Not Blogging Today

If I blogged today, it would just be swear words.

So, here. A lovely song that nobody reading this will understand. This was actually Hungary's Eurovision entry last year. I did not like it at the time, but it's grown on me for sure.

Nincs most más, csak a kedvesem, az én kedvesem, ő

Bárhol jár, az úgy jó nekem, az úgy jó nekem, mert

Mindig rám talál, az én kedvesem, az én kedvesem

Úgy dúdolná: Ez így jó nekem, ez így jó nekem

Kyoto's Karamon Gate

The Nishi-Honganji Temple ("Western Temple of the Original Vow") Gate sits tucked down an alleyway in Kyoto. You walk down it, surrounded by plain tan walls, and then you catch sight of the Karamon Gate, or Chinese Gate. It was constructed in 1573 and just drips with detail. I think I stood looking at it for a full ten minutes.

Teacher Trip

I'm about to depart on an overnight trip to an island with most of the teachers from my school. Here is the schedule, kindly translated (in brief) for me:

Friday
3:30 Departure
5:00 Arrive and settle in
5:30 Raw Fish Dinner (yum!)
7:00 Party

Saturday
8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Bus
9:30 Forest Time
10:20 Bus
11:00 Walk Among the Reeds (sounds poetic)
11:50 Bus
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Bus
1:10 Fabric Museum
2:10 bus
2:30 Bird Exhibit
3:30 Bus
3:50 Market
4:30 Bus
6:00 Arrive Home

Will I wind up drunk on this teacher trip, as I have on all others abroad? Will the bus be a karaoke bus? Will the raw fish be the still-wiggling octopus so popular here? Will I fall into a body of water? Check back on Monday for the answers to these and other pressing concerns.

Yay, a rant post!

(I can't embed at work, just click.)

This video just breaks my heart.

Is it any surprise that young people, and young girls in particular, are so obsessed with the way they look? Or that they think how they look doesn't measure up? In a world filled to the brim with images of perfection, how is real life supposed to compare? I'm not going to go into the whole photoshop rant. It's been done, and it can be found ad nauseum on the internet.

I would be absolutely terrified to raise daughters. I mean, the thought of raising children in general is a pretty scary one. But daughters, man. How do people go about that these days? It's all a terrifyingly fine line to walk. Girls can be anything they want to be... but you don't want to lie to them, either. How do you teach a girl that she should never walk home alone with earbuds in without terrifying her? How do you teach her to keep herself fit and healthy without making her feel ugly? How do you encourage her to study what she wants without pushing an agenda? And so on and so forth.

When I was a kid, I certainly thought other kids were ugly. But now, as an adult (and I think especially as an educator), I don't think there is a single kid on this earth that is ugly. Kids are beautiful! But goodness me, I can understand where they're coming from.

Masochism

Looking out the window at the thick, soupy haze that is covering the square concrete buildings of 전민동, I decided to google image search "Christmas Budapest."

Yeah, that was a bad choice. Most csak vágyom a forralt borra, a kürtõskalácsra, és egy kis somlóira.

Don't get me wrong, I dig it here. But there aren't Christmas markets, so there is absolutely no socially acceptable way for me to while away an afternoon drinking mulled wine from plastic cups and eating liver sausage. The streets don't twinkle with lights dripping from every tree. The smell of chestnuts and cinnamon don't fill the air. Snow doesn't crunch under my feet and children don't give me gifts of mandarins studded with cloves. Nobody is singing carols or force-feeding me gingerbread or even (shudder) beigli. I don't have a stove, so I won't be making mountains of cookies to bring into work. There are no advent wreaths to roll my eyes at in class.

I guess I just miss walking up to people I know and kissing them twice on the face. That feels much more Christmas-y than bowing. 

Twinge

I feel a small twinge of perverse satisfaction when I screw with the Korean system. I just sat down on the bus next to a man who is older than me. I sat fully down, rather than half sitting on the edge of the seat. As a result, he had to *gasp* actually close his thighs and sit like a normal person. I can feel his displeasure and I do not care. It's six in the evening, dude. You don't get two seats to yourself, even if you are a middle-aged man.

Numbers

I had a whole day of deskwarming today (the kids were writing finals). So I wasted a lot of time on facebook, stole cardboard boxes from around the school, and ate many mandarins. I also graded the third grade tests (is there anything in the world more soothing than grading multiple-choice tests with a wax pencil?) and planned a bit more for camp. The most important thing I did today, though, was to write up my Christmas cards.

