Feeling the heat

I forgot to ask earlier: what is it with kids always being sticky, and then always wanting to rub their stickiness onto you? I was sneezing and had a runny nose this a.m. and my aunt thought that I had a cold but I think it's just my body being scared of germy children. Or maybe b/c I slept w/the window open b/c it was so hot. I've been sleeping on the bus to school lately b/c I'm so tired and in our last hour of class today, I had a sudden slump where I was just crazy tired. Luckily, we're learning something really easy (how to speak to people informally, rather than formally), so it didn't affect my performance too much.

{Kelsey is on the left.) I just had a nice long lunch w/Kelsey and we swapped nightmare-ish ancient history stories. Mostly, it was me telling her about mine. We also talked about how vicodin is something I might want to try someday. We have a lot of similarities, and the ways that our brains operate constantly at light speed is one of them. I tried today briefly to just take notes and not re-copy them (I've done this ever since I started undergrad), but it made me feel like a lazy slacker. I think I'll have to hold onto that habit, even if I'm not learning grammar any better that way. I did manage to finish the picture book from my cousin and am almost done w/my extra grammar book. I started doing hardcore vocab drilling, but am not sure how well it's going to work.

Oh! The fun news: I just found out today at lunch that I am NOT the oldest person in my class!!!! There is one person who is older than me by 2 months. I found out that the 19-yo boy is NOT the youngest one, either - there's an 18-yo girl!

Okay. Time to study.

I've become one of those people

who takes pictures of strangers and then posts them online. I know, dreadful. These are kids at the park I went to near home a week ago, not anyone that I'm related to. The lake is manmade, not a beach or sea or ocean. The same kids as the ones on eyes everywhere. It's just easier to take pictures of everyone else, since I'm not doing anything that requires visuals (commuting, sitting in class, studying, running away from mosquitoes). I just had lunch w/Kelsey today, which was a nice change of pace. I'm thinking that I will skip doing my homework at school, and will just tear out pages from my textbook again (b/c it's so heavy), hit the post office, and then head home. If I'm able to get apples and shower tonight AND get all my homework done, that that will have been a decent day's work.

Poor planning, but I'm no DP

Whoops. I took my camera + an extra set of batteries to the beach and both sets died before I could get out of the condo (called Ocean Castle). So, no pictures! Sorry. It's fine, though, b/c it was just a beach, nothing particularly stunning about it. Just the landforms at the ends were different from what I usually see. It was a REALLY quick trip, 24 hours from door to door. But I'm still glad that we went. After leaving school on Friday (this is the monstrosity I have to look at when I arrive, M-F. Makes me laugh every day), I walked uphill forever to get to my cousin's house. We had lunch and cleaned a little before going shopping w/her son. That alone was an adventure. Classic things like fighting about what toy he would get, wanting to sit on the floor, and dumping a half-closed bottle of Gatorade into our shopping bag. After rushing through three noodle dishes for dinner, I met my other cousin at the hospital to catch a cab to the subway to the street where we met his brother and his brother's wife, who then drove us all the way to the west coast.

[This would NOT be the west coast, but the cooking studio at school where we made a traditional Korean noodle dish during the first two hours of class.] Mystic's "W" was stuck in my head on the 2-3 hour drive west to a large island, once covered in dense pine forests, but chopped down by the Japanese for the quality of the wood right around the beginning of the Japanese colonial period in Korea. It used to only be accessible by boat but now there's a bridge. We ended up on the west coast of the island, too, in a condo w/a view of the beach. Most everyone stayed up (except for the two kids) and we had a funny conversation about how to raise kids re: language and pronunciation. It made me realize why my dad is the way he is - b/c HIS father was like that, which is why my uncle is like, which is why my cousin is like that w/his daughter right now. I like hearing family stories from other family members. It's nice to replenish the family myth bank. I hardly slept and the kids woke up at 6am just about tearing down our doors. I managed to escape the first trip out to the beach, but ended up then doing full-time duty at the swimming pool/sauna. I think I was only able to do so much swim time w/my niece b/c the pool only came up to the middle of my ribs. Then we had an amazing Japanese lunch - soooooooo much seafood. Things I've never seen before. Totally gorgeous. That was the only thing that made me sad about not being able to use my camera.

