Honestly, now.

Visa Status: ……..

Being who I am and looking how I do, people in this country are delighted when they discover that I speak a handful (a scant handful) of Korean. Their faces light up in dazzling joy, like someone just told them that their every wish had come true and that Japan was now at the bottom of the Sea of Korea and all of their children were going to get married to the son or daughter of Hera or Samsung. They beam at me like I just revealed the secret of cold fusion or that I discovered that, yes, kimchi really, truely does cure cancer.

However, this is only the case when I’m with my similarly round-eyed friends. Put me next to a bunch of kyopos (Korean-American or Korean-Canadian) and it’s a whole different dumpling.

Being next to people who are inherently bilingual makes me feel a little rough around the edges. I’m envious. I see them as towering world-citizens, able to slip into different cultures with the ease of a well-lubed otter. I know that this isn’t the truth, but it’s hard to see the downside of being able to tell everyone around you exactly what you’re thinking. And sitting next to a kyopo at a restaurant apparently decreases my IQ to somewhere in between a cup ramen and 9 month old. Gone is my magical ability to master my handful words. I tried to order a set lunch today (Set A, M8, Vietnamese Coffee). Our waiter looked at me as if I had just banged my chopsticks on the table and grunted. He turned to my kyopo coworker and said, “Uhhhhh…..what the hell did she just say?” I don’t know if that’s a direct translation, but that’s all I could get from his tone. My coworker repeated the exact same thing that I said and the waiter was off to get our food.

Vietnamese coffee is a delicious concoction. It’s basically a cup with some sweetened and condensed milk in the bottom and a tiny, adorable peculator on top. It takes several minutes for your coffee to drip through and then you stir it will a cute little spoon to make the milk kick up in a miniature storm in your cup. The waiter bustles back with my coffee. He set it on the table and then hesitated. He looked at me, then at the cup. He then said something in Korean. He said it very slowly so, of course, I understood none of it. This was accompanied by a circular motion of his hand. I just looked at him. What the hell is wrong with my coffee, I thought.

The waiter again turned to my kyopo friend and said something quick in Korean. Joon looked at me and then said in overly-loud Special English (the kind that is reserved for dogs, deaf people, and foreigners), “YOU HAVE TO STIR IT!”

Something about being with kyopos makes me appear unable to handle myself. It’s almost as if the natives look at me and say to themselves, “That poor girl doesn’t know a damn thing.” I imagine them shaking their heads as if I’m some tragic character in a Western T.V. show. “Poor girl must be addicted to cocaine,” or “She must have been sold to human traffickers.” And between C.S.I. and Sex in the City (the two major American T.V. shows on here) , I can completely understand where these ideas come from.

And on that note, I’m off to bed with some warm milk and my copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day. At least David understands.

Visa status:  still none

However, I’m still off to Japan.  My tourist visa expires tomorrow and my school is being pretty generous and sending me to Japan for a whole six hours!  But my plane ticket is free so I really can’t complain.  Apparently, my visa will go through “next week.”  So who knows when that will be.  I’m pretty sure that the owner of my school hates me these days, but something is keeping me from getting fired.  Here’s the conversation today:

School Owner: Anne!  Are you working?

Me: Not until I get my visa.

School Owner: Your visa is coming.  Work!

Me: Yeah……not until I get my visa.

School Owner gives me a mildly dirty look and stalks off.  I give myself a pat on the back for sticking to my guns.  But all things considered, I still want to work there.  I miss my students and coworkers.  I still like my job (the working part, not the waiting part).  However, I’m pretty sure that either A) someone somewhere really, truly believes deep down in their heart that I will get my visa or B) they are working on replacing all the people that need visas with people who don’t and management doesn’t want to risk pissing me off and me getting all of the teachers to quit.    Either way, I’m okay for the time being.

Peace.

So I have quite a bit of time on my hands recently. On the bright side, I get to catch up on the news. I still can’t tell you whose leading in what state, but I can tell you about recent heath breakthroughs. (Reading the political news is no fun for me. I still try to do it because it’s important, just not fun. Health, tech, and science are just more interesting.)

In my meandering about the different news sites, I came across this post. Please take the time to read it.

It really drives home the point that we need to be informed customers. Most of us wouldn’t buy a car based solely on the recommendation of the car salesmen. I think I can argue the same case for our health. When in doubt, get a second or even a third opinion. Too many people do things blindly. We just accept what we’re told and go on our way. Never mind that the people who gives us this information are human and, in spite of their excellent training, are bound to make mistakes. Okay, this is turning into a rant. It comes down to this: know as much as you can about what you’re getting into. From voting to buying a car to making decisions about your health. Now if you’ll excuse me, I try and muck through some more articles about candidates.

P.S. Nothing new about the visa status.

Visa Status: Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

For the past month, I’ve been a blob.  I haven’t accomplished anything.  Or at least I haven’t felt that way.  For once (at least since I’ve been on my own), I have the time and opportunity to do whatever I please and I’ve been mindlessly wasting it.  Stupid me.  But I’m getting better.

I’ve decided to try and celebrate everyday, in some way. Starting today.  So this evening (after cleaning the apartment a bit and rearranging stuff), I went running.

For those of you who know me, I hate running.  I tried to run here in Korea last year and it didn’t work.  I hated every minute of it.  However, this time I kinda liked it.  And I think I figured out why.

The thing that I hate most about running is the fact that people can see you and you can see them.  I know it sounds strange, but it bothers me.  In Korea, it’s worse for the obvious reasons.  People are always looking at me.  I’m an example whether I like it or not.  However, there is a solution to this problem: winter.   I don’t have any winter running gear.  After solving that problem with a quick trip to Homever, Badugi and I were off.  Amazing things, hoods.  At 10pm and with a hood, I was just another person.  It was great.  Anonymity felt amazing after months sticking out.  I didn’t go far, but I wasn’t hating every step.  It’s a start.

I  don’t have much of anything else to talk about.  I’m going to try to make tacos for my friends tomorrow.    I’ll write more later about this little self-improvement experiment of mine.

Visa Status: still clueness

*sigh

To celebrate, I stay home.  Corinne came by and we drank hot chocolate with Irish cream.  And it was good.    I didn’t expect her, so it was a good surprise.  Qing called to wish me a good new year, which was sweet.

Not a lot to write here.  Just wanted to wish everyone a great year!