I'm sad that I won't be delivering them in person this year, but I think the fact that Christmas is such a non-event here will help me to forget about the sadness.

Writing the addresses and grading the tests, I realized that I've almost entirely stopped doing Hungarian-style numbers now. My ones are straight more often than they are hooked, and my nines don't look like gs anymore. I'm still struggling to adjust to the closed Korean four, but it's happening. That sort of makes me sad, too. Isn't it sort of funny, how even something as basic as how we write numbers can change in a new place?

Blogs

Aren't blogs a funny thing? Who decided that it would be a good idea to keep a diary, but publicly, on the internet?

My weekend:
Chicken, tv, sleep.
Conference, dinner, wine, more sleep.
Burrito, dog walking, dog escaping, dog catching, bleeding on the bus.
Grinning like an idiot.

I can't seem to stop with the grinning.

Thankful

I'm sort of in a dark place at the moment. I am just desperately homesick. Like, feeling a weight sitting on my heart, pressing down on my lungs, making it hard to breathe levels of homesickness. And the funny thing is that I'm homesick for America for the first time ever, or at least the first time that has lasted more than a few hours. I've been gone for so long that I was starting to think that I was immune to homesickness, that I truly was a nomad without a home, and that I could count myself as blessed for that immunity and the freedom it conferred. But I actually feel much more lucky for being homesick. I miss America! I miss the country on my own passport! What a crazy idea. Add to that Hungarian homesickness, and... wow. Expat Thanksgiving will happen this weekend, except that I won't be there. I'm so happy that it will happen, but I'm also really really sad.

(My first Thanksgiving in Hungary, a lifetime ago, I got drunk in a freezing cold house and then yelled at Balint that he was being a bad coteacher. I yelled at him for translating "igen" for me, because what kind of an idiot did he think he was?, even though he was actually just being kind. I fell down a flight of stairs and pulled him with me while walking him down to his scooter. I then proceeded to go back upstairs and steal all the champagne in the house. I woke up the next morning, mortified and hurting, but discovered that, much to my continued amazement and delight, this wasted mistake, this vulnerability, had made us friends. I think I will always think of Balint on Thanksgiving.)

So. Dark place. Crying at work whenever someone messages me, and being pretty much near tears the rest of the time. I need to snap out of this, so I'm going to attempt to make a list of things that I am thankful for. They're not in order of importance, but just in the order they've been sitting on my mind. I have tried to exclude superficial things, though, as thankful as I am for my new electric blanket...

• At this time last year, I was just starting to accept that I was really quite sick. I'm so, so thankful that it all turned out to be nothing more than a very-treatable brain-stem infection, and not the tumor I was absolutely certain it was. It's crazy to think that just one year ago, I was pretty much certain that I was dying, and here I am fit as a fiddle.
• I am thankful that I have a beloved best friend who knows me, deep down inside, and actually loves me more for the ugly parts. I am thankful that we have traveled the world together, and that I know what real love (real sharing, abiding love) is as a result of having known her. I'm even thankful for how very much I miss her.
• I am thankful that I have a good job that I care about which also allows me time and money to do other things that I care about. I'm really thankful to not have to be constantly worried about my job any more. I'm thankful that I can support myself and pay for all my needs and reasonable wants.
• I am thankful for the new friends I've made here in Korea, because this would all really be pretty much impossible without them. I am thankful for my coteachers and their unflagging patience.
• I am thankful that I have lived in beautiful, complex countries that have touched my heart and molded me into myself. I am thankful that I have left little pieces of my heart in other places, because they keep me connected to the rest of the world and remind me just how small and vulnerable I actually am. I am thankful for the three Laurens that exist in three distinct languages.
• I am thankful that I have been able to travel to and around thirty-seven marvelous countries. I am thankful to have met their people, seen their sights, tasted their food, and spoken their languages. I am thankful that this won't be coming to an end in the foreseeable future.
• I am thankful for my family: how very close my dad and I have gotten over the past few years, my mom's making a way for herself, my sister and I talking again, and my grandparents still being around to worry about me.
• I am thankful for my friends who are far from me, but still close in my mind and heart. I wish I could see you all every day.
• I am thankful for all the tv shows, movies, and books that give me something to look forward to, think about, pick apart, and obsess over.
• I am thankful to Magdalena for taking care of my sweet Dexter in his old age, because knowing that he is loved and cared for is the only reason I was able to leave him.
• I am thankful for hope, butterflies and dumb leaps of faith. I am thankful for a heart that is not so scared that it won't jump.
• I am thankful for my parents' dogs and for the cats I've lived with over the years and all the happiness and silliness they have brought into my life. I'm thankful for my rats and all the sweet tummy kisses and playfulness.
• I am thankful that I am mostly strong and independent. I am also thankful that I can be needy and that I cry at the drop of a hat. I am particularly thankful that I don't cry easiest when I am sad, but when I am touched by the kindness of another. I am thankful that this is getting worse and worse as I age and turn into a bigger sap.
• I'm thankful for cooking, running, writing, and all the other things that bring a moment of silence into my loud-mouthed brain.
• I'm thankful for my older friends and the wisdom and patience they have shown me while they helped me to become a better person. I can only hope to be as amazing as you.
• I'm thankful that tomorrow will be another day for me to eat up, and that so many people will be helping me do so.

