Waiting

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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A bit of a prologue

I am sitting on my couch in exotic Shrewsbury, MA.


So... nope, I have not left yet, but I am going to start posting if only so I don't have to stare at the mistitled "Soon So Come" of my coming soon entry.

I have included the following in each and every journal / blog that I have ever had, but it is most relevant to this journal. Quite simply this was my Alpha-Adventure; the one that began it all for me. I have climbed mountains, I have drifted through the Bronx and Harlem and stared at a frozen Niagra Falls. I have been to Rome and Milan. I have seen the battlefields of America.  I've spent weeks in the mountains and valleys of northern Greece and pounded stakes into its clay. I have been abandoned in Mexico City and found myself in a doorless motel in Acapulco. I have done many things and hope to do many more, but it all comes back to this. It is a fitting starting point.

I have left it largely intact, meaning it remains as gushy and vague as it was when I first wrote it many years ago. I have given it a once over for the sake of getting rid of any blatant spelling errors. Enjoy, add me, comment.

My "adventures" are, as a rule, never adventures... they're just sort of happenings that help pass dull days... then something to think of, which will at the most make me smile... but the other day, oddly enough I had an adventure. the "little beach hike" taken by Brandon and myself ended up being a 20 mile trek to the border of Maine- complete with bloody legs, torn and blistered feet, hunger, thirst, etc... looking back, we could have easily died at least twice not even counting getting hit by a car. I still have that map; whose note of "map not to proportion" we saw 20 miles after we should have... I still have the tattoo... I still have the sore foot and the lumps from the massive bug bites we got in the marshlands in Rye... Rye is positively the largest coastal small town on earth. I smile at the fact that after walking 15 miles, we were dragging our dirty bloody feet on the side of a road when a RED-BULL truck practically hit us... only to have the driver ask us "Do you need some ENERGY!?" and give us RED BULLs. I still cant believe we hitch hiked with two kids who, although very nice, were also very drunk. and I cant believe even more that that wasn’t our last instance of hitch hiking... this time with old drunk lesbians... one of which had recently gotten out of 9 days in a maximum security prison... and in between references to PAY IT FORWARD and good deeds upon others, jokes of cutting us into itty bitty pieces and throwing us into the marshes were made.... and its still funny... that after 20 miles of walking, 20 miles of riding in cars with strangers, we came back to an amazing Hampton night... with a hole in the clouds... before midnight... it was transcendental... to sit on the cool sands, and rest out legs under the stars... with the surf roaring and breeze blowing... as teens smoked down by the water, or played foot ball... and to sit there and talk and revel in the epiphanies that such a night can have... that everything works out. that at 11pm, when you find yourself in a strange city after hours and hours of blisters and bugs, road races, rain, trash bag rain protection, 20 miles off of only 2 hot dogs and Gatorade, swimming in cold water just to cool down, washing in a run off pipe, after walking all day... and deciding to walk back all night, just to avoid a dreamless night on a cold evening with only a long-sleeved tee... that after a THOROUGHLY bad idea and a 20 mile hike in sandals or bare feet... the night ended better than we could’ve imagined, that before midnight we would find ourselves once again on the sands of Hampton beach... drinking smoothies and smoking peach flavored cigars...alive and safe... and HAPPY!!! forgetting our feet and legs and drenched and dirty clothes, we were laughing at it all, hysterically, and looking for non existing words to describe it all... and in the back ground... that hippie kid playing guitar... it was like a movie... a bit funny how in a way, Brandon and my summer ended on the same beach it started on... down to the parking spot. and the whole experience... like Brandon said... just showed that everything works out. and that’s such a clichéd statement... but it just hit me hard that night... that even when its at its worst, even when it seems that at the very best... there’s a very unpleasant walk ahead... in the end... it’ll all be fine.. it all works out in the end... in the most amazing sublime ways... and I don’t know, this seems so cliché... but its just that when we were sitting on the beach, with the beach combers driving by... laughing and talking... it was so obvious that if we let the situation completely destroy us, if we were walking in absolute misery beyond our jokes... if we let ourselves get brought down by hurt feet, or simple mistakes... we wouldn’t have had the awesome ending to that night... instead of sitting in a sort of still speechless euphoria... we'd be sitting there all pissed off... well aware of our pains and dwelling on them... and I’m just happy that’s not what happened... so if nothing else... our little hike just went to show that its hard as it might be, in the end life will turn out fine, in fact better than we expect when we're in our worst moments... and knowing that... its easier to deal with the situations and dramas of life... that in the end... as hard, or confusing, or painful, or complicated the beginning of a day is... in the end, it’ll just be something to smile about and be happy that it did in fact work out...that in the end... the best nights are worth the long days


and the tattoo on my back will remind me of that... it had meaning to me before... but after it all... after the walking, the joking, the epiphanies... it means even more... and I was worried that id regret getting it the second I did, but I don’t... I’m very happy that I got it...

Ok, in my defense I had not yet begun my journalism studies and apparently had no idea as to the use of ellipses. Someday I will fix it up and someday Brandon and I will write a joint version, but until then this will work just fine.

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