THE END. (or to be confused with the beginning)

Well, it's finally come. My last couple of weeks in Korea. I'm still a little aloof to the idea. I mean, it's just so unreal to me that thinking about everything I do here being my 'last' is unfathomable, ridiculous. Of course I'll return to Korea, teach these same children, eat buckets of rice and hang out with my foreigner friends every weekend, won't I? Yet, I know these things have an expiration date, there are lasts to everything, including Korea.

Walking around Suwon the other day I had that revelation, the one where I realized my toes and fingers could count the days I have left. I think in that same moment my eyes divided into four, my hands grew feelers and my memory bank let go of those terrible encounters with boredom and frustration and allowed for my hippocampus to be refilled with everything I love about Korea. Since then I've tried my hardest to make every experience count. While sipping my morning coffee and walking my twenty minutes to work, I take my time in a lackadaisical fashion fit for any French aristocrat, though I'm thinking of a specific one that lost her head. Like Ms. Antoinette that is, and just like her I'm noticing my splurges are becoming more commonplace, each event, food, drink, item having a far greater value than a week ago. I see the chocolate at Starbucks and say, "Of course I deserve that. It's my birthday in a week, I'm leaving Korea and I need the calories for my marathon training. There. Done. Chocolate in my mouth in seconds. Satisfaction granted and my mind is thanking me profusely as the caffine hits my prefrontal cortex, speeding up my short-term memory, my concentration and my mouth. I don't mind at all being like Marie, but my pocketbook, ass and boyfriend (who must then listen to my mouth make loud and fast noises for the next hour) do mind.

My end of days tendencies are not all bad. I no longer feel as much frustration with Korea as I did this entire winter. That change may be seasonal, but I think it also has to do with the realization that my life here is ephemeral. Thus, lacing up my running shoes today and I forced myself to take strange routes to make my last days here seem full, to make my experience in Korea full. I figured at least running has mostly positive effects for the people and things around me, whereas the chocolate drinks, rice cakes, shopping in Emart and bus rides do not. (All make me feel like a sack of poop after - chocolate and rice cakes = bloatation so bad I want to be popped with pins, E-mart = frustration and annoyance so bad I want to pop everyone else with pins, and bus rides = nausea and anger so bad I want to pop the bus tires and the bus driver's head with pins. In other words, not good things, thus put in the list 'to be avoided'.)

Apart from running as being my last and most positive way to say goodbye to Korea, (I also have a marathon in two weeks and therefore can kill two birds with my running shoes) I find myself opting for long walks around city parks where I can watch Korean life at its best. Children and small dogs are my number one favorite aspects of these parks, but I also find myself loving the older men who play GO on the park benches or ground - throngs of other older men standing around watching the games and smoking their Korean brand cigarettes while they talk strategy with their neighbors. There's also the older women. Their youth-like beauty long gone, they have a new beauty in their trench-like wrinkles and stern eyes. They rule the streets with their carts and wide stagger. I used to (and am sometimes still) be very intimidated and therefore skiddish when affronted by one of these tabby cats. Rightly so as they will push you out of their way and not softly. Yet, and a large YET because I can't believe I'm going to write this, but these women in their derelict and harsh states have also found a place in my heart. I will miss their brutal pushes and stares in so much as I will miss their tenacious and impregnable character. Meaning, I can now see (from a healthy distance) how they are the last of what was right and wonderful about Korea. That with their generation goes what Korea knew about survival, about pride in hard, dirty, hands on work. Thus, I must say I've come to realize that I will miss the elderly ajumas and ajushis, in so much as I deeply respect the lives they've led and the people they've had to become.

Now, I think this is a good place to leave this blog. I could go into the opposite feelings I have, i.e. the negative feelings I will be so glad to leave behind me in Korea. But, I believe I really like that saying about "if you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all." I said my 'nice', so I think get positive points. I therefore get to say in brief and so not so bad that I will not miss: loud music and speakers from stores advertising crap, miles of stores, miles of crap, K-pop, K-movies, K-pride in their history, K's asking me if I can use chopsticks, K's being surprised at me for eating kimchi and it not being too hot or for being able to speak passable Korean and you can read it, too?!, K-buses and bus drivers, the staring, the spitting, the mutability of K's when you walk into any place, Maxim instant coffee, coffee shops not opening until 11 in the morning, SMOG and POLLUTION, the same 'traditional' Korean shops, restaurants, temples, palaces, trails, mountains, sites and food ---> SAME SAME SAME SAME SAME SAME SAME and SAME, and lastly, I will not miss the clothing styles, the obsession of the younger generation to FIT IN, the ubiquitousness of high heels, short skirts, small dogs and cutesy jewelry/hair/make up/speech yada yada yada - the lack of feminism and the inadequacies of the K society because of that lack.

INHALE OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo EXHALE HOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I'm done. I swear.

There are tons more for that last list, but then again there also tons for that first list. I may have over exaggerated my 'new clarity of my last days', BUT I at least had some sort of nostalgia that most definitely was NOT there before. I can at least walk/run down the street and not want to push people over to see if they'll go down like dominos they're so close to each other. Instead, I found some peace. Not necessarily perfect peace, but its something. So, as it's (or was) a fresh feeling of mine towards Korea, I figured I'd write it here for my remembrance, my eulogy, if you will. Because though I'm still not altogether believing there's an end to this cute induced cement exile, I know that in just two and a half weeks I will be leaving, and for good. That my world will be thrown into a twilight zone of good cheese, warm friends and family and a good old piano that my fingers have literally itched to play since I was last home. That I'll fall so happily back into the life I've always known and gladly forget that there is such a place that has cement for every surface, and dust and pollution so bad it makes my head hurt sometimes after a run.

I think I may be scared a little actually, because after home it's a new country with a new life for me to fill with new things, foods, people, culture and language. Everything I absolutely love about traveling and world in one place, in Istanbul. I have huge hopes for it, of course. I'm terribly excited. I'll get to see the conglomeration of the east and the west, the hubris of both as they rub against each other. I can't wait!

So, I guess, this leaving nostalgia and fear is not just for the end of my life in Korea but also for the feeling of home and the fear of leaving it again for a new world. I'm frightened that I'll be too comfortable and content to leave it for something that I'll have to fight and struggle in. And, moreover, I'm scared about seeing all that I've missed out on these past two years and then coming to the realization that it will continue to happen as I get older. Did you know that you get older too? I didn't really realize that. Or that I'm getting older for that matter. I kinda did that Dorian Gray thing where I just assumed all my fuck-ups in youth wouldn't effect myself or my future. I keep learning that they do, but dang- I have a REALLY bad memory!

Anyways, in sum, I'm now just excited to have time left in Korea enough to enjoy it before I go. I'm excited to have time enough at home (well, never enough actually!) to see my friends and family and keep my piano company. And, last but not least, I AM excited to start my life anew again, however misdirected and fuck-up-like it may be. It's a beginning and I really, really like beginnings.