Typical

I didn’t bring my computer to work because I have 6 classes in a row, my long day, no break time ‘til 8 PM. But unlike last night, I’m in the mood to write. So I’m on one of the work computers, which we all have to share, so I can’t be on this that long.

In my mission to bring my rosacea under control, I have gone full paleo (except peanuts. I am still eating peanut M&Ms). This is an enormous undertaking in Asia, and Korea in particular, due to the ubiquity of wheat, which no one expects here, and of course rice. I read on Quora about a Chinese guy who was talking about readjusting to China after years in the W, & he commented on how terribly unhealthy Chinese food is: really high in fat and carbs, and very low protein. Substitute really high fat for somewhat fattening occasionally & spicy, minus the prevalence of vegetables, & you’ve got Korean cuisine. Oh yeah, plus smelly (can we talk about people bringing dried seafood/kimchi on the train? It reeks. Why can there not be laws about this?). ANYHOO, I’ve decided to go full paleo. I’ve only had rice twice in about 10 days, have twice baked paleo goods on the weekends, but the true evidence that you’ve gone full-bore is making your own bone broth. Supposedly Koreans have been consuming this regularly—hell, I even bought a bag labeled beef bone broth at Lotte Mart, though it was milky white and really had no flavor.

In real, true, paleo form, the above bone broth was made with nonpesticide chicken (the best I can do here), & organic produce. I had a cup after I got home yesterday, and it was great. Then the not-so-great part happened: I put the Tupperware full of bone broth on the edge of the kitchen sink… and somehow knocked it, spilling my slow-cooked-for-26-hours broth almost completely down the drain.

While upset & swearing up a storm and cursing Korea & life for a good 10 minutes, it wasn’t accompanied by my full-on screaming. So this qualifies as a somewhat tempered, calmer reaction from me. I wondered why that was, ‘til I realized while washing the dishes what would have resulted in the usual screaming and a tirade that would have lasted at least 15 minutes: the chicken broth went down the drain, instead of spilling all over the floor, so I’d have had to clean it up on top of losing it all. The ONE upside is that I had another non-pesticide chicken carcass in the fridge, and given the teensy size of my fridge and especially my freezer, it would have been impossible for me to freeze half of it (Aaron is particularly amused by my basically not having a freezer, because believe it or not, the frost wall got BIGGER, mainly in the back, so I couldn’t even fit my fist in the back), & storing both at the same time takes up 1/2 my refrigerator. So, there’s that.

There’s also my usual penurious state at the end of the month. I never go out because I’m always cooking, eating, and frequently bitching, so where was my money going? It was going to Lotte Mart, the most expensive place to grocery shop (but it’s the thing closest to me & one-stop shopping), and I’ve been buying organic stuff whenever they have it. My bank account & I jointly determined that I would have to start going to 1 of the fruit & veggie places sprinkled closer to and on my way to work for produce, and try going to some of the butchers I’ve seen as well.

So in that spirit, I’ve gone that route, & stopped in a butcher shop across the street from work. The guy was SO nice, & the bonus was that, while I spent the same amount for the pork neck there as I would for the same thing @ Lotte Mart, I got 2-3 times the servings from his that I’d get from Lotte Mart.

I also found a woman with a stand down the street from me in the back, & there are 2 mom-&-pop type grocery stores I go to too, which are both cheaper. So, there are options. I did also stumble upon a completely organic place, but can’t tell if it’s a co-op or not.

Since it’s the end of the month, I’m counting every damned won($) because I have 60,000 to get me through this week. Saturday I went to the nice butcher guy near work for some more pork neck, but he recommended some other cut of pork. Then, he started indicating a thing of the pork neck. I wasn’t sure if he meant I should get it too, or he was giving it to me. I finally acquiesced, since I was pretty sure he meant it was a gift, but could afford if it not, & thankfully, yes, it was free. I was JUST delighted & SO happy, particularly since I needed the free meat! So of course that guy has got a customer for [my] life [here].