I then ran out to the beach alone and then we drove back, in time for me to feel really sick and take lots of meds and go to bed early. I only started to feel better late this afternoon after two naps, three rounds of cold medicine, and a whole carafe of homemade Korean citron tea. It was probably a mix of too little sleep, too much babysitting, too much sitting in the back seats of cars, too much A/C, and too much raw fish. But I still managed to get my homework done, even though I still don't think I've learned a lick of vocab. I keep INTENDING to 1. read the new picture book from my cousin, 2. re-write and memorize 10 pages of vocab, 3. learn grammar on my own, and 4. skim 11 volumes of Korean history. I'm just so impatient to get through books in Korean the way I do in English that I forget that I'm about 1,000 times slower at everything in Korean. I'm having a hard time accepting this.

I also feel super out of touch w/things going on back home. I just found out this morning about a high school classmate who was in a bad biking accident (he was hit by a car) and tonight's dinner conversation was mostly me trying to explain to my aunt why Angelina went to Namibia to have a baby. I feel like I'm not on my feet at all w/my language studies, not anywhere I want to be w/my research (even though I'm not technically on my research grant yet), and still confused about who I'm supposed to reach out to amongst all my family and my family's friends. I feel like I NEED so much but I'm not sure where I'm supposed to get everything I need, and not sure who I'm supposed to ask for help. Since there's so much etiquette that I'm unaware of in terms of asking for help and receiving it from specific people.

But beyond the extreme exhaustion and ungrounded feeligns, the best part about being here for a while is watching my cousins' children get to know and trust me. As cold as it was in the pool yesterday, it was important for me to hold this girl in my arms and not let her feel like she was going to drown. The fact that it would have been impossible didn't matter (she was tall enough to stand up w/o the water going over her head, and she had floaties on her arms). She was on her back and I had her back and legs supported, and then I would bounce her butt up every time it sunk down. A few times, she gripped me b/c she was scared that she was sinking, and those were the times that I would make sure that she knew, through my body, that I would never let that happen (I have a childhood experience of drowning, and drowning is actually ancestral baggage on my mother's side of the family).

Ellie-Jo and I have been emailing about vulnerability and how to find people who can let you be that way. I think I have gotten so way beyond letting myself go soft that seeing an 8-year-old totally trust me, someone she has only seen three times in her life, makes me super conscious of my responsibility to others.

Amazing what mail art will do

I've been wading through a thick inbox. Not just email, but real mail, and other things that fit into the category of things that people make to put out into the world that touch me. I am so tired from running around today and trying to do homework after that, but am so impressed by what everyone has been doing. My dad scanned mail art from Joseph and sent it to me, which was exactly what I needed to see/read. I got my second e version of Ching-In's and my collaborative. 1,000 Artist Journal Pages is going to have a show in California soon, and 500 Handmade Books is available, too.

And then after all the sweating and back stress and subway transfers and searching for buses in the haze of construction and police units and making nice w/Fulbright staff, I fell into a bus seat with the A/C blasting and opened my packages. MAGIC! I am so unaccustomed to having people send me the kind of things that I send them, so it was hard at first to take it all in. Renata sent a lovely monoprint and letter from Portugal (with fantastic stamps). Clover sent a book by Murakami, a book that I had made a long time ago and given to her that she turned into a beautiful letter/artists' book, a DVD of her thesis performance, and a little bit of nature. I'm not really able to articulate properly how excited I was by the feeling this evening of all these artists who are working SO HARD all the time, always trying to be better at what they do, learning more, sharing with others, collaborating, being honest about what they need, and putting themselves out there.

