And just like that...

...Min Gi was struck with inspiration last night.  It came in the form of a business plan.  It's years away, but it's brilliant and he's happier than I've seen him in months.  He has an idea that I fully support and finally seems like he has a purpose in life (you know, other than adore me, of course).  Seems like he's gotten his brother on board already, too.

Now I do have more to look forward to next year.

Belated Thankfulness...

Sadly, it's my first real American holiday season in four years, and I skipped my annual Thanksgiving post because I've been stressed out, busy, and a bit depressed.  I should not post at all when I feel like this, but I feel like maybe I owe you guys an update.

Certainly, I am thankful for many, many things this year.  It was a very eventful one:  I got married this year.  I went on an amazing honeymoon to two new countries and a second one for a week to Jeju.  I managed to move our family to America and find a decent job within a month in a horrible economy and establish an independent household.  I did all this while reducing my total debt load by more then $12,000 (and all of those earlier things I mentioned cost a pretty penny).

But 2010 has also been tough.  Not perhaps as tough as 2009 for me (the year my father, mother, and myself all spent prolonged periods hospitalized for various reasons), but I feel as though 2011 holds less promise and that I have comparatively little in the upcoming months to look forward to.  After several years of one big exciting life thing after another, I've hit the point where the life changes to come feel more like assuming responsibilities.  This is the year I turn 30.  Apparently, it's also the year where I have to grow up and accept that there are some things I simply will not do with my life.  For example, I will not go back to grad school full time and become a professor.  It's something I've always kind of thought about... but I realize now that it's not the life for me.

American life feels like a struggle to pull myself out of the financial cesspool of the middle class.  What should be a very nice salary for someone my age is instead a crippling barrage of saying "no, thanks, we can't afford it" to every opportunity that comes along (and in America, opportunity and choice are overwhelming).  My health insurance premiums alone eat up about 8% of my salary--and that's before either of us get any medical care.  Rent is about the same as the take home for one of my two-week paychecks.  So much of U.S. culture is consumerism, that it's really hard to adjust to it when you have no money.

But...

We have family nearby who support us and love us (and let us steal food and use their sailboat...).
Min Gi's family in Korea is healthy and supportive and we can stay in near-daily communication with them thanks to the free wireless internet options in this area.
Although we can't "get ahead" and pay down my student loan and save up for a baby like I want to, we aren't suffering for our basics--something many Americans these days are.
My health has been in steady recovery mode for the last year.  Despite some issues with catching colds after starting my new job and the depression, I'm back to being almost as healthy as I was before I left for Korea, which is amazing when you consider that I now have a pretty serious disease.
We (desperately) miss our friends and support network in Korea (including the best job I ever had and likely will have for some time), but we are so grateful for the good friends we have in this area.
I am thankful to be working at the hotline again.  I think it may be my higher calling.

and... saving the most important for last...

I am thankful that I married Min Gi.  He really is the best husband I could possibly have chosen; I believe that even if I had been allowed to make someone up from scratch to be my partner, I couldn't have come up with something better.  He continues to surprise me with his thoughtfulness and kindness and patience and humor every single day.  In all my life, I've never been as excited to come home at the end of the day as I have in this year we've shared together.

Happy belated Thanksgiving, all.  I had a good one with my family and extended family and am looking forward to Christmas with more of my extended family.

Well... That was a doozy.

I caught the nastiest cold I've had in awhile (ok... in 3 weeks) last Thursday.  This readjusting to a new country for those of us with impaired immune function is annoying.  Since I started working in a school again, I've caught 3 major bugs.  I'm burning through my sick days at an alarming rate.  What kills me is not the physical symptoms, but the mental ones.  Sleep-deprived Diana cannot cope with 14 year old sass in the way normal Diana can.  As you may notice from my word count calendar for NaNoWriMo, life in all its forms just about stopped for me mid-last-week.

While I'm still hacking up a lung every 30 minutes or so and choking down the Vitamin C like I do chocolate on my period, my basic brain functions returned Tuesday evening, and I was able to complete my work week.  But that's about all I've been able to manage.  Seriously... You should see the pile of laundry awaiting me for tomorrow.

