Trusting Skeletons

I felt it coming. Quickly. Like a sneeze you can't control. We were outside in Meyong Dong, the busy shopping area and the streets were jammed with people doing a little late night shopping before the Lunar New Year. I bent over the bench and threw up my lunch into the clean white snow. Danielle looked on in quiet disbelief. When the wretching was over we headed for the subway, feeling confident I could make it the hour back to my apartment. Three stops later, I rushed off the subway just in time to hurl off the platform and onto the tracks. "Hey," an old man yelled as I projectile vomitted the water I'd just drank down onto the tracks. "Sick," Danielle said, pointing to me and rubbing my back. I looked up at the old man, dressed in a reflective vest, face mask, and yielding a baton, used to stear people clear of the tracks who are either too drunk they may just fall or intentionally jump in front of the subway. He laughed. I laughed back, as if to ask him i...

"The head is culture, the heart is nature," he said. He said, "The heart is a fool, but the head is a bigger fool." We were in the balcony, surrounded by a sea of black hair, and this Irish man on the stage was speaking about the things I felt in my heart. I went to go see The Swell Season on Sunday. If you've seen the movie Once, you'll know what I'm talking about or if you've ever listened to The Frames or watched the movie The Commitments, you might know what I'm talking about. But it doesn't matter if you're familiar with them or not. You don't need to know them to know the power music can have or to understand what I will write. It was the second show I've been to here. If you know me, you know this is abnormal. I will go to a concert by myself without hesitation. Music stirs something inside me and I hadn't realized how much I missed it until I was sitting in Row F, staring down at the stage. There is something ...

I'm in love with the end. Or well, I fall in love with the things that are ending. If it's going to last, I forget to love it. Korea is ending. My adventure is coming to a close. Quicker than I anticipated. And I find myself loving everything about Korea, knowing soon enough, I won't be able to love it the same way. And also knowing that I don't know what is after. After. After Korea. We are creatures of habit, it's the way we survive, the way we function. But habits don't come quickly in a foreign country. I have them now and they are comforting. I wake up early in the morning, turn on the heat for my shower, make a cup of instant coffee, get ready for work, walk to work with my ipod in my one good ear, teach, go to the gym, walk home, make dinner, read, watch bad television, play with Animal, and go to sleep. Sometimes I mix it up a bit, but for the most part, that's my life. There is comfort in that. And there is comfort in the familiar fac es and the sam...

Here is a song that one of my elementary students wrote in his English journal. His name is Prime, and he's a clever boy who wears his taekwondo uniform to class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. His English is, at best, mediocre, but he always makes me laugh. I make a song. is here I am so hot grandmother buettiful I am so fain grandmother charm here I am, so coll grandmother good I am so so so ~ hot hot The and It is happy

I have a staring problem. It's gotten me into multiple binds. I'm curious about humans, about the things we do, the way we look, the words we choose, or the way we lean into people when we're talking or avoid eye contact with strangers. So, I stare. It feels fitting here, where I am stared at a hundred times a day. Stared at, pointed at, laughed at. "Mommy, look, there's a white person," the children say pointing at me and their mothers smile and stare at me. But staring didn't just start in Korea. I've been doing it for most of my life. In high school and even college, other girls used to threaten me with bodily harm because they wanted to know, "What are you staring at?" Maybe it's because for most of my life I've felt abnormal, so I studied people, trying to grasp what it was I supposed to be doing or saying or wearing. I developed an affection for strangers, and a hatred too. But mostly, I just look. Sitting across fro...