So it has now been 2 weeks since I’ve done strict paleo, but it coincided with my getting sick, so I skipped my workouts. And wonder-of-wonders, look at the difference. I started feeling a little better, so did some short HIIT workouts, & naturally, my chin started getting a bit red & there were the faintest shadows of what I know would be the bumps. My last real option for exercise that is rosacea-approved is swimming. Anna, the head teacher at my school, swims every morning, so I’ll ask her where to go.

I know I'm WAYYYYY behind, sorry kids. With the start of the new school year, but honestly? Going paleo in Korea and having to cook EVERYTHING I eat, having to stop at the store to refill on veggies that I run out of even faster now means there's just no time left for much of anything. Like blogging.

It has happened again.

I have to use youtube videos for my background music, since spotify won't work without subscription, and everything else is blocked, even with a VPN. So this means that there are short ads that play before some songs. 

One ad has this catchy little song in the background that I SO want to hear in its entirety, but I CANNOT FIND the name of the song or artist ANYWHERE. I can find the video in longer and shorter versions on the company's website and on its facebook page. But credits for the song used? HELLLLL NO. It is driving me fucking batty. 

In this country, if you say anything bad about a person or particularly a company, particularly online, you can get sued for libel. It's that easy. But they have no effing qualms about not crediting the musicians in their stupid ads. All I know is that apparently the girl who appears in it is Yuna Kim, the "famous" (to them) figure skater. Not that that even helps because she appears in several. 

I tried playing the video and using Shazam, but either the other noises in the video were interfering, or it just doesn't know the song, because it just said I should try again, closer to the speaker. I am just out of options, but cannot seem to run out of the futility of continually trying and trying again. Why does Korea do this to me? WHY WHY WHY???

Bear with me here, as I get all metaphysical on your ass.

Back to working out this week, whatever that turns out to be, since as I said, taking last week completely off showed me that, as they say, anything that makes your face red (like physical exertion) will worsen your rosacea. Another thing I noticed was that not ONCE did my plantar fascitis bother me. It usually hurts a little when I'm doing basic yoga poses like warrior, but last week, not one step or moment was tinged with any pain in my heel.

While my upper body of course lost tiny ground fitness-wise, I'm amazed to say that I did 3, 1-leg squats on each leg without once bringing the lifted leg down, just up and down with that leg in the air. I got about 6 total that way on each leg, which I can assure you is a record these days.

I've decided after my tabata I'll just do stress relieving yoga. In the one I tried today, the woman told us some affirmations. The first two were fine: "I am at home in my body, and all is well," and ""Every decision I make is the right one for me,"

But the 3rd one really threw me for a loop: "I love every cell in my body." All I could think was, there are immune cells in my body that went rogue and have been fucking me up for 7 years. I can't love those cells, I'm fighting those cells and the shit they do! I have to fight this shit. And then, I suddenly thought, that whole self-acceptance thing is to accept your flaws with everything else. Accept that I'm broken? That's what it feels like. How can I accept that and not feel like shit?

So, self acceptance is accepting this and not fighting it? That would probably allow me to stop resenting my health issues. But that goes against everything I thought I was supposed to do.

Just to grind the point home, she added: "In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole, and complete. I no longer choose to believe in old limitations and lack. I now choose to begin to see myself as the universe sees me: perfect, whole, and complete." Which again really upset me because I thought, how could I be seen that way when so much shit is wrong with me?

Though I guess it's funny that my conscious mind thinks, "fight!" when my body's already fighting itself. I'm fighting fighting with fighting. Writing it out makes it seem like a pretty wrong-minded approach. Also? I find it really funny that when I get upset I really feel it in my throat, I guess near my thyroid. Though I guess everyone does, hence getting choked up, and then another funny thing is that Marcelina and me (I think?) were both told by our Peruvian spiritual guide that he felt we both had blockages in our throats.

Well, anyway, that's where I am. It's one thing to know you have to accept the bad and good when you passively hear it and aren't preparing to act on it; it's another when you are confronted with actually doing it. It's an extremely hard concept to swallow. Thoughts?