Grumble

"Lauren. We need you to do this thing. But we also need to work on your computer. So... go sit there for awhile."

Me, in a physical sense

I like my hair. I know that it does well for me. It's curly without being too crazy, and it's an interesting color: dancing along the border of red and blonde and brown, but the color of gold in the sun. I like that's it's easy, in that as long as I make the effort to keep it soft I don't have to much worry about it, and can just wash it and let it do what it wants to. This saves me a lot of time in my life, I know.

I like my eyes. I've developed an off-color spot in one of them over the past year or so that I'm not crazy about. But I like their color, and their size. I like their expressiveness (except when I'm trying to hide my feelings!) and that I still only need glasses occasionally, when I am very tired. I recently received a compliment on my smile lines, which was a bit unsettling as it was the first time someone other than my mother or a paid beauty professional has talked about them. I don't mind, though. I'm twenty-seven years old, and if I have to start wrinkling up, I'm glad that it's caused by my tendency to smile and laugh too much, rather than the opposite.

(I remember that after my year with the Americorps, I had a defined line straight down the middle of my forehead, and that at only twenty-one! I moved away, and my life got happier, and it went away. It seems to be staying away. I'm very thankful for the life changes that allowed that to happen.)

I like the bump on the end of my nose, because it is the only piece of my face that is my dad's.

I like my broad shoulders and my long neck. I like my big, strong hands which are capable of carrying many things at once or rocking an enormous ring. I like the lightning-bolt scar on my back, because I think it's cool, and because it's on my back rather than my forearm or face. I like my freckles, particularly the little ones that spring up after a day in the sun and then fade back into hiding.

I don't like my feet, which are long and wide and shapeless, and which require special care to not crack and hurt me. I do appreciate their propelling me about the world, however. I do not like my arms, which are too long for most shirts and too big, too. I do not like the mole on my right side that catches on shirts and hurts me.

And here I realize that I'm pretty darn lucky. Because I can't think of another part of me that I really dislike. My thighs spring to mind, because the tops are soft, but the bottoms are strong and hard... and my thighs let me run and bike. I wish the skin on my face was a bit less shiny, but I'm glad that it isn't too dry. Nobody likes their feet. Feet are gross. My arms are ok, and I guess reaching things is handy. It makes sense to dislike a mole that gets caught on stuff, because it's annoying.

The only part of my body that I'm actually truly self-conscious about is my eyebrows. I can deal with that.

*Click*

You know when something has been confusing, and you've been pondering it in a somewhat obsessive way? Like, really working on it with your mind? And then, all of a sudden, you get a new idea, so you do some research and suddenly *click!* it all makes sense in your mind?

Well, that just happened for me. I didn't even have to run too far for the realization. Which is good, because it is damn cold outside.

Waygookin Chopstick Challenge

A fun staff-dinner game: take a whole chicken, including bones and skin, stuffed with super-dense rice. Cover it in opaque herbal broth that boils for several minutes after being served. Use a pair of chopsticks and a dull spoon to remove the skin and bones, place them on a nearby plate, and crack open the chicken to get at the rice. No fingers!

At least my coteachers thought my explanation of, "This is a foreigner chopstick nightmare!" was hysterical.

Playing Hookie

Should that be an -ie, or a -y? Shows what a square I am, I guess.

Jihei and I went for a training that ended quite early. Rather than head back to work, we got coffee and chatted. Then we discovered that taxis don't come to the area we were in. So now we're on the village bus, heading slowly back into town where we can actually catch a cab back to our hood. We will be late to staff dinner. Oops!