Really putting themselves out there. It makes me so happy to know that I am connected to all those people all across the world, and that there are more that I will never know, and more that I will meet soon, and more that I will meet in the faraway future, and more whose work I will fall in love with over and over again. And of course I will fall in love with them, and love them the way I love the ones who are in my life right now.

And in new ways. Makes me excited to kick off the subscription series this month. And, hello - I will get to see my first friend from NY in Korea very soon!!! Kiwon comes w/a Yale orchestra next week for a Seoul concert and Asian tour. YAY.

Pop stars in training

Agh. My schedule is all thrown off today b/c I have to run an errand today (which I don't want to do b/c afternoon is the worst worst worst time to walk around) - I have mail waiting for me at the Fulbright office. I know one is mail art from Portugal (yay!) but the other...I have no idea what it may be. So I'm going to skip doing my homework at school and have to lug books around. Tonight, I have to pack for the beach, too. I was told a couple days ago that my family is going on an overnight trip to the beach and they're taking me! Wohooo. So, tomorrow I go to school, cook Korean food for two hours (it's part of our study - we already read a chapter on how to cook this particular kind of noodle dish, and tomorrow we'll go to the kitchen in the basement and make it and eat it - one of the "fun" parts of learning Korean here), have class for two hours, and then do my homework...or go shopping w/my other cousin. Then, I'll meet my doctor cousin at the hospital and we'll go and meet his younger brother and his wife, so we can drive together to the beach. The other two carloads (or one?) will go in the afternoon.

So I am REALLY looking forward to some time away from Seoul & the vicinity. Plus, I'll get to spend more time w/the niece that liked me for having pen and ink and is REALLY smart. It's nice now that I've been here for a little bit and the kids are getting used to me - I stayed w/another cousin last night, and when her daughter came home and saw my shoes in the entryway, she said, "can it be?? Is Aimee here???" and then got all excited when she found out that I was spending the night. We had really good homemade bibimbap together for dinner and then we sat at the dining room table and drew pictures and swapped. I did a bagpipe player w/the Taj Mahal as a backdrop (he was on the cover of one of her books, and she asked me to add the Taj Mahal, from the back cover, to the drawing), and she did a flower. And then we taped them into our books. She wants me to make her one, so sometime when we have more time, I'll totally have a bookmaking session w/her.

Her little brother, when he first met met, was mad that I was taking his mom's attention away from him, and he said, "go away! Leave now!" But I think he likes me better. The last time I saw him, we took pictures w/my camera phone, and this time I was able to drag him to the bathroom and trick him into brushing his teeth and changing into his pjs. He's still light enough and agreeable enough to pick up and carry. We did some abc's, too.

The other "fun" thing we do in this language program is some kind of musical competition. I am NOT excited about this b/c it involves each class getting up on stage and singing a Korean song for everyone else and then being judged. We were trying to figure out a song, and I of course have noooooo idea what is popular right now. We were thinking of this song (w/better dancers, of course), but we decided to go with this one instead. I'm kind of mortified by both, but I guess it should be fine since EVERYONE will have to play the fool. The first song is way more fun but the dancing is hard and the words are even harder - Koreans have a hard time singing along! So we have to go w/the one that is sung in an old man style by a young man, whose title, if pronounced incorrectly, becomes an obscenity. At least, that's what I heard.

Sticky seats

When I went to the park this weekend, I saw this rainbow and it was like, "wow! I don't have to make this anymore!" I had been wanting for over two years to make an outdoor rainbow piece but couldn't figure out how to rig it w/o a rigid structure, since I wanted it to be made out of paper and just float in the air. If I could train flying creatures, maybe. But I can't. Then I saw this and realized how easily this artist dealt w/the engineering - to make two legs on one end! I mean, it's made out of metal so it's plenty rigid but I'm just glad that there's a big perma-rainbow that exists SOMEWHERE.

