Back, and hungry

Last month I got the chance to talk to my ex-grad school advisor for the first time since I jumped that ship. I was feeling rather apologetic about doing so, and was talking to him about going to South Korea, telling him about the Spanish classes I'd been taking this fall. He said to me "Tala, you're just a curious person" and said something about how I have so many interests. This is certainly true, and extremely relevant to the reasons why I've pressed the paused button on the whole grad school idea. I lamented to him that I this was exactly my problem and he laughed, and said that he couldn't wait to hear from me 10 years from now, that when I finally pick something I'm going to be this machine at it and rocket into space.

That felt really good.

But it also makes me wonder if I will - if I will find one single thing to focus on. That sounds so boring at the moment. Here I am in South Korea, and at the moment, I'm still filled with wide-eyed wonder for this new adventure. Apologies for the long silence, I've been so busy experiencing things and honestly I just didn't want to take time from that to record them.

But it's been going great so far (and I haven't even mentioned my pre-Korea travels yet). There are small challenges - my first night I couldn't figure out how to get the hot water going, for example.

But so far, the newness outweighs the frustration. My current "project" is trying to learn as fast as possible how to read menus. It's pretty intimidating, and also frustrating, to sit in a restaurant with a growling stomach, surrounded by all these people happily digging chopsticks into sizzling plates of stir frys, slurping steaming bowls of soup, and in front of you is this menu of gobblygook.

I stole this menu from C's local diner, so I could practice at home (yep, I'm that serious).

Thankfully, I started teaching myself hangul (the Korean alphabet) a few weeks before I came here. Thankfully, hangul is a pretty easy language to learn to read - it's all phonetic, and the characters are clustered into syllable groups, which helps with pronunciation. So my challenge right now really is learning the names of dishes. Hopefully one day I'll be good enough at hangul that I can recognize words, and not have to sit there slowly sounding out each character like a 5 year old. At the moment I survive by keeping print outs of websites like this and this in my purse. The problem comes when I'm hungry and haven't thought to bring my cheat sheets along.

Good thing I also like cooking.

Tonight I made a killer coconut curry.

Asian phones ^_^

Speaking of texting (see last post) - yesterday I got a new phone and its adorable. It's a Filipino number so I'll be able to text my parents - when I'm in Korea it'll be roaming so it'll be slightly more expensive for me to contact them but they will still be able to contact me for super cheap (1 peso for 1 text. Current exchange rate: $1USD to 44.4 pesos). Its tiny:

Its a touch screen, it even has a little stylus if I feel like my fingers are too fat haha. This is especially nice because the US phone I've had for only a year has been pretty broken for the past 3 months.

When I start working in January, I also plan on getting a Korean phone. I imagine they will have equally cute (if not more cute) phones there. That will be good because as cute as this phone is, it won't be getting much use. Good thing phones and communication are so cheap in Asia. Really, its rather frustrating - I'd been using this totally janky phone for 3 months because it was too early on in my phone plan to upgrade without it being a total rip off. Here, we just go to the electronics market get a really nice phone, buy a SIM card, and its done.

Church, State, Christmas

This article in today's local paper, the Philippine Star, caught my eye. One, because its such a classic example of how unseparate church and state are here. Not that the film industry can at all claim to be part of the government but my hunch is that the type of censorship described in that article would not be permitted in the States given that thing we call a First Amendment. (Although I have to admit I'm not government/history/politics expert by any stretch so I'm probably toeing the line of informed discussion here who knows). Two, I'm really amused that something reported via text message is considered legitimate enough to be publishable.

Back in 2009, I wrote a little about the Catholic church's role in the Philippines. I mentioned the Reproductive Health bill. As it was mentioned in that article today ("RH Bill" - in the cartoon) I'm guessing it hasn't been passed. There are a lot of things I could comment on about this, but it's pretty standard liberal politics and I feel like it's enough to say "hey check this out."