Change of Plans

Originally, for Christmas, I was going up to the Pyeonghon region (I could look it up, but it really can be a bitch to get the wifi to move along like a good little doggy at school). My friend Jennifer was wrangling people together, where we’d stay near a big park & ski resort, and all eat dinner at Jennifer and her father’s (I guess) rather large room there (God knows it was expensive!). And I wondered about doing the reliability of booking.com’s distance markers, and did my best to double check it, but Jennifer just found out today that a few of us, me included, were lied to by booking.com about how close we were to her. So we’d have to scrounge up taxis or see if there was a shuttle bus available to the park where she’s staying.

November was a very expensive month for me, what with those extra expenses that I THOUGHT I’d budgeted for but clearly hadn’t. Already, I’m hopefully seeing a new dermatologist on Friday, and the 2 nights in Pyeongchon was going to be another 168,000 won. Not to mention the 80,000 I’m sending tomorrow night to the girl who sold me her oven (which I spent a few hours on Saturday getting it as clean as I could, leaving me wondering if millennials know how to clean). And while nothing is definitive for my birthday, it being my 40^th, the one thing I was thinking of was going to a really nice hotel for the weekend, maybe having friends visit and drink and eat chocolate and nonsense there, and/or go to one of the premiere cocktail bars in Seoul. Oh, and I TOTALLY NEED a shelf on which to put the oven so I’m no longer baking on my floor. Which means, oh you know, money. Not to mention the money I need to ship off every month to pay my bills back home. So, financially, cancelling the trip was kind of a relief. The other thing is, I just don’t mind being alone for any extended period of time, even at Christmas, mainly because Christmas is nice, but it’s not the holiday I care about the most. I spent Christmas at home one year and made a big paleo feast. What with my sweet oven that I’ll be using every day this week, my slow cooker, and saving money on the hotel and expense of getting to, from, and around Pyeongchon, I’m totally fine with staying home.

So there we are with that. Aaron got a promotion in Army (nod to Buster in Arrested Development), so he’s moving to the bigger and nicer officer’s quarters. Or something. Maybe it isn’t officer’s quarters since he was already a staff sergeant, but he’s really excited because it’s twice the size of his old place and has a kitchen. I’m thinking it may also include his own private bathroom (instead of the one he shared with his neighbor. Thank God they were both good at keeping it clean). He was moving this weekend, so I’m going to see it on Saturday.

Lastly, I am actually enjoying the Sunday English lesson, even though it does mean getting up early on Sunday and making impossible my attending anything else in the afternoon, including the jimjilbang outing I was SOO looking forward to. And God knows were they LIFESAVERS during my month-of-running-out-of-money-super-fast. My sister needlessly reminded me that they’re open 24 hours. I haven’t gone to one yet because:

1. Going on the weekends would, I think, mean they’d be super crowded;
2. I’m not getting up early during the week to relax so that I don’t want to go to work, and I can’t go after work because that’s when I eat and workout;
3. I’ve heard enough stories of expats not being let in because we’re foreigners. There are clubs who won’t let foreigners in, and there are jimjilbangs where you have problems too. Not that many, from what I’ve seen, but it has happened. I could tolerate it more with company, particularly if someone with me speaks Korean (plus we were going to a nice one in Seoul with an English page, so it seemed like a safer bet).

Ohhh, I could totally go the week of my vacation!

See that? That 168,000 won I’m not spending on the hotel was already spent a while ago. Though jimjilbangs are pretty cheap, so at least there’s that.

Anyway, we’ve been having our English lesson at the apartment of one woman, who made kimchi jjigae (stew) for me because I love it. We discussed my rosacea quite a bit for some reason, and next week, she’s going to make kimchi pancakes but with rice flour instead of wheat.

Ohhh, and yeah, speaking of, I was off my diet last week because I couldn’t afford to buy food to make for lunch. And the antibiotic I was using for the rosacea stopped working a good 2-3 weeks ago. That dermatologist wouldn’t prescribe anything else. And my skin is an absolute mess. So, I’m trying everything on the natural sites I can til hopefully better options on Friday: meditating to alleviate stress; consuming turmeric and ginger; doing the oil cleansing method so my skin won’t get so dry; and backing off wheat, dairy, and what the hell eggs for this week too. Plus I’ll just do some yoga instead of my usual HIIT workouts, because exercise can be another aggravator, believe it or not. I’ve always known that, but it’s my workout, so I’ve just ignored it. It’s fine, I was probably due a recovery week of sorts anyway.

