Fastball - The Way

I'd forgotten this song existed, but suddenly it was in my head when I woke up about a week ago, and I haven't been able to get it out since.

I heard you say it. Will my iced Americano be special now? Don't assume I'm not taking bus number 9. These days I function at 10% but I didn't need evening class to learn 외국인.

I know you noticed the long skirt I wore last week Friday. Stop watching me. If you have not been my friend until now then it is too late. There are too many things I will no longer explain. It's true that I do not wear short skirts; it's because I'm hiding something.

Do not project your desire for a foreign lover onto me. I will not marry your son. You think I look better with long hair, don't you? I will not marry your church's best choirboy. I know

you have decided I'm lonely but it is not the kind you've imagined. I know you have good reason to think I do not speak your language.

sometimes I desire to set myself on a stage in front of all of my school

while I eat a bowl of spicy noodles with chopsticks.

It's just that, you know, you'd think that everyone would have all discovered a long time ago that I can eat with chopsticks. Really, what did you think I've been doing in the school cafeteria all this time? We've been to the cafeteria together, we've been to fancy staff dinners together. I have not tried to hide my eating habits. Why is it still a novelty that I use chopsticks well?

As part of my application to renew my contract here, I had an open class yesterday (with my principal, vice-principal, all of my co-teachers, and the English department from a different school all watching me). I haven't gotten any official news yet, but so far the feedback seems to be favorable.

Next, I have an interview. Then I'll sign a new contract. Then I'll get a new health check. Then I'll renew my visa.

I'm pretty sure I'm happy about the prospect.

aigoo, you worked hard.

1. carve your name and the name of your village into the wall you have built, so that if it falls down we will be able to hold you accountable.

2. bow 108 times when you wake and 108 times before you go to bed. On Saturday, bow 3000 times.

3. climb the mountain. Do the hard thing.

4. do not take a picture.

5. hold my hand platonically. I will not know you are my friend if you do not caress me.

6. let's do it together. Let's take a picture.

1 분 vs. 1 초

Someone put their hands on my head for the first time in over a month today, and then 3 more people did the same thing with varying degrees of firmness.

Then I cried (a little, a lot), the first time I've let anyone see me cry since I got to Korea 7 1/2 months ago.

Here are the reasons I can think of for needing (wanting?) to cry in front of U Young-Hee and I So-Yeon (gg#2) so urgently:

1. after school classes making me feel worthless as a teacher again, how can I manage this new environment?

2. guilt seeping in when you tell me you miss me, sometimes I wonder if I am a bad person for finding it so easy to leave Michigan and the U.S. and you, sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who found it difficult to leave things behind

3. I've been feeling a little fragile lately, as though I've perpetually just eaten tongue (@warmandbarky)

4. it's been a long time since I cried in front of someone, maybe it was time and maybe I knew that U Young-Hee and I So-Yeon were safe people to cry in front of and also that no one would think it strange if I felt many deep emotions while their hands were on my head

and then he told me I was a god

6 Feb. 2010

I've been dreading this movement but now I am moving (because it is time to move) and it feels like coming home a little, somewhere along the line airports ceased to be confusing and unknown places and became something like my comfort zone. Once more I am not searched at customs, though I have a shaving razor in my carry-on and I'm carrying several hundred dollars of converted currency that I was really supposed to report. #privatemeat is a cheese "whopper" in the lounge outside customs, I guess I eat cheeseburgers now

if I still have enough ₩ for wine. On the bus from Seoul I teared up briefly - it felt like I was leaving Korea - I am leaving Korea. Passport control asked me if I was coming back to Korea and I said yes - that's true, and I'm positive I projected the vulnerability in her tone. How strange that there is even the option to not come back but outside of my job there is nothing really to hold me here and I don't know why I am cleaving so tightly to Korea when it was so easy to leave Michigan.

