The Russian hit on me in the first five minutes of meeting me. Sir, please read the room and my travel-weary face. A moment before he looked me up and down and said “you’re looking good”, I was deboning a chicken and chatting with him about his job when he suddenly stroked my forearm and I was so taken aback I just said “why”. “Oh. I don’t know why. I guess because you have arm hair and I don’t.” The last person who did that was a nine-year-old Korean. I had higher hopes for a twenty-seven-year-old man. I would also expect a psychologist to have a little more situational awareness…

Today was my release date from quarantine and my goodness, what a way to be re-introduced into society with a knock on my door 8:30 AM. Luckily, I had slept in clothes from the day before and peeked my head out the door. It was the courier who had come three hours early to pick up my scheduled delivery. If you think I was planning on dragging two 50 pound suitcases to Busan by myself, again, you’re crazy. I will give this man credit: he’s probably one of the two people who simplified his Korean to a level that I could understand. We worked out that he would come back…

Do you remember the scene from The Princess Bride in which Inigo Montoya hears the agonized screams of Westley and says “My heart made that sound when the six-fingered man killed my father”? I have certainly never grieved to that extent but there is something in recognizing someone’s sounds of suffering as your own. Mr. Whitchard is a choir teacher who caught COVID-19, recovered, and then got pneumonia. (Damn.) Thankfully, he’s back at home recovering with his family. His video appeared in a recent news stream, a river that I dived into in November and from which I have not resurfaced due to ceaseless torrents of *sweeps hands at America* everything. In…

A story in photos, a journey of meals. My heart’s desire was simple: all I wanted was to eat radish kimchi, malatang (spicy numbing Chinese soup), and 물냉면 (spicy buckwheat noodles on ice)— and that I did. I just have a thing for red, I guess. Sponsored by: my very worth-it Coupang membership and Korea’s robust love for and commitment to food delivery.

I’ll be honest: my goal for the day was to receive my Coupang groceries and that dominated my mind. I only realized it was in fact New Year’s Eve when a very sweet woman from the local health center called to confirm my address and remind me that they have holiday hours tomorrow when I come in for my in-country COVID test. Maybe I should have wished her happy New Year then. The bulk of my 2020 introspection came to me on the plane since quarantine limbo has kept me concerned with living day to day and ordering delivery. Nevertheless, 2020 is winding to a close, the bitter end, and…

At 40,000 feet with no wifi and nothing but the smudged ice tundra below I feel isolated but contemplative. Somewhere over Siberia I saw three orange lights linearly spaced: the first two were closer together and they all seemed to be on the cloud’s horizon. What is that? What could it possibly be? Is it another plane? But then the lights wouldn’t be so large or discernible. It seemed stationary as the plane took ages to fly past it. Is it a remote research lab? A marker of some kind? The North Pole? I wonder what the safety protocols are if the engine goes out and we meet the sea…

I have passed all three required exams! Once score verification is complete and the Florida Department of Education finishes processing (which takes one to six months…) I’ll be an officially licensed teacher. A US teaching license is globally recognized which means I can teach just about anywhere. However, where that will be is a consideration for future me. Current me is focused on cramming my big people shoe purchases into a single suitcase.

These past few weeks my life has felt like a series of nearly incomprehensible moving parts, this week especially. I had to become the project manager of my own life to organize the documents I have and have not received for my teaching visa, coordinate mock interviews and real interviews since my application was accepted, realign expectations that Gyeongnam wanted me to interview for a March start date instead of April, schedule and reschedule teaching exams, avoid COVID, ship Christmas gifts, cancel long distance trips and set up small meetings with friends, and try to put on pants at least once week. I decided to bite the bullet and take…