In January we start the winter intensive where we all get to come in Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays for almost all of January at 10 instead of 1:30. I’ll, of course, be doing the little kids for 2 hours. Not enough kids signed up in July, but I’m pretty sure I won’t escape this time either. Which sucks, EXCEPT for that whole getting-paid-extra part. That I wouldn’t mind at all. For this reason, Sandra said this coming Sunday is our last class. That didn’t last long at all! The other reason it’s ending is because Sandra’s leaving the school at the end of January, and she’s not sure if Sue would be ok with our classes when Sandra no longer works here. Honestly, I’m thinking maybe I’ll suggest we can still meet, and just do an English lesson lunch, because I really do enjoy the ladies. 

Irritants

I figured it was time to update (again) on all things Jen since they have changed somewhat.

Let's see!! Ok, first, wanted to go to an endocrinologist in Suwon, and made an appointment with the MUCHO helpful English assistants there. The only problem is, I'm not on the national insurance plan. Prior to this appointment, that was no big deal. It was something of a big deal to get to this hospital, taking a good 1-1.5 hours, which it not being Seoul, is a little much. But get in to see him, and tell him my current dosage, which is 250 mg. He was astonished, and said that was extremely high for someone my weight. This doesn't really surprise me. Since I'd eaten before coming in, he wanted me to come in the next day for a blood test, then next week for an appointment to discuss results. Plus gave me a week's worth of meds.

I go back the next day, and luckily you have to pay before you have anything done. Now, Sophia, the English assistant (who even showed up in the waiting room!), had warned me that I'd have to fork over whatever money was required. Which was fine, because that's been in the $150 range up to now. But that day, I don't know WHAT he was going to have them do with my blood, but it was going to cost 415,000 won. Which is, well with the won being in free fall now, probably only $375 or so, but still, I was NOT, NOT NOT NOT expecting anything like that. If you want me to pay such an exorbitant amount, I'd gonna need a warning and some time to get money squirreled away for that. So I said no way, canceled the appointment next week, and went ahead to the Itaewon Foreigners Clinic. This is the doctor I went to for anti-anxiety meds who was unaware & unconcerned if the meds would interfere with my thyroid meds. So he ordered blood test, gave me 100 days' worth of my meds at the 250 level, and sent me on my way, with the pleasant surprise that he'd email me the test results.

Unsurprisingly, for the first time in my life, I'm hypERthyroid, so he told me to knock back down to 200. Easier said than done, because the more nuanced levels we have in the west (I was at 137 for 2-3 years) don't exist here. No, you have 50 and 100. 150 was closest to 137, but that wasn't working anymore, so up we went to 200. But the (different doc, at a clinic that moved but hasn't posted where yet, so no way to reach them) doc said I was STILL a little low, so up to 250. So maybe 210 or 225 would be better? Well, we'll never know, since that would require me doing a much better job of splitting the pills with my knife than I've been able to thus far. And the genius at the Itaewon Clinic prescribed 150 and 100 mg pills, instead of 50s and 100s, so once again, to go down to 200, I'd have split some of the 100s. I meant to ask at school if the pharmacists would take them back and split them themselves since the doc said to go down.

All of this also happened around the time I'd gone to the bank on Tuesday night to take out cash (80,000 won) to buy an oven from a departing expat! But I apparently didn't have that much in my account. Nope, I had 63,000. For about 2 weeks. Apparently, when I took into account the extra spending I'd do for the hotel for the ball, I didn't account for the extra doc visits, and that did me in. I was able to fill the prescription and pay my electric bill, but that all took it down a bit more. I'm currently at about 10,000, I'd estimate, but luckily my friend Lisa here told me she uses Western Union to transfer money, because it's only $15, compared to the $35 or so that my bank charges me. I had about $100 extra floating in my US account, but because I opened it while here, I don't have the ATM card (not that I'm even sure I can use it abroad, since I just found out that I can't make international transfers from it). Fortunately, Mark helped his super-cash-strapped sister, and since I wasn't getting the same options as him due to not using a VPN for the US options, I transferred the cash to him & he sent me through Western Union.

