Over and Over

I am an engine and I'm rolling on...

It's hot and wet tonight. It's been raining all day. It's been uncomfortably hot all day. Thunder and lightning and monsoon season. It feels heavy - like something's happening. So goes the most pathetically transparent pathetic fallacy. How appropriate that I'd prepare my escape from Korea on a dark and stormy night.

But there was more than a storm brewing on my last weekend in Korea. I got together with the people I know best in Korea, and had a great night of Koreana and finality. Meeting in Sillim, we ate Galbi at a my favourite Galbi place. And after much drink and dead pig, we headed off to Led Zepplin for one last visit with the bartender whom me and Ben have dubbed 'Gary'.

Saturday is show night at Led, and we communicated by pen and paper while a generally shitty classic rock cover band slide-guitared their way through our faltering eardrums. Dishes of cheese an peanuts were (as always) par for the course (for some reason). Teeny dried fishes, too. Curiousity finally helped me confirm the obvious: they taste fucking terrible.

Never content to armwrestle in just one place, we headed towards another nostalgically typical destination - Hongdae.

That was goodly too; the warm comfort of doing things I know with people I know is what I wanted of the night. We even ran into some people I haven't seen for approximately forever. As nights are apt to do in Hongdae (or Korea in general) the whole ordeal turned into a drink-until-morning subway-home affair.

So my Korean conclusion was not unlike the last episode of a TV show. Safe, familliar environs, and everyone coming out to take a little goodbye bow.

And so went my last few days of work, or course. The kids were sad to see me go, particularly the Kindergarteners. They cried and asked why I had to go, and when I'd come back, and other such saddening questions. Gripping legs to stop me from walking out of the classroom. Lots wrote letters. Older kids asked for my email address.

Part of us loves that. We want people to cry and wail and feel practically useless without us. We want to know that we're that important, that the world turns a little rustier without us.

But in the end, I know they're fine, and I think they understand. I mean, no one keeps one teacher their whole life. That shit's called parenthood, and it's not really what I planned when I came here.

Simple, fitting good times on my last week. Just a week of enjoying the hominess of a place that's been home for so long. A year is good timing. A year is just right for me right now.

People ask me why I'm not doing another year, and honestly it's nothing to do with disliking Korea. In fact, I can think of few more satisfying places to piss-away another twelve months. But the reason I came here in the first place was for a change. If I come back again, it's not a change anymore. It's not different. It's more comfortable, it slowly gets better and feels more like home.

And perhaps that's the crux of it right there. Right now I'm not looking for a new home. If anything, I'm looking not to have one. Perhaps that's why I'm going wandering around Asia for a month. Maybe it's why I'm traveling so quickly, only a few days in each country. Never time to get comfortable anywhere. Hell, hardly time to realize I've arrived before it's time to go again. A whirlwind of wander and wonder, which is more than fine by me.

The shit thing is that I'm losing the people I've met here. Or at least, I'm losing the means to enjoy their company very easily. But fuck, no one's a tree planted in Korean soil. We all move. Out and on. Over and over. The ones that really matter will cross my path again. It's a cruel system, this finite one-year-contract shit, but hey, I had to leave some great people to meet these folks in the first place.

So it's done here. Hours left in this country. Then it's off on a 26-hour boat to China. And a million other places between now and August. I'll keep up to date here with sketchbook pages sent from the road.

Exciting, sad, wonderful, scary shit this travel thing. Just me and a backpack full of crap.

But hey, what does Korea think of this travel stuff? Or rather, how do Koreans envision us foreigners when we're visiting the rest of the world?


Like that, evidently.

I'm not quite sure what sort of Singapore-ian treats are making this guy basically spasm with culinary joy and orgasmic tastebud overload, but someone should really warn him that drug offenses are punishable by death in Singapore.

And that's it for my year in Korea. Over fifty Thursday nights spent talking to a laptop and letting the interwebs listen-in on the conversation.

Porky Pig used to have some sort of saying that's really far too obvious to specifically mention here. But too appropriate not to reference.


Goodbye, Korea.