious as a Research Grant, but there are a couple people here that I can't actually imagine graduating college, let alone somehow securing this allegedly 'prestigious' scholarship. And it's not that they aren't smart--obviously (in theory) they are--but they have terrible attitudes about, in particular, language class. They don't study, they act like this is a joke, and they're rude to the teachers. I think what I may find most perplexing is that they (meaning the Orientation Coordinators) make such a big deal about how we all need to make a million friends during Orientation, because these other people are the only ones who will understand how we feel and support us. But... I'm not a terribly social person. I'm not shy, true, but given the choice between hanging out in my room and studying or going out with a big group of people to dinner/a bar/noraebang, I will nearly always choose to stay in. It doesn't mean I don't like these people, just that I prefer small groups or individual interaction or, let's be honest, my own company.

And I've made what I consider about four good friends, which is plenty for me, but I still find it somewhat disconcerting to be on my laptop or studying on a Friday or Saturday night while listening to herds of people discuss their plans for the evening. Not that I'm not happy with what I'm doing, because I always am, but it makes me question whether I am, which is troubling. I guess I'm a little more fiercely independent than I ever gave myself credit for. I feel like I perhaps have the capacity for pretending to be a social butterfly, but I just don't want to. And there seems to be a lot of (peer?) pressure here to do that. Still, even if I went out with these people every day, I still probably wouldn't become their best friend and want to keep in touch with them when we're spread all over the country, and I know that spending the time studying Korean will, in the end, likely have a better payoff. Having five good friends out of seventy people is, for me, par for the course, if not on the high side. In conclusion, I'm satisfying with my level of social interaction, but last night when I was feeling down, I thought perhaps having a larger social circle would have remedied that. Doubtful.

5. I've begun to find Orientation frustrating, because I feel like so much of what we do (with the always notable exception of language class) is a complete waste of time. Also, they're really disorganized. Yesterday morning I got up early for my shift of helping out with the Camp Fulbright graduation. Know what my assignment was? Picking up trash. That's right. As one of the country's best and brightest, a Fulbright scholar, I got to pick up trash off the sidewalks between the dorm and the language building, ostensibly so that Korean students' parents would be impressed with the cleanliness of Kangwon University. That might not bother me, if I got more than the equivalent of $35 a week, or if I hadn't had to put up with further disorganization and crappy attitudes from people in charge after that. In fact, that single incident may have accounted for my bad mood all through yesterday.

There may be other things I've recently found frustrating, but that list is plenty exhaustive enough, I think. And this exercise was apparently a success, because now that I've described and quantified my tiny struggles, they seem smaller and overcomeable in a way they didn't at 3:30am when I finally laid down to go to sleep. Success.

Back to looking toward the future, here's a schedule of interesting things I'll be doing in the next couple weeks:
Wednesday (the 8th)- Last day of language class--Final Exam
Friday (the 10th) - Graduation from language program
Monday (the 13th) - Trip to the DMZ (not Pammunjon, the superfamous place, but nonetheless)
Wednesday (the 15th) - Leave Kangwon University and go to Seoul
Thursday (the 16th) - a very vague "Fulbright Meetings"
Friday (the 17th) - Yonsei Day - meet my principal and co-teacher, go to Naju

I'm still really nervous about leaving, but it will be nice to know that the next settling-in process will be my last one. As soon as I got used to Chuncheon and the Orientation schedule, I started to get bored with it and ready to move on, which proves the age-old adage "Familiarity breeds contempt." I've come up with another goal to ensure that I use my time here in Korea well: to write a novel. I'm only supposed to work 20 hours a week. Realistically, I'm sure I'll work closer to 30-35, including lesson planning, grading, and time spent at school during classes, but even so, I have an entire year, and I should have far less distractions. And if I wrote one page a day, I'd have a 365 page novel next summer. Something to look forward to.

One last thing... I saw a movie yesterday that I highly recommend to all of you who want to know something about the North Korea-South Korea conflict. It's called JSA (Joint Security Area), and it's simply phenomenal. Interesting, well-acted, affecting, and good! Also, it's probably available at your local Blockbuster, if you have a decent Blockbuster. (Try the one on Del Prado.)

I hope this doesn't lead you to believe that I'm miserable and I want to come home, because that's not the case. I'm certainly not miserable, although I think it's good to acknowledge shortcomings rather than ignoring them, so that's what I'm doing. Sometimes, when I'm laying in bed, I think about what I would be doing if I were at home. I can't be sure, since I had so many different directions I was contemplating. I'd most likely be living in Orlando and teaching, while finishing up my English degree. That would be nice, because I'd be three hours from family and around old friends, and three minutes from Taco Bell. But it would be hot there too.

I was sitting in my stifling hot room discussing this with Dana, fanning myself with a ludicrous chicken shaped paper fan that some random delivery guy gave me, and I said to myself, in slightly less appropriate language: "What the heck am I doing in Korea?" Interesting question. I came to teach, but to be clear, I would be doing that in the States right now. I came because I wanted to see what it would be like to live in a different country, in an immersion experience, for an extended period of time. (In theory, to see if the Foreign Service might be for me.) And I came because there's a good chance I wouldn't have another chance to do something like this, and because I wanted to.

And in honor of that kind of attitude, here's the lyrics to a song I first discovered at nineteen, but which means a lot more to me now.

"Twentysomething" - Jamie Cullum
after years of expensive education
a car full of books and anticipation
i'm an expert on shakespeare
and that's a hell of a lot
but the world don't need scholars as much as i thought

maybe i'll go travelling for a year
finding myself or start a career
i could work for the poor, though i'm hungry for fame
we all seem so different, but we're all the same

maybe go to the gym so i don't get fat
aren't things more easy with a tight six-pack?
who knows the answers? who do you trust?
i can't even separate love from lust

maybe i'll move back home and pay off my loans
working nine 'til five answering phones
don't make me live for my friday nights
drinking eight pints and getting in fights

i don't want to get up, just let me lie in
just leave me alone, i'm a twentysomething

maybe i'll just fall in love
that could solve it all
philosophers say that that’s enough
there surely must be more

love ain’t the answer nor is work,
the truth eludes me so much it hurts
but i’m still having fun and i guess that's the key
i'm a twentysomething and i'll keep being me