Which brings us to our NEXT adventure, having to find these banks. There are banks around me that have Western Union, but I don't know where they are. The addresses don't mean much to me, even though they're all in English. My map app wasn't finding those addresses, but it did find one. When I got there, though, no, they don't have Western Union. But it seemed to be a question they got a lot, because there was a little map printed out that she gave me. Which would be helpful if I could find street names and knew exactly which way to from there, but that wasn't the case. She sweetly put the address into google maps, though google maps isn't very helpful because it isn't really used here so not always accurate, but more than that, it always shows a diagonal line from where you are to where you're going, rather than the street routes you need to take.

That's ok, I'll do my best-- at least until my phone died with 77% battery. Lately it shuts down if I'm using any app and it's at 30%, but this was a new hell to contend with. I had my portable charger, but it was having trouble recognizing it was being charged. It was back to 70%, so I shut off all the apps, and was lucky enough to see that the corner I was on, trying to figure out how to get to the place the woman was trying to direct me to, was named after a bank that was listed on the Western Union site. I went in & waited, with just the notes open with the Korean translation which seemed to be making enough sense to get across what I needed. In 4 minutes of sitting inside, it lost 40% power. SOooo, apparently I also need a new phone! Awesome. Because I DEFINITELY don't have the money now (though I do have 114,000 won left after buying eggs and broccoli last night, thanks to the influx from my US account), but even with money, that shit's ridiculously expensive here.

The phone is fine today, and someone mentioned cold weather, so maybe it's that. Who knows.

What I DO know is that in addition to everything else I'm switching dermatologists. The guy I was seeing here trained in the west (please see my previous post about dermatologists here), but has been doing the usual: antibiotics for the pimple-like cystic shit on my chin. That worked... for two months, but now it doesn't again. Big surprise, antibiotics are not good to be on long term, though I was for a decade for the acne of my youth. I know that, and in Chile that guy knew it, and gave me an anti-inflammatory which worked just fine. When I asked this guy to do that, he said no, this was the only course of treatment for it, and something about needing to stay off of steroids with rosacea. Huh. Had no idea the 2 are the same. Found another clinic that apparently was recognized by the US Department of Defense because so many military people used it, so we'll see how that goes.

Other than that, just amazed at the shit show Trump got himself and the US into by accepting a call from the Taiwanese president. I had no idea that was our policy, but am not surprised by it, especially since Taiwan hasn't officially declared independence anyway. But I don't love kowtowing to those nut jobs, even though it is so massive population and economy-wise. While we're on the subject, I'd like the thank China for being such an enormous influence throughout Asia that lots of Asia, Korea included, have plenty of Chinese customs. In addition to a Confucian approach to education and society, Koreans have the noisy eating custom. You know, it was never a big deal, but after 11 months, it is. The longer I'm here, the more I think, could you PLEASE, at least TRY to chew SOMETHING with your mouth closed? I can deal with the noodle-slurping somehow, but eating like a cow is really fucking getting to me. Not enough to say anything, lol. It's a cultural thing and not my place, even if there's an official name in English for people who despise noisy eaters because it's such a thing. There are so many things that don't align here vs home. We have to offer an extra 6 hours/week of classes in January, provided I get students to sign up for mine, which I will now since they know me. I have to think of lessons. One I thought of was manners, because none of my students except the advanced middle schoolers know the word "rude," and it's not the middle-schoolers who are rude. I'm forging ahead because I have no idea what else to do there, but it's all a cultural lesson. Chew with your mouth closed? That's a Western thing, they don't do that here. Say, "Excuse me," when you bump into someone? Again, that's us in the West, here they don't, which still does annoy me. The number of things that turn out to be cultural are astounding. I'm sure I mentioned the leaf pile thing? I had to write a fall-themed conversation for a young class. So I wrote about one of the kids liking to jump in leaf piles. But the kids didn't get it, because:

1. They don't have yards, they live in apartments;
2. So no one has to rake up the leaves that fall;
3. And they have lots of ginkgo trees, which have the smelly seeds, so they probably wouldn't be encouraged to jump into those anyway.

