Retracing my Steps- Getting Married

[edited post-divorce so I don't throw up reading the mushy things]

Now that I'm so far behind in this blog that I can't even remember what I have to blog about, I'll try for big events. Here's a big one: I got married.

On July 9, 2010, the day after my plane landed in Korea, my fiance and I went to the American Embassy in Seoul and did some paperwork because I'm an American citizen. Then we walked about two blocks to the Seoul City Hall and did some paperwork there because Kyu Won is a Korean citizen and we're in Korea. Then we were officially married in Korea. Once again, we went to the American Embassy and gave them a copy of the marriage license from the Seoul office, making us officially married in the United States. It cost about $100. Very anticlimactic, but I wore nice white clothes and he wore nice black clothes so it felt like a wedding a little. If you are an American citizen thinking about getting married to a Korean citizen, go here: US Embassy website.

After the paperwork, we celebrated by going to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, then we went to the CoEx Aquarium in Seoul. I'd wanted to go there since I first heard about it last year, but I never got the chance. It was amazing! I wanted a real wedding on Jeju Island, but we had no money.

The day after we were married, we met with our closest friends living in Seoul and ate at a restaurant called Gogi King ('gogi' means 'meat'), which is an all-you-can-eat meat buffet. You sit at a table that has a round grill in front of you with a retractable air vent above it (common in Korean restaurants), and you fill a large plate at the buffet with all the raw meat you want to eat. Then you cook it yourself at the table and everyone takes what they want. Then we went to the Seoul Tower on Namsan, the tallest mountain in Seoul. We didn't do any of the expensive things, but Kyu Won and I participated in a tradition: couples buy padlocks without keys and heart-shaped plastic things to write messages on, then put the hearts on the padlocks and lock them to the fences. If a couple has a padlock on Namsan, they are going to be in love forever. Of course that's not always true, but it's a sweet couple activity and there are a LOT of padlocks. We put ours next to my best friend's. She is Korean and her boyfriend was American. He came to Korea for summer vacation to learn some Korean, meet her parents, learn about her culture, and just to be with her. They broke up, too. Neither of our padlocks worked!

After getting married, we went back to Andong and rested for a while. Then we took a trip to a bamboo forest. I really wanted to go there, because of course we Americans don't really see a lot of bamboo in our lives and I have a thing for plants. The day we went it was raining cats and dogs, which was great because there weren't many people there. On sunny days, you can't take a picture without 10 people in the way. The bamboo was just like in kung-fu movies, tall, close together, and serene. I expected people dressed in old-fashioned nonspecific Asian clothes to come out fighting in a nonspecific martial art style. Speaking of martial arts, the uniquely Korean martial arts are Tae Kwon Do, Taekkyeon, as well as a Korean version of kendo called kumdo. We walked around the forest slowly, trying to find baby bamboo shoots because supposedly it's lucky if you see one. We didn't see any. I still have good luck from when a white tiger looked me in the eyes at Everland. Don't worry, I'm not superstitious; I just like the idea of luck. Did you know that knocking on wood comes from a superstition about distracting fairies from stealing your luck? We're all a little superstitious.

On the way home, we had to stop in Daegu to transfer buses, and Daegu just happens to be the homeplace of my favorite Korean food (yookgaejang, a spicy beef and vegetable soup), so we went to that restaurant. Amazing~! We drank my favorite Korean alcoholic drink, macceoli (rice wine, tastes a bit like skim milk mixed with sweet champagne) with its rightful side dish, nokdoojeon (kind of like a spicy shallot pancake) while we were waiting for the soup.

After our "honeymoon" was over, we returned to Andong again and rested a few days before opening up our restaurant. And that, my friends, is a topic for another day.

Retracing My Steps: Hello California!

My mom moved to Silicon Valley, California in June, so I decided to take a five-day layover in sunny Cali on my way out of the country. As the plane circled the San Francisco Airport and came in over the Pacific, all I could see out my window was the ocean drawing nearer and nearer to the plane. I'm sure my eyes almost popped out of my head, and I started to panic. What was the idiot pilot doing so close to the ocean?!?!? Turns out, the runway backs up to the water, and however seasoned the traveler, the first landing there is always terrifying. After flying all over the U.S., to Germany, England, France, Japan, and Korea, you'd think I'd seen it all. Maybe now I have?

