Waiting
Tuesday, February 7
It is just past midnight on a Sunday. Tomorrow I will pick up my E2 Visa from the Korean Consulate in Newton, MA. My recruiter, a man who calls himself Steven, has told me that any day now he will send me the itinerary for my flight from Boston to Incheon. It seems real now.
It has been a long and unproductive road to this point. It seems as though it was so recently that I touched down at Logan International Airport in Boston after over a year away from home. It seems such a short time ago but it has now been nearly 9 months.
I have done next to nothing noteworthy over the past 9 months.
The weather was turning from pleasant to oppressive when I landed. I had a girlfriend and my family was so happy to see me. I saw my friends and I told my stories.
Kelly lives in China now. My family is probably fed up with the horrible mood swings and general crankiness that accompanies an utterly idle and comfortable life.
I have this memory of sitting in MJ's, an expat bar in my old city of Cheongju. I don't really remember who was there but Gavin, the only Kiwi in my main circle of friends, was talking about the difficulties of doing stand-up comedy in Korea.
"It won't translate," he said. "Nobody will know that the hell an ajumma is."
The problem with comming home after a year of living and teaching in Korea with other people from a bunch of other countries living and teaching in Korea is that you almost forget how to relate to anybody else. You tell your stories and find youself laughing your ass off by yourself, wondering where your Waygook friends are.
"I felt like I didn't belong," said my friend Tim the day after I got home. He had been home for a number of months. "Sometimes, I still don't."
It is hard to come home after something like that. Well, it isn't. When I saw my mother, father, and sister after so long it was hard not to cry. My dog lost his shit and I spent the next several weeks catching up with friends, family, TV, burritos and alcohol. I told my stories and they told theirs.
So many of my friends obtained jobs with decent pay and decent respect. A few were married, bought houses, and / or had children. I can barely take care of myself.
Close friends aside I felt myself falling by the wayside of secondary friends and vice-versa. It wasn't a bad thing; it was a natural thing. A short common history was partially eaten by the intense experience that is international friendship abroad. I couldn't relate to a year of adulthood and they couldn't relate to my year of reckless abandon.
I knew I wanted to go back to Korea almost as soon as I got back.
I put it out of my mind and occupied my time with distractions. Within a week or so of landing I was on the road with Brandon, one of my best friends and a guy I missed profoundly, down to Florida to see the one and only Hadley.
I went to the worst part of Brooklyn and deap sea fishing.
Larry from Cheonan is successful now. I saw him with Mike and Patty in Brooklyn. At the train station it was hard to recognize him: clean-shaven and dressed to the nines from work. It all seemed so different. Last time I saw him we stunk of booze and I was sleeping on his floor because he had already given away his couch.
It all came back, though. A couple months later we all went deep-sea fishing. I brought peanut-butter and jelly, Mike brought grinders. Larry from Cheonan brought a package of Oreos and a water bottle full of soju. This was at 7am.
I tried to put the feeling of wanting to go back to Korea aside. It was inconvenient. My family wanted to know my plan, Kelly wanted to know my plan, I wanted to know my plan. My plan was to blow through my money as fast as possible. I immediately went out and bought a new laptop and a giant TV despite the fact that the only TV show that I watch is AFV.
After a few months I decided that I really wanted to go back, but I was wary. Larry spent a long time telling me that it was probably a mistake. I knew he might be right. He told me that he had friends who tried for the "repeat" and it ruined it all for him. I told him to "shut up" but I knew he was right.
I sat on the idea of going back to Korea for a while because I was scared that what I actually wanted was to go back in time. I spent so many hours at Buzz in Cheongju talking to Tim and Andrew, Amanda, Amanda, Katie, Gavin, Robyn, Kim and everyone about how we would pay all the money in the world to go back to University.
It seemed as though my ideal memories of an idyllic University had been replaced by idyllic Korea. I knew this was fantasy.
Cheongju was gone. it was over for me. The vast majority of the people that made that place special were long gone. I tried to fight the urge to go back to Korea because I knew my tendency to dwell on the "good ol' days" but it all won out.
I took a job in Gangnam, one of the richest areas of Korea.
The school covers the same age-range of my old school and, while slightly bigger with 2 foreign teachers, does not have a massive / impersonal number of students.