The good news?  (1) I'm returning to hotline volunteering at the same place I worked three years ago (some new folks, some old friends).  (2) I was approved to run my high school's drama club (with plans to get my certification endorsement in theater if I pass the test in January and then teach theater as an elective next year).  (3)  Min Gi obtained his MD driver's license, so we have purchased a second used vehicle through my uncle who will drive it down to us when they visit for the Thanksgiving holiday.

# 3 is a mixed bag.  I don't really want to own one car, let alone two, but America is a country not well designed for pedestrian lifestyle, especially outside a major metropolitan city.  So cheers to the continued destruction of the environment...

On with the show!

Settled?

We unpacked the final box we'd shipped from Korea last week and attended an American Halloween party.  Min Gi got his social security card and his driver's license.  Tuesday, I have a doctor's appointment.

It feels like something's shifting.  Like maybe I can start to relax just a little and move on with life goals--the ones I put on hold to accomplish this nightmare relocation.  This move has been so all-consuming that I'd almost forgot I even had them.  NaNoWriMo is helping a bit.  As is the Couch-to-5K running program I restarted this week.

I marvel at how different life was six months ago--when we didn't yet have our visa or even tickets for the U.S. and I had no idea how I was going to find a job and get everything done I needed to do to wind us up on the other side of the world with our cats and without being completely broke.

Well... we did it.

I'm still not completely happy here in America.  I don't know if that's the adjustment, reverse culture shock, or the shortening days (winter is never easy for me), but I do know that I'm starting to feel settled.  That this house and this job are starting to feel like "mine" instead of just the place I live and the place I teach.  It helps to have found places for everything; it helps that I've been able to plan out the quarter, rather than going day by day/week by week with my lessons.

As I enter the first American "holiday season" I've had in almost four years, I feel unwound.  Like I've been a tight coil for a year and half of short-term, high-pressure goals--all achieved, all stressful, many fun (to name a few:  completing grad school, planning a wedding and honeymoon, getting Min Gi's visa, moving to America and repatriating, dealing with a new chronic illness)--and now I have no bounce.  But maybe I can use this flexibility and rest to my advantage.  Use it to sift through my new identity as wife.  As American-in-America.  As high school English teacher (maybe, in the near future, drama teacher).  Use it to work on my health, my career, and my writing.

Let's hope.  I need some inspiration!

Just a Taste...

I'm at 3419 words.  Apparently, the word counter doesn't like it when you write ahead, so even though I'm on track for the month, it says I didn't meet today's goal.  Odd.

In case you're curious about what I'm writing for NaNoWriMo, it's a young adult novel, currently titled Calling It In.  Here's the description I posted:

Katie's senior year of high school was supposed to be the best... but then her older sister announces that she's moving to Korea, her boyfriend for the last two years dumps her as he enters college, and talking to people with problems at the youth crisis hotline where she volunteers starts to feel a little too personal.

A short, unedited excerpt from what I wrote today for NaNoWriMo:

Every night for the year after It had happened, Katie had the same nightmare. She was in a strange Asian-looking temple that was like a maze with walls that stretched on forever. Her mother's voice echoed from just around the next corner, "I'm here, Katie. Come find me! Help! I need your help!" But when Katie rounded the corner, there would just be more of the maze and the bright colored scenes of the Buddha and tigers and wise old fat men and dragons with fish in their mouths.

"I'm coming, Mom! Just hold on for a moment. I can't find you." She'd run and run and run until she was out of breath, but still there was more maze.

Right when she was about to give up, her mother's voice would say, "There, there Katie. You could never find me here. I don't belong here."

And then Katie's mocha skin and straight black hair would start to glow and burn.

"It hurts, Mommy," she would cry out.

But her mother was gone. And the pictures seemed to be smiling at her burning skin. Mocking her with some secret zen knowledge that was forever denied to her.

Even when she was awake that year, she stopped looking in mirrors. If she didn't look in the mirrors, she could pretend that she looked like Deena and her mother. She could belong. 

First Quarter Finished, NaNoWriMo started

I submitted class grades for the first time since 2007, and I must say, I like how this new computerized system keeps me on my toes so that I have to actually finish all of my grades for a numbered percent.  I used to flub it a bit--as in sometimes the last essay/test of the quarter didn't actually make a difference to the kid's letter grade as long as they handed it in; I would save those to grade after submitting grades, thereby perpetually extending my own deadline and my stress.  Now that I'm done, I feel relief.  Even if more of my ninth graders failed this quarter than I would have liked to see.

