September 3

Here we are, September already.

I may have asked aloud if 2020 had anything else in store but I cursed us all as a super typhoon formed and hit Korea last night.

Luckily the guesthouse suffered no damage and the storm brought cool and windy fall-like weather.

The day stuck to a schedule that is now becoming routine: attend online class, scoff at the students who still can’t use Zoom, eat a snack, finish class, have lunch, do homework, go to the gym, eat dinner. Throw in cafe trips, rooftop lounging, and beach visits somewhere in between.

Today I spent the better part of the afternoon laying in a hammock on the roof listening to a podcast.

That’s exactly the kind of afternoon I want.

When I got back from the gym, my college freshman Korean roommate was sitting in lotus on the front stoop wall.

“Hey! I’m going to take a shower then I’ll join you.”

I’ve come across her singing or dancing at random times and she says, “nothing’s wrong, I’m just weird,” which is my sentiment exactly.

She says she’s introverted but she has been the easiest Korean stranger to draw into conversation thus far. She even seems to, get this, enjoy it.

So I joined her on the the hard seat which would later appear in twinges of my aging back and we caught up on life as we know it.

She sighed at a juncture where all we had to say was “corona” and added “I want to meet my boyfriend.”

“Oh, you have a boyfriend?”

“Not yet.”

Damn! We love to see confidence.

We kept chatting on the cool breezy night air until she checked her phone and exclaimed at the time.

We had talked until midnight.

“I have a diary. I’m going to write about this,” she told me. She too liked the atmosphere of talking with someone from another part of the world, casually in pajamas, with neighborhood sounds as our backdrop.

This is it folks. This right here is how we’re supposed to live.

Everyday I talk to at least one of my housemates and I feel renewed as a social being. Community is what I was looking for in Seoul and found in Busan.