I'm getting a little faster at getting my homework done at school, but not much. Well, maybe not at all. It always seems so endless. Then again, I have to admit that I add a lot to the pile that no one else does: I copy all of my notes after class into a different notebook, write all my vocab words four times (as in, the words I picked up in class - both the ones I didn't know and the ones I did know but wasn't solid on the spelling), transcribe the dialogue and reading for the day, and do all the exercises for each unit in the workbook (which is a book just as huge as the textbook, but w/exercises only, no lessons). What's assigned is to make a sentence from each vocab word we were taught (different from what I do on my own), three sentences for each grammar rule, two pages in the textbook, and one longer written piece. Optional is to keep a diary in Korean. That's the one thing that I keep NOT doing since writing is such a struggle for me.

Today, I was thinking about how I now REALLY empathize w/my former violin students who struggled w/reading music. There was one in particular who had a really good ear and had been able to fake his way pretty far, but you can only get so far, esp in an orchestra setting. I would fight w/him all the time b/c I could see that he'd just listen and not read the notes. I had learned how to read music from day one of piano lessons, so I had no basis for understanding what it's like to start out all ears. Now, I am that student. I grew up HEARING Korean. I was forced to read and write a little, but hardly. It was easy to limit my exposure, too, whereas I couldn't make my parents stop speaking Korean to me. So I get by, but my grammar is all wrong and there are words I only know by ear and not by sight. It's hard to even everything out! REALLY HARD.

I also found out today that I am TOTALLY the oldest student in this class. It's kind of nice, though, being one of the slowest ones. It's a different pressure from being at the top of the class (which I am used to - it's good to have a big change).

Last night, I had my big first bout of homesickness. I couldn't sleep and finally just put on my iPod and listened to Josh Ritter for an hour, had revelations about recording engineering's value, and remembered how amazing it was to be in Nebraska two years ago. I had this huge poetic post all composed in my head about love and the smell of laundry (I get sad now whenever I put on a new piece of clothing that hasn't been washed yet in Korea - b/c once it's washed, the familiar smell is gone forever), confessions and learning to be at peace w/never being at peace, and so on, but the heat makes me just want to hydrate and lay on my back while studying vocab.

I will say: I think the homesickness is hitting now b/c it's just after two weeks here, which in my "normal" life is when I'm heading back home, or halfway through a residency. Two weeks in Maine = sea changes. Two weeks in Mexico = sea changes. Two weeks at Ragdale = two seasons, two private performances, one baby grand, and one stalker. But this is my longest stint of commitment to one place since I started grad school five years ago.

Severe dyslexia

I'm unsure as to why my slight dyslexia has now manifested as all over the place dyslexia, but it's kind of a drag. I constantly misspell words in Korean and when I transcribe things, I'll say one thing in my head and write another, over and over. I'll even mis-write things that I've already written myself correctly before. It's crazy making! I feel like I can't trust myself at all when I read and write, and it's even making me falter a lot in English. I was thinking last week that b/c it's SO HARD to understand each other (even when sharing the same language), communicating well is pretty much a miracle. The norm is misunderstanding. So I guess I'm thankful for language, as flawed as it is, since it sometimes works better than charades. Though sometimes charades works better...

I was able to finish all of my homework today in about three hours. That's pretty fast. Except that I don't think I actually took any of it in. I know that this program is really grammar heavy and I wanted to really bone up on my grammar, but the lack of continuous speaking practice makes me feel stunted. It's all a kind of halting, awkward practice for me, and I don't see myself getting better at this particular kind of instruction. Two nights ago, I had dreams of being held hostage in the US and I was begging to be released so that I wouldn't miss my flight to Korea and miss language classes. I woke up all startled and it took a while for me to realize I was ALREADY in Korea and already in classes. Clearly, my anxiety levels have not subsided. I'm feeling burdened by my to do list that never gets done, mostly b/c of the weather. It's sooooo grossly hot and humid that I have no inclination to run any errands in the afternoon b/c I'd just fall over and be cooked on the pavement. But I need to get things! For now, I'm running around dressed inappropriately (all my clothes are too low cut or sleeveless or too hard to wear/wash in this weather).

