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Quarantine, Week 1
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.
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December 31, NYE
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…
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December 30, Back again (again)
This goodbye was much harder than the last and I’ll miss my family terribly. I look forward to visiting again soon and doing all the American things I can’t do here. Korea welcomed me with below freezing weather. It was strange to touch down in the sense that everything was still different (Koreans everywhere! Bidets!) and yet felt not a bit unsettling as it had the first few times. The procedures required between disembarking and freedom encapsulated Asia Time no less than I expected. Army boys helped me install the quarantine app. At the next station I dropped my document binder twice, dumping all my papers over the feet of…
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Mid-Flight
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…
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Merry Christmas
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.
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December 19, I passed (so far).
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…
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Arrival
I have arrived to the land of eternal summer. I will be in America for the next month, dodging COVID and getting chubby, while I take my teaching exams and catch up on holidays with the family. Time is slow and languid like molassess here. The streets are wide but empty, the neighborhood is sunny but devoid of human life during the weekdays. The air is clear, the sky is wide and blue, and there’s not a coffee shop for literal miles. Koreans would be confused: “are you talking about the countryside?” No, just the strange in-between that is suburbia. I love the green and I’m thankful that the mild…
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Aging
South Korea went from being one of the poorest countries on Earth to the world’s tenth largest economy in less than 70 years. Korea has almost all the luxuries of American life, plus benefits my home country lacks: universal healthcare, cute school supplies, and extensive food delivery that UberEats only dreams of being. But seventy years is not a long time and even through through the Miracle on the Han River, age cannot be hidden. American culture seems almost ashamed of the elderly– put them in nursing homes until they are forgotten. I never really saw age until I got to Korea. In spite of the massive economic growth, sparkling…
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Touch
On a long bus ride home, several people avoided sitting in the empty seat next to me, less because I smelled (probably), and more because sitting next to a foreigner can always be a little bit scary. Finally, the bus was too full to ignore me any longer and two very tall college boys got on. One gestured to his huskier friend to take the seat next to me but that friend insisted on standing. The first guy sat down in defeat. The seats were too small to avoid touching thighs even though he gripped the seat edge and sat rigidly straight on turns to avoid bumping shoulders. There was…