And just now, I was google searching for the picture I have at the top of this post, and discovered another interesting article. Upon seeing the headline I thought it was going to be an article about something really absurd, but you know I think what the dude is saying is legitimate. I'm pretty ok with someone pointing out that Christmas has been taken over by consumerism. Except I don't think Santa is to blame for that.

Thinking about thoughts

When I originally created this blog, the idea was to create a space to share my adventuring with people I was leaving behind. Then I went dormant for a while (I guess that's not unexpected given that I was doing graduate level coursework). Now I'm back. I currently have two other blog posts waiting to be completed, and neither of them are about travel. I'm finding myself wanting to use this space for more diverse expression.

I've been reading a lot of other peoples' blogs lately, I want people to read mine. I have ideas and things I want to share.

So I'm all for expression - I think it's an important part of learning and growing - which in turn seems to be an important part of being a post-college 20-something - but expressing in the format of a public blog is something with which I struggle a bit more. How much do I feel comfortable putting out in this public space? Who is reading this? What can I say, without sharing too much? Does it even matter if I'm sharing thoughts with strangers if I don't know that I'm sharing thoughts with strangers? I don't think the information I'm sharing is putting me at risk for say, identity theft. But hopes, dreams, beliefs, ponderings - where does those fit in between the public and private spheres? I don't know.

Onward and forward

So I've been battling with another blog entry for most of this week, and as I continue to sort out what it is exactly that I'm trying to express (in that particular entry, I am delving into less familiar territory - deviating from my normal subject matter of travel) I thought I might give you all an update.

I'm currently digging through the corners of my apartment and sorting out all of my belongings (useful vs not useful; wanted vs not wanted; sentimental vs meaningless) because I'm off again in a week. I'll be at the airport, passport in hand, visas at the ready, dragging two huge duffel bags out of the country for an as of yet unknown period of time. Probably about a year.

My first stop in this next leg of my travels will be a return to the Philippines (it is the Christmas season after all - for my loyal followers you will should see a seasonal pattern here). However, I won't be there that long - this year, my immediate family has decided to escape the chaos of festivities in the PI for a remote beach vacation in Bali. Obviously I wasn't going to miss out on that. I pretty much have no idea what exactly I'm in for - all I know is that we've rented a vacation house in a less touristy area, so I'm sure I'll have more about that later.

But the main thing here (besides "blah blah I'm a jetsetter and like to flaunt my ability to spend holidays in tropical paradise) is that I am employed again! In South Korea. As an English teacher. Its all very silly. And it has been a ridiculously absurd process. But I'm excited. I really enjoyed Korea when I was there in September (despite the challenges of the extremely spicy food) and someone there is eagerly awaiting my arrival which makes it even better. Hooray for travel, and adventures, and a classroom full of little kiddies, and making money for even more future adventures!

There is a lot more to say about what I'll be doing, where I'm going, how I got to this point, etc etc etc, but I think this is enough for now. I'll leave you all to eagerly await my next entry...

Snow day!

Last week we got snow in Seattle!

It started snowing on Monday, and I was so delighted. I just love snow, I always have. My mom has reminded me of the strange childhood behavior I had - whenever it snowed, I'd go out to our backyard and just lie there, staring at the snow...in a t-shirt. And it's true. Well, I can't account for the t-shirt part, but I do remember lying there, thinking that maybe if I stared long enough, I'd be able to discern the individual crystal snowflakes. I was always searching for proof that every snowflake is in fact, as unique as we were taught in school; always wondering if they really looked like the paper snow flakes we cut out of coffee filters in art class.

There's just something about snow. Like when you walk through woods (on a snowy evening, with Robert Frost) and it muffles everything so completely you can hear individual snowflakes landing. How when the sun is shining it somehow sparkles yellow and blue, and at the same time remains blindingly white.

It makes sense, that old myth about the Eskimos (who I believe are actually the Yup'ik and Inuit peoples) having hundreds of words for snow - it can be wet, dry, powdery...Hm, they have a lot more experience with snow than I do, so of course they have more words. But I am reminded of how every snow day, the question of whether it will be the right kind of snow to build a snowman just added to the anticipation.