I thought it was dependent on seasons, but nope! Hay rides, leaf piles, Veterans Day/Armistice Day... none of these things are things here. So, as you see, the cultural adjustments continue unabated. I think I'm just too stubborn to acclimate to the point where here is normal so that reverse culture shock will ever be a thing. I like the kind I had after coming back from South America, where everything was delightful because it was fully intelligible to my mainly monolingual ears, and everything was easy, food was tasty, and shit was just the way it's supposed to be. For me. An American who loves America for a couple months, then has to get the hell out. Yeah, I have no idea either. Jason is moving to Chicago, he said he just really doesn't like cities, and begged me to drop my contract and come back so he could be happy in Chicago. And then I said yeah, but I like the school and being able to pay off debt, but then we're right back to that whole me getting bored to death there. Maybe it'd help if Jason's there, since we got each other through the hell of Santiago, but I'm not sure. For his part, he just got a job, and after Chile he just doesn't want to leave the US again. Jesus, what the fuck show will do to you. Lol. 

Well, you've endured a long enough post. Until next time when I have too much shit to report.

Ahhh, the little things!

Those sometimes fun & entertaining or pesky & irritating little things. Little things like the stairs that you must use to cross some streets, which were built by some mysterious race of people who are FAR, far shorter than I, the Koreans, and possibly the pygmies, yet the height of these stairs was made to the scale of this mysterious race of super-short people.

 Unless they're supposed to be ramps with super angular bumps in them? They're just deep enough that your foot fits, but their height is the perfect height to be a rather tremendous bother. Why are they this height? And why, then, are the stairs inside buildings so damned high? It's like doing box jumps, for God's sake.

Another little thing is that I now have to subsist largely on pork because the chicken at the store isn't tasty. What do they feed the chickens, garbage and flavorless corn? I'm honestly surprised there can be these big differences in flavors for the same animal. My Koreans students went to the US & one said that the pork there wasn't very good. I was puzzled by this, until now. I guess Korea has better pork, hence they eat much more of it. A good example would be the departments at the store. Here is the chicken section at the Lotte Mart, a pretty big Target-like store here:

And here is the one for pork.

 I know you can't see it, but that entire square is different cuts of pork. The only section as big or bigger would be the fish, which I'll have to photograph one day, though also record, since the guys working in the fish & meat sections yell all day. There are tanks with lobsters & crabs, or bins full of SUPER fresh crabs, beautiful fish, the whole seafood section smells like the ocean.

Another little thing is having a good hair day when I didn't leave my apartment all day except to get more pork. As is the fact that the A, Z, Q, 1, caps lock & tab keys on my keyboard no longer work, so I have to use my on-screen keyboard for those letters. & yet, who knows how long it'd take whoever fixes computers here to fix that? I'd have to go up to Seoul & that's SUCH an undertaking.

My freezer is very little. It's smaller than a shoebox (bottle for reference)

& that's after I turned the temp down so the wall of frost would shrink & give the small top shelf of my fridge a bit more room, but also a lot more water since the small defrost meant the wall of frost melting. I'll take a pic of that too, so you can see why a freezer is on my shopping list, right below an oven. What I wouldn't give for an oven, though I just got a crock pot last weekend & am using it a hell of a lot already.

Tomorrow after giving a private English lesson to one of the teachers at my school & some of the women at her sister-in-law's meditation studio @ 11, and why YES, IS super-early for me, particularly on a Sunday! She asked me in front of the whole studio, what could I say? Then they'll treat me to lunch, which would be lovely except that Sandra can't seem to remember I can't eat anything here since there's wheat in practically everything. Though this close to Thanksgiving, I'm lots more flexible. While I can't actually go to any dinners on Thursday or Friday because I work til 10, & Saturday is the lonnnng-awaited St. Andrew's Ball, which we're very much hoping that my gowns will arrive in time for. Kristin kept forgetting to send them, which is very understandable due to her having 3 kids! Plus shipping's expensive anyway. My lovely friend Dannie reminded me that postage to send to Aaron on base is cheaper, so we had her send the package there. They don't express to bases, unfortunately, though the guy at the post office was confident it would arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday here. We shall see. The very good news is that if by chance they don't, which worried me a lot because I did't want to have to buy dresses & spend MORE money is that 2 women on the expat women in Korea site have dresses I can borrow for free, just have to pick the one up tomorrow.