I also started my NaNoWriMo.  1957 words for the first day (of a minimum 50,000 required).  It took a little less than two hours today.  I'm happy to be writing so freely--no constant self-editing judgement, just get it done.  Check out (if it works) the widget on the side to track my progress.

November...

Well, I've gone and signed myself up for National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, as it's known on the interwebs).  You can follow my progress at the link above.  I guess it goes without saying that I may not be updating much next month... not that I updated much last month.

Anyhow, I'll let you know how it goes.  And now... on to the writing!  Happy Halloween!

I'm getting all "guh"

I miss having free time.  Teaching high school English in the U.S. is a very, very demanding job.

Something I've noticed... the culture here in PG county/suburban DC, that I was pretty "in touch" with three years ago, is now something almost completely foreign to me.  Part of it is getting older, but part of it is missing all those subtle cultural shifts that happen imperceptibly and rapidly without anyone who is a participant noticing.  Three years ago, almost no one but political bloggers referred to the Supreme Court as SCOTUS.  I still can't pick Katy Perry (yes, I had to look up how to spell her name) or Justin Bieber out of a lineup of similarly prepified tweens (frankly, who the heck cares?).  And now my students say things like "Mrs. S, you be getting me all guh," and I feel like I did when I was first learning about Korea and didn't know what "service" was (Good lord, I miss "service-uh").

It's got me thinking about cultural observations as an outsider in Korea and reflecting on how much I did or didn't understand.  Like if I hadn't grown up in the DC area, I might think some of these things were unique to this area, when really, they're new to the culture, not just regional.  Many things about Korean youth culture changed so rapidly that my students taught me things about Korean culture that older people, or even the venerable Korean of Ask a Korean wouldn't know.

How does culture change?  How permanent are the changes (or are they short term trends, like the Macarena)?  When we're living in it, we can't really know.  It's only over time that the depth of the change is revealed.

I think some things are easier to see from the outside (like the consequences of American consumerism) and others impossible to fully grasp except from within (like age-based hierarchy in Korean society, which I understand academically and linguistically but just don't get at all).  Living in a foreign land and marrying a non-American has made me a bit of an outsider of the culture once again.  And the first thing I've been truly excited about since coming back is trying to make sense of it all.  I've got my puzzle back.

Not Being There.

I shouldn't publish this because my family reads my blog, but it's time for my annual writing-share with my students.  This is what I'll be sharing tomorrow:

But they never call me. Near the end of my first year teaching in Korea, I had just signed a contract for my dream teaching job—a high school for students gifted in foreign languages—that would keep me in Korea another two years, when the e-mail notification for my internet phone line popped up with a message from my parents. During my year teaching English to elementary and middle school kids at an after-school academy called a hagwon, we'd fallen into a comfortable pattern where I'd call them on my Sunday mornings (their Saturday evenings with the time difference) to chat about life from 7,000 miles away. Yet, here was a message on Tuesday morning—one hour before my daily taekwondo lesson.

I had just fixed breakfast—instant apple cinnamon Quaker oatmeal that I'd scrounged up at Costco, a luxury in a country that feasts on rice and bean-paste soup with a spicy pickled cabbage dish called kimchi for nearly every meal. Why did they call on a Tuesday?

I clicked play and the worry in my mom's voice rang out over the tinny laptop speakers. “Honey, it's your mother. We don't want to worry you, but you should call us back right away. Dad's tests came back from the doctor.”

I tried to remember what we'd talked about this weekend. Mom had mentioned a doctor appointment, but it had seemed routine. Nothing out of the ordinary. Dad always goes to doctors for his diabetes and hypertension. Why that tone? The one she'd used to tell me my grandmother died.

In my head, I counted back the hours. Tuesday morning at 9:30 in Korea meant that it was 8:30 Monday evening in D.C. I hooked up my computer's microphone and dialed.

My sister answered. “Hello?” Even she sounded less energetic and more distant than usual.

“What's up? You sound weird.”

“I don't even get a 'hello' now?” She tried to pass it off like a joke. She was still a little angry with me at having moved halfway across the planet for her senior year of high school.