So, tomorrow I will find out when I leave for Korea. I have done this before but still I feel anxiety and nerves saturating my core. My temper is short and I wake up with the jitters.
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It has been a long and unproductive road to this point. It seems as though it was so recently that I touched down at Logan International Airport in Boston after over a year away from home. It seems such a short time ago but it has now been nearly 9 months.
I have done next to nothing noteworthy over the past 9 months.
The weather was turning from pleasant to oppressive when I landed. I had a girlfriend and my family was so happy to see me. I saw my friends and I told my stories.
Kelly lives in China now. My family is probably fed up with the horrible mood swings and general crankiness that accompanies an utterly idle and comfortable life.
I have this memory of sitting in MJ's, an expat bar in my old city of Cheongju. I don't really remember who was there but Gavin, the only Kiwi in my main circle of friends, was talking about the difficulties of doing stand-up comedy in Korea.
"It won't translate," he said. "Nobody will know that the hell an ajumma is."
The problem with comming home after a year of living and teaching in Korea with other people from a bunch of other countries living and teaching in Korea is that you almost forget how to relate to anybody else. You tell your stories and find youself laughing your ass off by yourself, wondering where your Waygook friends are.
"I felt like I didn't belong," said my friend Tim the day after I got home. He had been home for a number of months. "Sometimes, I still don't."
It is hard to come home after something like that. Well, it isn't. When I saw my mother, father, and sister after so long it was hard not to cry. My dog lost his shit and I spent the next several weeks catching up with friends, family, TV, burritos and alcohol. I told my stories and they told theirs.
So many of my friends obtained jobs with decent pay and decent respect. A few were married, bought houses, and / or had children. I can barely take care of myself.
Close friends aside I felt myself falling by the wayside of secondary friends and vice-versa. It wasn't a bad thing; it was a natural thing. A short common history was partially eaten by the intense experience that is international friendship abroad. I couldn't relate to a year of adulthood and they couldn't relate to my year of reckless abandon.
I knew I wanted to go back to Korea almost as soon as I got back.
I put it out of my mind and occupied my time with distractions. Within a week or so of landing I was on the road with Brandon, one of my best friends and a guy I missed profoundly, down to Florida to see the one and only Hadley.
I went to the worst part of Brooklyn and deap sea fishing.
Larry from Cheonan is successful now. I saw him with Mike and Patty in Brooklyn. At the train station it was hard to recognize him: clean-shaven and dressed to the nines from work. It all seemed so different. Last time I saw him we stunk of booze and I was sleeping on his floor because he had already given away his couch.
It all came back, though. A couple months later we all went deep-sea fishing. I brought peanut-butter and jelly, Mike brought grinders. Larry from Cheonan brought a package of Oreos and a water bottle full of soju. This was at 7am.
I tried to put the feeling of wanting to go back to Korea aside. It was inconvenient. My family wanted to know my plan, Kelly wanted to know my plan, I wanted to know my plan. My plan was to blow through my money as fast as possible. I immediately went out and bought a new laptop and a giant TV despite the fact that the only TV show that I watch is AFV.
After a few months I decided that I really wanted to go back, but I was wary. Larry spent a long time telling me that it was probably a mistake. I knew he might be right. He told me that he had friends who tried for the "repeat" and it ruined it all for him. I told him to "shut up" but I knew he was right.
I sat on the idea of going back to Korea for a while because I was scared that what I actually wanted was to go back in time. I spent so many hours at Buzz in Cheongju talking to Tim and Andrew, Amanda, Amanda, Katie, Gavin, Robyn, Kim and everyone about how we would pay all the money in the world to go back to University.
It seemed as though my ideal memories of an idyllic University had been replaced by idyllic Korea. I knew this was fantasy.
Cheongju was gone. it was over for me. The vast majority of the people that made that place special were long gone. I tried to fight the urge to go back to Korea because I knew my tendency to dwell on the "good ol' days" but it all won out.
I took a job in Gangnam, one of the richest areas of Korea.
The school covers the same age-range of my old school and, while slightly bigger with 2 foreign teachers, does not have a massive / impersonal number of students.
So, tomorrow I will find out when I leave for Korea. I have done this before but still I feel anxiety and nerves saturating my core. My temper is short and I wake up with the jitters.