It's also weird that most of the Americans here in class are also working as English teachers. I see them scurrying off all the time and commuting everywhere. It's like a guarantee that you'll find a job here teaching English. I feel like I'm out of the game, but that's b/c I'd be deported and stripped of my grant if I did it. It's nice to be prohibited from doing certain things that I probably would end up doing.

Endless studying

My cousin mailed eleven very heavy and very old books to me. They arrived on Saturday, and I had to wipe them all down and air them out but they're still super musty. Each book covers a different area of Korea. He apparently was a HUGE fan of these history/picture books and said that if I go thru them, they'll help in my travels. It will take forever just to look at the pictures (I won't even TRY to read them). Just looking at the stack makes me tired.

Yesterday, I ventured out into the incredible stickiness to walk through the ginormous park nearby. There are all these paths that you can walk or bike, and SO much public art - tons of sculptures all over. There's a section where you can walk barefoot, a traditional flower garden, man-made lakes, etc...one of my classmates, from the UK, proposed to his Korean fiancee there. It was PACKED. Also, tons of kite flying! That was nice to see.

I'm almost two hours into post-class studying and haven't made a dent, it seems. I think I might just rip out pages from my textbook (b/c it's so heavy) and take the rest home to do there. Today is my day to hit the supermarket in the department store near home to get soy milk and snacks for class (the sweet potato crisps are my favorite so far). So much for getting all my homework done at school!!

Excuses

I'm using the massive amount of language study I have to do (and a sore throat) as my excuse for not going to church today. I just really need some solo time. I knitted three pieces yesterday and wore out my hands. A demon haunted me last night; one that I thought I had gotten rid of. But apparently they travel with you like bed bugs.

Time to hit the irregular verbs. Thank god for the grammar book that I took from my sister's bookshelf; it's saving my life right now (b/c it has English explanations for pretty crucial things. No amount of waving hands and miming is going to sufficiently explain conjugations, tenses, and particles. This is my major criticism of the program that I am in).

Time time time no time

I feel like I'm operating at least a week behind everyone else now that I'm in this time zone. I'm having a hard time keeping up w/blogs b/c I'm on other computers almost all the time rather than my own. So before I forget, Jami sold her next book!!!! SO EXCITING. And Jeff Chang did a great article for Salon on Korean b-boys. I really want some serious b-girling to come out of this country, too.

I just finished up one whole week of language study. After having lunch w/my cousin who is a doctor at Severance Hospital (5 minutes from where I take classes, one of the best hospitals in Korea, part of Yonsei University, also home to the international clinic that I plan to check out soon), I checked out electronic dictionaries at the school bookstore. I feel like such a dinosaur w/my dictionary in book format (I'm still not quite over the fact that these are becoming ancient history), but I think I'll stick with it. It's a good way to keep on top of my ga na da's (the first three "letters" in the Korean alphabet) since I only know up to five characters for SURE in the right order and then things fall apart. Someone needs to teach me whatever abc song they have here. I'm too old to figure out mnemonic devices for myself.

Speaking of old (I know, I'm talking about it a LOT lately, but come on! I'm going from a life where I'm in the youngest/almost youngest bracket of my circle of friends and family to a very, very different life. I mean, all these kids!) - a Japanese boy in my new class is 19!!! Kelsey, the former ETA Fulbrighter, kept laughing at me when she saw the faces I was making when he told us how old he was. The other American, Audrey, is in grad school for East Asian studies at Harvard. And it turns out that Kelsey knows kate hers, who I met online via Pauly, b/c Kelsey is also a Korean adoptee and current Blakemore fellow. I'm totally going to pick her brain for the next two months.