I grew up in Virginia, and my father always scoffed at how people in my town didn't know how to drive in snow.

Well, compared to Seattle, Virginia is doing great in the preparedness-for-snow department.

We got about two inches. The city shut down. On Monday the main bus out of my neighborhood just wasn't running. Period. On Tuesday the roads hadn't been plowed, or sanded, or salted. The result of all this was that it felt like a lot more snow than there really was, because it was so inhibitory. For me, that was great. I don't have a car, I didn't need to be anywhere. So I got to enjoy it. But I was amused. People say that it snows so infrequently in Seattle that it is just not worth it to invest in snow equipment. I wonder if this will change with climate change. What I remember from school is that climate change predictions for this area call for less snowpack in the mountains - I'm not sure if that would also translate to less snow here (the snowpack on the mountains has more to do with precipitation patterns than temperature).

Moonlit contemplations

The past couple of days have been pretty typical for this time of year in Seattle: drizzly, damp, cold. But the weather cleared up this evening - the sky was clear, the moon was out, there was a breeze strong enough to remember that it was fall but not strong enough to feel the need to arm yourself for weather. Even though I now live in a part of Seattle where I feel a lot safer being out alone at night, I'll admit that my childhood fear of the dark lingers enough that I still don't tend to do so. But tonight felt so welcome after all this drizzle damp, so I put on some sneakers and headed out.

You remember when you were little, that thing your mom taught you about dealing with the annoying younger brother? That the more annoyed you become by his behavior, the more effort he'll put in to egg you on -- but if you aren't bothered, he gets bored and goes away? I'm slowly discovering that all the questions, anxieties, and uncertainties in my life right now act much the same way. They create a lot of noise and clutter in my brain, but are easiest to deal with when I don't freak out about the noise and clutter - left to their own devices, they settle down.

I end up in a kind of "chicken or the egg" contemplation of the evening and these fluttering questions. The night was peaceful - was that what allowed me to relax enough to settle the fluttering? Or was the night peaceful because I'd settled the fluttering, and the quiet in my mind let me enjoy the evening?

Regardless, the nature of the evening rid me of agendas. I felt grateful to have been given this space, this stillness, in the midst of my fluttering uncertainties. So I let my feet decide which way they wanted to take me. Trusting that I'll get to where I'm going because where I'm going is right here. Knowing that I'll make it home when it is time, because my feet can know and my brain does not need to drive all the time.

I hear the wind go past my ears and the rhythm of my sneakers hitting the pavement with each step. I smell the landscapes of Seattle-ite yards - pine, lavender, rosemary, dried leaves damp on the sidewalk. The moon, though only a little more than half full, is illuminating the night so that the clouds shone in stark contrast to the night sky. At the peak of each rolling hill, the city lights blink and glimmer in the distance. And to the west - darkness, where land drops into the Sound.

Something about nighttime in the suburbs really resonates with me. The sun goes down, the street lights come on, and everyone is cozy inside making dinner, putting children to bed, sleeping early because they have real jobs in the morning. And so the sidewalks are all yours, the shadows, the sky. I always end up anthropomorphizing the cars, tucked away against the curbs for the night.

I found the empty streets tonight dustily familiar. My mind resurrected childhood memories of taking walks after dinner with my father, on days when the chaos of our household was overwhelming me. Perhaps we would talk, my dad and I, about what was upsetting me, but I don't remember. The important thing was the stillness, the break from the chaos. The streets were so wide, empty, inviting. There was space for me, for my thoughts. Nighttime empty streets don't ask or need, they just allow you to continue placing one foot forward after another.

Someone expressed to me recently that all the quarter-life crises I have - those times in which all those fluttering questions seem to be overwhelming me and weighing me down - are not a sign that I'm falling apart or breaking down, but a sign that I'm growing. And I suppose that sounds a bit schmaltzy (in fact this entire post is a bit more schmaltzy than my norm), but I dunno, it sounds good doesn't it?