When I arrived, I was half elated and half exhausted and half just wanted to go to Korea already. I know that's three halves, but like the (John Mayer?) song, I was bigger than my body. My mom was waiting by the baggage claim area and gave me a hug and a 'congratulations' for finally finishing school. We got my suitcases and headed home, stopping for a late night steak and onions for me and breakfast food for her. Yes, there is a restaurant that serves both 24/7. California is that cool. Over the next few days, we did the tourist tour of San Francisco and Silicon Valley, including the Stamford campus and its famous tree-lined street and beautiful buildings, the Golden Gate Bridge and a fort that overlooks the bay with Alcatraz in the distance, the sea lions that play and chat at the docks, Lombard Street's famous curvy section of red-brick road, and some local shopping areas. We like window shopping, but not wasting our money.

I remembered that I can't buy women's shoes large enough for my size 9 1/2 feet in Korea, nor can I buy deodorant (at least nothing that works), so we went shoe shopping and deodorant shopping. Hopefully they will last me at least 6 months. I can order things online, or have somebody in America send them to me at great expense, but I don't want to think about that right now.

Being my first time in California, I drank it all in. The summer is cool and sunny in San Francisco, and there are no mosquitoes whatsoever because it's not humid. My mom pointed out that many houses don't have screens in the windows because they don't need them. The houses are very different from Michigan houses. Michigan houses look old and like they are made for the sole purpose of withstanding all kinds of weather, which is largely true. In Michigan, the lake effect drives the weather crazy, even crazier than most midwestern states. In one day it can be warm t-shirt sunny weather, then rain, then snow, then be warm again. Michigan people all know to dress in layers in the transition seasons. I call them 'transition seasons' because Spring and Fall are each less than a month long, and more of a start and end of the 6-month-long winter. My mom says that the weather in northern California is always perfect. I can see that in the houses. But, the houses there are made to withstand constant sun and occasional earthquakes. They are stuccoed and painted in cheerful, clean colors. There are pastels, bright colors, all shades of white, blue, green, pink, yellow... I don't recall seeing a single gloomy house. Honestly, just the fact that there are no mosquitoes makes me want to live there, but it's extremely expensive. I guess everyone hates mosquitoes and winter. Ha!

San Francisco architecture reminds me of a mix between Florida and Paris. Of course, that's just out of where I've been, so it's probably not a good description. Anyway, it's gorgeous. If I get rich, that's where I want to go! Anyway, I can visit my mom the California licensed lawyer (congrats!) anytime I want, as long as I can afford $1500 for a round-trip plane ticket.

There's a little Koreatown where my mom lives. She showed me areas where every sign has Korean and English, or even just Korean. They have everything from food to healthcare to insurance. Koreans generally only trust Koreans when it comes to important things, so I'm sure the large Korean population is largely self-sufficient.

Other than that, there's nothing from that week that's pertinent to this blog, so I'll stop at that.

Next installment: getting to Korea and getting married!

Retracing My Steps: Goodbye Michigan!

The past month has been a whirlwind of activity. For the first time since I started writing this blog, I made an outline so I could remember most of what I wanted to write. Now comes the hard part: filling in the details for you. I'll break it into installments to make it less crazy.

Let's start in Michigan: my last few crazy days.

I had three final exams, two of which were online and therefore rather easy, and one of which was “fundamental” genetics. I don't see how molecular chemistry and complicated algorithms are fundamental, but I spent a good all-nighter studying after barely sleeping the night before because of one of the online exams. I used my human alarm clock (my fiance) on the other side of the world via MSN messenger to wake me by sending me messages with my computer on high volume after a catnap, and then studied some more, got a bagel, coffee, and an orange to go from the cafeteria, and walked and ate to class. Little did I know that almost everything on the exam was exactly what I'm terrible at: statistics and memorizing names of things. Also, because it was my last semester and therefore totally futile to buy expensive things, I had no calculator.... I almost passed. The other two classes I passed no problem, headed straight for graduation, but... ouch. I emailed my professor from California a couple of days later begging for a 1.0. More on CA and the professor's answer later (suspense!).