I called Diana today, finally, after emailing her for a while (actually, it started last year during my Fulbright app research). She's a poet on a Fulbright in Korea now that I met online thru Ching-In. She has been super helpful and really good at calming me down re: all things related to Fulbright and moving to Korea. She keeps reminding me to take good care of myself and remember that a lot has changed, so it's fine to take it easy. It was really good to chat today and share our experiences: she also did the extra language grant last year and lives really close to me right now. So we talked about how the commute makes things challenging, and how utterly exhausting the intensive language study is, and the importance of just being present and taking one day at a time.

That said, I feel crazy b/c I haven't visited any museums yet or gone to Insadong, where one of the traditional papermaking families in Korea has a shop. But anytime I think about doing things besides go to class and study, I feel crazy. Especially now that the insane humidity has set in. Grossness. Koreans don't have dryers (which, overall, I think is a very very very good things), but I really wonder if my clothes will dry in this weather. I'll find out soon, since I am about to hang my first load of laundry here once I get off the computer.

It's been a trip to learn so much about how I learn. Today, I figured out that the best way for me to hear and repeat dictation is to stare at a blank wall or chalkboard. If I look at the teacher's mouth or other students or down at my book cover, it's just too much stimulation. I also wonder if I'll ever get to the point where I can see Korean characters and see them as words. Right now, I have a weird invisible shield that goes up and blocks me from being able to read them right away, esp if there is ANY English mixed in the soup. I see everything as pictures, images, symbols (which I know they are, but even more abstracted), instead of WORDS. It's getting to the point where today in class, our teacher wrote a big capital N on the board (to indicate "noun") and then more Korean, and I stared at the "N" for a while, thinking, "did she misspell Korean? What the hell is that character??" I only realized after she wrote another "N" somewhere else on the board that it was an "N"!! This whole 1.5 thing in terms of my language ability is going to be tricky. Since I already feel my verbal English starting to slip.

Good news: all these people I'm meeting at school are potential traveling mates! AND, people to visit in other countries. One woman, who I swear could model if she was half a foot taller, is here from Thailand. She goes back in September and goes back to work for a hotel. How fun would it be to visit?!

It's also interesting meeting people who have both Korean and American names, and which they choose to use in class. I chose Aimee (Koreanized, of course, to something akin to A-ee-mee) b/c I realized a few years ago that I just don't feel much of a connection to my Korean name. I'm glad that I have it, it will be useful when I travel to places where having a Korean name makes sense, and I love that it falls w/in a tradition and generation so that I feel like I'm part of a family lineage. But I just don't respond to it anymore. I used to more as a child. But my whole family calls me Aimee now. Even though I'm learning Korean, I felt like I would misrepresent myself by using my Korean name. It reminds me of my private performances: it has become something just for me now. Not for other people to see or use. And no judgment! It's just how it is.

Trying times for my overheating brain

I kind of wish that just doing language study for 10 weeks was enough for me and I could be okay w/doing nothing else. But I just don't operate that way. I think I would be really sad if that was all I had to live for, though at this point, I can barely keep up with it!! I'm staying w/my cousin tonight and today was exhausting and it's not over yet! I need to have her and/or her daughter (who is 11ish) help me w/my homework. Yesterday, I finally went and complained about being in an overly easy class, and got moved this morning into the fastest class (but in the same level. So our books/content are the same but everyone speaks WAY better and faster and understands more. And the teacher also talks faster and so on). The cons: I have lots of extra catching up to do since they're like three units ahead and it's the most abyssmal classroom. NO WINDOWS. Clearly, there used to be windows, but they were covered with concrete. I am assuming b/c of construction? Whatever it is, it's horrible to sit in a tiny room at those tiny chair/desks for four hours and not see sunlight.

I'm so sensitive.