“Mom called. She sounded weird, too. What's going on over there?”

Sarah paused, unable to respond. “Maybe you should talk to Mom. Let me get her.” Listening to her fumble for words was a shock. She always has a snappy comeback. Always.

My oatmeal had congealed into a lukewarm lump. I didn't care. I wasn't hungry.

“Hello, dear.” Mom's voice still had that tone.

“What is it? You guys are really starting to worry me. Is Dad okay?”

“He's fine.” She had to swallow. “I told you this weekend that he was going to his doctor. Well, we didn't want to worry you, but it was not his normal doctor.”

“What do you mean? Tell me, Mom. Spit it out.”

“He went to an oncologist for testing. He has something called multiple myeloma. But don't worry. There's a lot of hope. There are so many treatments these days and the outcome is usually—”

“Wait, Mom. Did you just say Dad has cancer?”

“Yes, but the treatments these days—” She went on to tell me a lot of things about multiple myeloma that I did not hear. My father had cancer. And I was 7,000 miles away in a country that ate kimchi for breakfast. I had never felt so alone and so helpless in my life. I spoke to my father that morning, too, but I can't remember what he said either. I was thinking about the fact that I had just signed on to be away from my family for another two years and wouldn't even get a chance to visit them between the jobs. After I got off the phone with my parents, I canceled my taekwondo lesson, crawled back into bed, and forgot about the dried, cold oatmeal and the multiple myeloma and slept.

Two years later, having finished my employment contract with the foreign language high school and returned home to Maryland, I can finally talk about it. I still have trouble with the c-word, but I can say my father is in remission. I can joke with him a little about the fact that he can't use public swimming pools anymore because the risk of infection is too great. I ask him about the plans he's made for when it recurs in five years or so.

But I wasn't there when he lost 40 lbs and all his hair. His doctors wouldn't let me visit him while he was undergoing the bone marrow therapy because I was coming from a foreign country. I was half a world away when my family faced the biggest crisis they ever have because they all told me it was okay, and that I should take the job I wanted because it was such a great opportunity, and that there wasn't really anything I could do to help while he was in the hospital anyways because my brother didn't have a job right now and the economy was bad, so he could do what was needed. I wasn't there and my body rebelled, tore my guts to pieces, and put me in a Korean hospital a year ago. The doctors call it “ulcerative colitis,” but I know the truth. It's a physical manifestation of the guilt of not being there.

Every single day, I miss kimchi and taekwondo and the adventures I had in my husband's homeland. Was it the easy way out? My brother thinks it was. He resents me for not being there. For falling in love and getting married while our father almost died. My sister's anger at me for leaving in the first place grew more bitter. We remain distant compared to the inseparability we once had.

My dad is the only one that understands and approves.

“Cancer changed me,” he said last weekend while we were sailing on the boat he bought earlier this year. “All for the better. I would never have bought this boat, for example. A dream I've had for years—it just never would have happened. I was far too caught up in worrying about the future to realize that the present is what matters.” I look away, so he can't see the tears forming in my eyes. “I'm so glad you were off in Korea, having adventures, writing about them, sending us pictures.”

He doesn't say he was happy I didn't see him frail and weak like his other children did. He doesn't say that my getting married in Korea in January gave him something to get better for. He doesn't need to.

I know not being there was my way of being there for my father. But not being there was the hardest thing I've ever done.

I'm here, now, though. And now, sometimes for no reason at all, my father calls me to chat. And I don't have to wonder why he's calling on a Tuesday morning.

Illness and Reverse Culture Shock

For the last week I've been dealing with a creeping cold/flu which reached a new frenzy early this morning.  I'm still feeling like crap, but hopefully taking the day to rest will allow my body to heal.

I haven't been updating because of my illness and increased depression--which I believe may be related to reverse culture shock.  I'm glad I have a new job, but now that I'm in the routine of a "daily grind," my adjustment (or rather maladjustment) to my homeland has actually begun.  Coping with that, with all the issues related to Min Gi's immigration, and with a new job that's a lot more stressful than my last one is taking a toll on my health and my ability to write.  I have very little energy these days.

Plus, my last living grandparent, my mother's mom, died this weekend.

It's been a bad week.  I can only hope that it will get better.