compliments of the chef...

So...
I had my first near meltdown yesterday.. although some may call it a complete meltdown. But who's here to judge? Ok put your hands down and your weapons away. Geez. Others had warned it would happen but whoa. I didn't anticipate this. It certainly didn't help that I'm trapped in a freaking "death box/cell" (like David affectionately calls it) A room like this would surely make any sane person go off the wall BONKERS.

**side story(suppliment): A guy I met from my program had already not slept for about two days.. he had to stay in a room like mine, but possibly even larger. He got extremely claustrophobic, grabbed his bags at 4 in the morning, and took off. He didn't know where the hell he was going and he only had a few words of Korean up his sleeve but he just had to get the hells on out of there. So YEH. That's pretty much my living situation right now. Except I'm a warrior.... with...the..occasional....freak out. But yeh, I endured, right?


But after it happened, I just thought to myself.. If this is the worst of it, then it's really not that bad. And honestly, it can only go up from here. Again, put your weapons away haha. Not to quote a Beatles song or anything.... but actually, the Joe Cocker rendition of the Beatles song which is also the theme song of an amazingly awesome show called The Wonder Years(hells yes!)... but "oh, I get by with a little help from my friends...[AND family]" and I did. I had to realize that although I can sometimes feel pretty isolated and ronrey(team america anyone?), friends and family and simba are never too far away(figuratively, of course. I DO realize that there is a vast ocean of separation) I downloaded Skype which may be the single most greatest invention EVER (sliced bread is highly overrated)... and it was so nice to have human contact with a familiar face. So anyone who has Skype, let's do it!! And anyone who doesn't have Skype, get a webcam + a microphone and download that shiznit.

Anyways, things have been looking up. I finally was able to find a power converter in the randomest of random places. A place that was an eye sore, chock full of neon lights and such. A little place I'd like to call OMG-YOU-SAVED-MY-LIFE. No exaggeration there. I even kind of made a friend. A girl randomly knocked on my door asking if she could take a look at my room(some people call it a room, I call it a box.. but whatever, to each his/her own) since she was moving in here. Upon first glance, she gasped, "It's so small!" Yeh... geez, I felt so awful for her because I get to move out after 5 days but she has to stay here. Oy, but she did speak a little bit of English.. and I do speak a little bit of Korean so I blurted out "LET'S BE FRIENDS!" We went out for dinner the other night and explored the neighborhood a little bit. I LOVE my neighborhood.. it pretty much has everything I'll ever need in it. And it's safe! Well, I feel pretty safe here.. and that's saying something considering the sunset(sunset represent heh) back in San Francisco freaked the crap out of me. No gang rape will happen here haha.

Hmmm.... also, I signed up for some clubs at school and there's a welcoming party tonight. Hopefully it's tons o' fun and maybe I'll be able to meet some chums. O.k. well that's it for now... another freakishly long post. I guess I'm a bit verbose but I'm sure most of you already knew that. It was written in fine print in the contract you signed to be my friend. You DID sign the contract, riiiiight? Heh, well 'tis all for now. Skype people! LONG LIVE SKYPE!

Blah.

a safe but dizzy landing..

Greetings from Korea!
South, mind you. Not north! I wouldn't really be too amped on going to live in an impoverished country with a totalitarian dictatorship. But anyways.

The plane ride wasn't as completely awful as I thought it would be. It was about an 11-12 hour flight... I took some dramamine(motion sickness medicine) I think it may have completely knocked me out. Maybe they haven't learned how to actually help motion sickness so they decided to just make a sleeping pill with a happier label. Whatever, I was a satisfied customer. I was hoping to sleep the entire plane ride anyways. I guess it also helped that I only slept about 45 minutes the night before. Hmmm.. all in all the plane ride was ok although I do have my suspicions that the man sitting next to me stole my peanuts. I'm not trying to point any fingers but all I know is that one minute those peanuts were sitting next to me, and the next.. .GONE. Was I going to eat the peanuts? Probably not but that's hardly the point.... urg.

So how's Korea you ask?
HOT! Absolutely mofo-ing hot. And humid at that. It seems pretty great so far though. I love the city life and it seems I've entered a much bigger city than my little home of San Francisco. The only thing that's a bit scary are all of the crazy cars cars with the crazy angry drivers inside of them. Usually when people are are driving and see pedestrians, they'll slow down at least a little bit.. seems that in Korea, if they see pedestrians, they'll slam down the gas pedal to try to move past you as quickly as possible. I'm also going to have to adjust to the fact that motorcycles and scooters are allowed to roam freely on the sidewalks. Geez, and I used to think that bicycles on sidewalks were annoying/dangerous. I guess I shouldn't wear on my ipod while walking haha... especially since I'm already a pretty oblivious pedestrian with a somewhat slow reaction time. It seems like any time a car honks at me, it takes me a while to realize what's going on and then instead of getting the heck out of the way, I usually respond with a confused look and awkward body movements. Yup, I'm normal.

I'm not moving into my place until September 1st so I've been put into a solitary confinement box.. or so it appears. It's just a bed.. and then my two huge bags of luggage take up the vast majority of the floor space.. and.. no window. I can't even open my luggage so I just unzip the bag and slide my arm into the suitcase. This is the point where I'm cursing that I had to zip up the underwear compartment. Don't worry though. With a little bit of finesse and some careful wriggling, I was successful in unzipping it and haven't had to wear the same pair for the past few days. Thank the stars! Haha, I'm trying to take the positive from this by thinking that this will just make me all the more appreciative of my new place. I've been trying to explore the city by walking around and not getting lost. I tried to find a restaurant where things were pretty familiar. I stepped into a place earlier today but didn't exactly know how the ordering process worked. So I walked up to the front and stared at people. No response. I looked around with utter confusion(usually the universal sign of "what the bleep is going on?" and then looked back at one of the ladies upfront and shot her a look of desperation. Success. I only saw 4 things on the overhead menu and ordered the familiar tonkatsu. Koreanized Japanese food. Alright!! It was pretty yummy though and only about $3.50.

O.k. so I've written a shit ton.
So I'm keeping this blog for my own personal reference as well as to keep all of you folks at home updated! So bear with me.. this is incredibly strange for me to have a public blog seeing that I'm a pretty private person. The blogs may be somewhat incoherent at times but hopefully they will at least be somewhat informative and entertaining. If not, sucks for you. Stop reading. Anyways, I miss all of you back at home and PLEASE email me! It seems like when you have no friends, you have all the time in the world. I've only been able to explore so far from my home because I don't want to get horribly lost. O.k. well take care! HEART <3

hy_c@hotmail.com