But at least my brain was stimulated today and I wasn't falling asleep out of boredom. Good times. Also, one of my new classmates was on a Fulbright ETA a few years back, so I'm totally going to pick her brain (English Teaching Assistant). After class, my cousin picked me up and then it was children underfoot for a while. I tried to study but it wasn't happening. I went w/my cousin and her kids and niece, and her mom (my aunt) to a FABULOUS Chinese restaurant for dinner. Yuuuuuum. Now I'm taking a break before I get back to work. Oh, wait. The kids are home from Taekwondo so I have to babysit.

A little rain

[These are all from the home neighborhood this past weekend. Misleading b/c starting yesterday it got all cloudy.] Agh. Four hours of language class and then at least four hours of homework afterwards makes me a little crazy. Plus all the commuting. And getting used to being around international students + gyopos. Yeesh. And then on top of all that, I feel like I should be working on my Fulbright! Even though I'm not officially on it yet.

[Grand Department Store is the closest to home. The silver things are what I walk past to get to and from the bus.] Which means that I want to hit museums and meet more people. But I don't want to commit to it until I get more used to classes. B/c that's the reason I'm here right now, whether I like it or not: to take Korean language classes! I am hating the method, though. I'm totally NOT a rote memorization kind of student, which is what is needed for this kind of program. Unlike French, which I studied for years, I just don't have knowledge of the roots of the language to be able to guess what words mean.

And guess who doesn't know Chinese characters??? Sigh. It's funny to be back in school now that I have a real understanding of my own learning patterns and shortfalls in the brain. I was talking to a classmate and she said her friend's sister went to Oberlin, but that it was a REALLY LONG TIME AGO so I probably wouldn't know her. Well, I did. B/c I graduated that long ago. Hilarious.

Apparently here, they take good care of their trees and lash them together so they don't fall down. I'm going to put my books into my locker and walk to the bus and wait forever for it to come and hope that I get a seat. Wohoo! [oh, I did some extra reading that wasn't required and came across a funny Chinese saying about how people eat everything that flies in the sky but planes and everything w/four legs but tables. My rough translation.]

Between class and cramming

[Ads near where I live.] I'm still adjusting to the M-F grind and the sitting in plastic chairs attached to tiny desks with name placards classroom life. Yeech. Even though I'm bored by how slow the rest of the class is w/speaking, I somehow always have tons and tons of homework to do writing-wise and workbook-wise and I still suck at it.

[On the corner near home.] But at least the students are nice, even though I feel completely disconnected from them. I'm thankful that I'm in the "regular" program, though, and not the summer intensive mostly for American-born Koreans, b/c then I'd feel reallllly out of my generation. The Americans in my class are more willing to learn while the Chinese and Japanese ones are the slackers (though this is probably more about age and inability for some people to wake up and function in the morning).

[See the tiny people playing soccer?] I think I should stop taking melatonin now, but I REALLY have enjoyed it. For the first time in years and years and years, I just lay down on my bed, close my eyes, and fall asleep. What a concept!! My dreams have been out of control but I haven't been with it enough to record them. Our reading teacher told us today that the monsoon season has changed a LOT in Korea. Thanks, global warming. I wonder if that means the dreadful summers of Korea are now only a memory...I doubt it. I'm sure it will be brutal in a different way.

[the fence that keeps people from bum rushing the soccer field.] Did I say that it was great to see my family on Sunday? The combined child count was five but it felt like five hundred. I can't believe how tiring it is to just be around them. But now all my gifts are out of my hands! Yay for lighter bags.

[this sign says not to smoke b/c a school is nearby.] I realized the other day that I'm still operating at warp speed and haven't had any really good rest/down time. Right now, I feel totally scattered - I'm standing at a 5th floor computer terminal and have to go up to the 6th to get my books from my locker so I can do my homework (boring). I have no idea what is going on b/c I just feel so weird standing at a screen that is embedded into a metal sheet and completely perpendicular to the floor.