***********

And now it is tomorrow, or of course today  but yesterday's tomorrow. I have the dress, which fits perfectly, & also have some paleo baked goodies! This sweetheart of a woman enjoys baking in her spare time, posted to the expat women page offering her services, & she was up to experimenting with paleo. Next up I'm going to send her some money so she can buy the ingredients & create a recipe of her own choosing.

The English lesson was actually fun-- Sandra had found a whole list of excellent conversation topics, so today's was the first on the list, how important money is to you, including which is more important, love or money; and do you think you could be happy if you were poor? Interesting conversations.

Well, I guess the only other thing of interest is that the guy I was quasi-seeing in Chile is still getting in touch every 2 months or so. He misses me more each time I hear from him, which is oddly increasing now, when I really want to know where was all this ardor when I was there? Trying to see him regularly was like herding cats, a strange metaphor for this example, yet it feels perfectly apt when applied to Joel. 

OH, there WAS one last thing: I'd discussed this with Mark. Got a reduced rate for the night of the ball at the Grand Hyatt, where it's being held. The price is around $150,000 won lower... but it's still 200,000 won. When I was looking at google maps, it was showing hotels close by that were quite a bit cheaper, so I thought, since I won't be there in the room to enjoy it 200,000-won-worth, I shouldn't stick with that room. However, it turns out that the cheaper rates were for those nights, the night I was looking, a Tuesday. Now the prices are the same or only 50,000 won cheaper. Given the need to then get a cab to them, I'm thinking I may as well just stick with the pricier but much more convenient on-site room. Don't worry, you'll hear all about it in a later post. 

Oh yeah. Taiwan.

Don’t know why, but I suddenly remembered I never wrote about my trip to Taiwan to visit Mercedes & Andy. I’d say the trip had more personal significance than anything else. It was really just to see Mercedes & Andy, with the added bonus that Mercedes & I were going to go through our high school reunion page because ffs, it has been 20 years since we graduated.

First impressions, I have to say I really liked the airport. Second, it was hot & humid, & Mercedes & Andy assured me that the temperature had dropped since the week before. They have a pretty nice place, though I’ll admit I was surprised it was so small because that’s not usually Mercedes’ MO when it comes to traveling. It was nice, & surprisingly educational because I learned that their washer was also a dryer, but the dryer has no settings, except what should be called scorched, as the dryer has burned holes into their sheets. Hanging them to dry as their neighbors do isn’t an option, because they hang their clothes on lines out the windows. The humidity will definitely not let them dry, but the other issue is, most horrifying to me, that their cockroaches fly.

Taipei struck me as pretty clean & modern. The people, few that there were because it was a Lunar holiday so most people were gone, struck me as overall pretty good-looking—better-looking than the Koreans, which is funny because Korean dramas are very popular there, & I was told they think a lot of the stars are really good looking. So, it was far too small a sample of people to get much of an idea of anything except my terror of the cockroaches covering the sidewalks at night. I can’t tell you how terrible I feel for Mercedes having to witness every scream & jump that occurred really every few feet every night. Apparently when the Taipeians are away the sidewalks are theirs.

I also learned a lot about Mandarin, which Mercedes & Andy were staying in Taiwan to study. For one thing, there are 2 scripts. Simplified, which is the one used in mainland China now, which came from the Cultural Revolution. And classic, which of course has lots more lines & is what is used in Taiwan. Basically, as you’d guess, simplified was supposed to make the ornate characters simpler, to make reading & writing easier. Their friends in Taiwan suggested they study classic because it’s what’s used there & would allow them to read simplified too. Funnily enough, that seems only to be true to native speakers, because honestly, to my totally untrained eye & Mercedes’, uh, much more studied eye, there is little resemblance at all, so they can’t read simplified, & switched to that—the impetus for Mercedes to learn Chinese was working in China all those years but never being able to speak it. Initially, it was so when she went back to visit she could better communicate, but she is considering working for a year or two, if she can, so that they money spent on travelling the world could be made back & put toward building her own home, as she has always wanted.