After the genetics exam, I was exhausted, so I slept a couple hours and woke up to my human alarm clock again. Bedodoop! That's the best I can describe the telltale MSN sound. Then it was time for more cafeteria food (I was living in a dormitory for the summer session) and the last online exam. Although I was sleepy, it wasn't bad. After that I took a shower and got ready for my going away party!

It was supposed to be a take-my-stuff-so-I-don't-have-to-deal-with-it-and-then-let's-get-food-and-drinks party, but it ended up a Kristin waiting for an hour in Bubble Island for people to come, then everyone coming late so the restaurant I wanted to go to was already too packed, so everyone sat around feeling awkward until we decided to go to Buffalo Wild Wings instead party. Although I was exhausted and a little annoyed at first, it ended up being more than I had hoped for. More than ten people came, and everyone got along even if it was the first time they had met. While people were arriving, my dad stopped by on the way through town to say goodbye and drop off some things I needed for the move. Again, awkward but nice. My father looks very strange without a beard. All in all, my last day in Michigan ended up being very warm, and I crawled into bed for another catnap for the last time. Although nobody took my things that day, a couple of friends had mostly cleaned my room out already, taking things like kitchen necessities, clothes and towels, office supplies, and other things that everyone needs and uses.

The next morning I took a shower, got in some comfortable traveling clothes, did some final packing (i.e. toothbrush and hairbrush), and went to play piano for the last time while waiting for my friend Jessica to come take my TV and a couple other things I promised her if nobody bought them. Jessica and my brother were “dating” in kindergarten, if kindergarteners holding hands all the time can be called dating, and he found her again on Facebook recently. She happened to live near me, so I got to see my brother more and made a new friend a couple months before leaving. After we hugged and said goodbye for the millionth time, I went back in and cleaned up what was left of my room. Then another new friend, Tei (whom I had met recently because he was something equatable to my RA) came to my room to help me take my baggage to the bus stop. I hadn't found a home for my dorm fridge yet, so we lugged it downstairs and left it in a corner, an the front desk called someone to take it to some storage area. Before it was taken away, a random conversation ended up with a guy taking it to his room. He was checking in while I was checking out. Funny how things just work out sometimes. After checking out, we rolled my two suitcases, me dragging my smaller one with my carry-on bag on top, and he dragging the larger one with a box of textbooks to sell on the way on top, the fifteen minutes or so to the bookstore, then to the bus stop (now bookless). We chatted until it was time for me to go, then said another sad goodbye. I got on the bus, which took me to the airport, called my mother so she wouldn't worry about my getting up on time, and slept.

The flight to California was an uneventful flight with one stopover. One interesting thing was that, with the new baggage fees, it was about the same price to check my bags as it was to upgrade the first leg of the trip to business class. As the southern businessman sitting next to me in business class later said on the topic, “that's what we call a no-brainer!” That was July 2nd.

In the next installment, Kristin goes to California for the first time ever!

One semester to go

I finished my last two final exams for the semester today, and now I just have to write ~20 pages for a history of medicine class by Friday. If you were wondering why I haven't posted for months, school is the main reason. Also, I am not in Korea, so I have seen and talked to my friends and family a lot more; and, America is not as interesting to me as Korea is.

This semester has been by far the most complicated one. I suppose I couldn't expect less considering I signed up for five classes and planned to support myself and my fiance for three months while trying to spend as much time together as possible before he had to return to Korea. Visa laws are evil.

In case you're curious about the kinds of classes I take for my International Studies major and Psychology cognate, I'll tell you what I took this semester: cultural anthropology, introduction to international relations, history of international relations, history of medicine, and biology and psychology of sex and sexuality. This was the first semester since middle school when I respected most of my teachers. I tend to have a disdain for the educational system, and am a strong believer in "those who can't do, teach." Also "those who can't do or teach, manage." That is why I don't bother applying for part-time jobs anymore. So where does my income come from? Private English as a second language tutoring. I've been doing it for three years and have an ESL (TESOL) teaching certification. Considering the fact that I have personally studied 3 foreign languages, I can relate to ESL students and understand what they are trying to say because I'm usually familiar with the grammar of their language. So for me, it's basically talking to friends whom other people can't understand, and trying to help them improve so other people can understand them.

While my fiance was here I had five students: two from South Korea and three from Saudi Arabia. I met them an average of 3 hours per week per student, not including travel time, so I was working about 15 hours a week. That doesn't sound like much now that I think about it, but it felt like a lot.