15 Feb. 2010

They'll serve my cappuccino after I finish my panqueque 55, they don't drink coffee with food here. Korea doesn't drink any beverages with food, unless it's alcohol (I'm thinking about Korea a lot here). I've only just found out that Argentina is usually considered a third-world country, I'm not even sure what that means. The fact of my American privilege more obvious than it has ever been before (more obvious than in Korea? where I am given a job only for speaking English, where even the oldest person at the table sometimes treats me as the honored guest. I have things these people do not have and have no expectation of ever having. (Not all of the people, I mean, I don't know what I mean.

16 Feb. 2010

("Oh! Girls from Michigan are beautiful!") I imagine that everyone who sees me and Audra together here forms the assumption that all girls in Michigan don't shave their armpit hair. I finally managed to keep my eyes closed the whole time with two of the leaders, maybe I didn't even want to open them

Told me I was so tall and beautiful that if I would only dance my height (instead of trying to fit myself to the height of my leaders) I would have the world at my feet because I am a god ("sos Dios"?)

17 Feb. 2010

"Hola Leo, dame un poco de tu fuego" -Oscar, I don't know what it is about me that makes all the middle-aged porteños think I'll respond to the most saccharine and obvious pickup lines they can muster. "La vida es corta" is another

FUCK TANGO IS THE WORST THING EVER FOR MY SELF-CONFIDENCE IS THIS REALLY WHAT I NEED NOW?

24 Feb. 2010

I wonder if Korea will feel like home when the plane lands. I feel like a raw nerve right now - we're on the highway out of BsAs, I don't know if I'm ready for my sense of reality to shift again so soon. Nelly Furtado "I'm like a bird" just started playing in the taxi, we're at the toll booth. I'll definitely blog about that when I get home.

There's a strong "tow wind" which has "decreased our flight time substantially" - to 8 hours! Originally, flight time was 12 hours between Buenos Aires and Johannesburg, or something like that (though I can't be sure, flight lengths and times have been blending together these days) and I thought: OMG! only 8 hours! what a relief!

Turbulence is a side-effect of the strong tow wind, they've told us. I like the turbulence when it happens, it reminds me that there is a world outside, that we do not exist in isolation in this claustrophobic space. Most of the windows are closed - the window across from me was still open for a while and I could see some sort of horizon through it (though it was dark out, and we've been above cloud-level this whole time - maybe the horizon was the line between our layer of clouds and pure sky?) I liked that horizon, but my window view is gone now. It's light out now, I can see a corner of someone's open window and the real light from it is a relief from the darkness of the cabin, though I'm the asshole who turned on my reading light while most other people are still trying to sleep - I'm sorry! I tried to sleep, really, but I couldn't and the darkness and inactivity was making my head feel too tight, I needed light and OH NO now I can't even write anymore if this pen dies.

[pen didn't die! don't worry <3]

26 Feb. 2010

I've gotten so comfortable in seat 38A, by the window, that I'm dreading leaving it a little, leaving it means I am getting terribly close to Korea, terribly close to having responsibilities again.

WHAT ABOUT THE PUPA.

but Loretta used sugar cookie dough and hers was the best in all the land

I don't expect I'll be blogging much from Buenos Aires.

OMG, I'M SUCH A LONELY DRIFTER. DON'T LOVE ME. (@warmandbarky)

alternately, "weekly" pop music profile #6: C.N. Blue.

C.N. Blue (Code Name Blue) just debuted in mid-January, and high school girls everywhere have already decided to be in love with them. Here is their only music video so far: "I'm a Loner." (@bird_esque MinHyuk [Lovely] and YongHwa [Emotional] have dyke/SuperJunior hair.)

These guys are one of a few Korean boy bands that don't dance (FT Island is another). I DO NOT APPROVE. What kind of a boy band are you if you don't have precisely choreographed mediocre dance moves (that are mesmerizing despite their mediocrity)?

I'LL TELL YOU WHAT KIND OF A BOY BAND YOU ARE: A FAKE ONE.

IT'S A PRETENSE. A MOCKERY.

(what I mean to say is, dear Super Junior: I love you and am lost without you. Plz make more music videos.)