Leaving the reading and writing, then you get into the tones. Well, sort of. We’ve all heard it’s a tonal language, so yes, the tones help dictate the meaning of the word. But more than that, it’s also, even more so, a contextual language. Mercedes showed me the meaning of one tone’s “yo” sound. This one sound with that particular tone had no less than 60 different meanings, some of which even contradicted each other. You also may have heard that there is no past tense in Chinese. For tense & the one meaning that the speaker intended for pretty much every word/sound they utter requires using the rest of the sentence or sentences around it. Hence, Mercedes could never just give one sentence in an email to her coworkers to translate, because it could mean any vast number of things when there are no other sentences around it to tell them if this sentence is about shirts, women, boats, the sun, a leader, a loser, yellow, flies, or God only knows what. Nevertheless, they were both doing well using the language, especially Andy who was studying a bit more consistently than Mercedes, & seemed to be really latching on to the different rules, etc.

We took a cooking class, making various kinds of dumplings, & shockingly my absolute favorite was the sesame seed dessert ones. & I learned that juniper berries are an awesome addition to dishes, only not when they’re green because eating them causes stomach cramps.

Our sesame dumplings

      

Drinks menu & dumplings at restaurant

Otherwise, Mercedes & I spent a good amount of time on our class’ reunion page, where pics from the reunion neither of us attended were. There were a lot of surprises, mainly in how Mercedes, who could never remember the names of people she’d worked with for years, only knowing them by the nicknames she gave them, was suddenly remembering more names of people than I did. This is unprecedented in the 20-some years we’ve been friends. Not only was she the one remembering names & jogging my memory, but she could often place the faces that had changed a lot in 20 years to those names. For the love of God, she remembered this guy Tom that I always called TJ, who ate lunch with me & some friends junior or senior year of high school (she rarely, or never, ate with us because she graduated early, so had more classes). She’s also friends with a lot more people on facebook than I am, so was updating me on them.

I really enjoyed high school, & I never thought I’d never forget pretty much anyone. So the fact that 10 & now 20 years had erased all but my immediate friends was really surprising.

There was one more surprise though, & that was my somewhat new & very different feelings about people from the LHS reunion pics who had also gone to my elementary school. Everyone who was in 6^th grade at St. Luke’s except for Katie, the other girl who was severely harassed along with me, was grouped in with the worst offenders, & I wanted nothing to do with any of them, at all, ever. They were all guilty by association. So when I was still an infrequent user of fb & got a friend request from a girl who I really don’t remember adding to the list of people making my life hell, I was outraged. Did she not remember what happened? How exactly could you forget? No one could avoid it, they could just ignore it at best or join in. But even probably 5-7 years ago, that wasn’t enough for me to see your nonparticipation as not guilty. So I was very surprised to see a comment from the boy I’d had a crush on during the first half of 6^th grade, and think not only that I had no bad feelings toward him (he hadn’t been one of the harassers), but more to the point, felt curious about him.

For a week I couldn’t stop thinking about how I kind of wanted to at least send a friend request, but wasn’t completely sure I should since it was so unprecedented for me to want to reach out to anyone at school that year. I scrolled through his friend list, & none of the offenders were there. I decided to send it. From what I could see of his profile, he was rarely, if ever, on there, so maybe he wouldn’t even see it, never mind consider it.

Usually when I send a request to someone I haven’t seen in years, I send a short message too. I didn’t send one to Jeff, because I still couldn’t figure out what exactly I would say. It was another few weeks after he accepted the request that I finally just said I wondered how he was doing. He wrote back—he seems to be a very laid-back guy who paid no attention to English class & punctuation. In any event, I’m surprisingly glad I did it.

Weirdly, a couple of months ago I started dealing with a lot of leftover feelings from that year, mainly in the way of recognizing that doing the typical victim thing & turning all the feelings on myself had been the wrong thing to do, & working on forgiving myself for doing that. Since then, the rest of life has taken over & I haven’t ruminated on what happened or the fallout since. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll finally be able to leave the past in the past.