Kyu Won couldn't go to school or work in America (visa laws are evil), so he and my brother's cat, Polly, hung around the house all day while I went to school and work. Sometimes he went out and explored. Every Tuesday and Thursday I had an hour and a half between the end of classes and meeting my first student, so Kyu Won spent those days cooking at home (he's a chef) and brought dinner to me on campus. We ate together and talked, then he studied cooking and/or English while I tutored, and then we went home together. On Mondays and Wednesdays he would cook dinner at home around 9 or 10 so it would be ready when I got home, and we would eat together and talk or watch TV. I really miss that. My apartment is about a 10 minute walk from the nearest bus stop, and it's in a residential neighborhood , so it gets really dark and creepy at night. It was always nice to have him there with me or knowing that he was waiting for me at home. Fridays I didn't have class, so he came with me to campus and studied or explored while I tutored, and then we had time to ourselves.

It was very stressful for both of us living under those circumstances. For Kyu Won, he wanted to work and support me while I went to school, but all he could do was be the equivalent of a housewife. Psychological studies have shown that men whose wives earn more than they do have higher levels of stress, and that the higher the ratio of woman:man household income, the shorter the man lives. Those studies may or may not be complete bogus, but I think there's truth in those results. Also, the language barrier was very stressful in daily life for him. In Korea, when I speak a little Korean, people are amazed and think I'm a genius. In America, if a foreigner speaks a little English, Americans think he or she is an idiot and not worth talking to. All of my students dread the typical American "what????" and this was especially difficult with my friends. Most of my friends are really kind, understanding, and patient. But not all of them. It's very humiliating to need someone to translate from your broken English to American English. On top of all that, there was culture shock. Kyu Won had never been on an airplane before, and the only country he'd ever visited was Japan. I kind of know that feeling.....

For me, having him here was extremely stressful, but having him gone is equally stressful. While he was here, I felt guilty because I couldn't take him traveling or buy him all the American things I wanted to buy him or help him make friends or even spend enough time with him. He was so lonely waiting for me at home all day, and then when I finally got home I was exhausted and only half there. I felt like I dragged him to this country just to imprison him for 90 days. It was a paradox: I felt like I needed to earn more money, and I felt like I needed to spend more time with him. I couldn't have both. Another paradox: he had all the time in the world and couldn't earn money, and I didn't have enough time in the day to earn enough money. I took out some $5000 in student loans just to get through this semester, and needed every penny even though I worked and earned money, too.

The stress of not having enough time or money was intense, but I didn't have to do laundry or wash the dishes or cook or anything. No matter how hard the day was, I had a loving pair of arms to come home to. Another psychological study shows that married people are happier than single people. This could be for a variety of reasons, both emotional and physical (I mean like chemicals in the brain and bloodstream, for those of you with dirty minds). When I was sick, he took care of me. When I was sad, he hugged me and did sweet little things to make me happy. When I was happy, he made me happier. When I was hungry, he fed me.

Now I only have to support myself, but I have a negative balance on my credit card that is slowly creeping back to zero. But, there's nobody at home. Just me. And the cat, who sometimes drives me crazy and requires more attention that I care to giver her. I'm depressed and empty, like a shark bit a hole out of my abdomen and nobody came to the hospital to condole me. I have friends and family, but it's not the same. It's been over a month since he left. He got on a plane early in the morning on my 22nd birthday, March 25th. Ironic... last year I got on a plane to Korea on the 26th. I haven't had a birthday party for two years. All of the feelings I had that drove me to sell everything and run away to Korea are still here in East Lansing, but now there's the added one of being lonelier than a single person. I know he's out there, I know I love him, but I can't remember him clearly and he can't be here to remind me. I finally quit tutoring about two weeks ago. I asked my mom to support me until I graduate in July. For the first time since I was 16, I admitted that I can't take care of myself.

Every day I have to tell myself that I only have to be here a little longer. Now it's just two months more. I'll be living in a single room in a dormitory on campus. I don't want a roommate unless it's him or my best friend, and they will both be in Korea (my best friend is Korean, and she goes home during the summers). Also, I won't have to worry about housework, and there is a piano so I can compose songs and work on a Korean pop song I want to play and sing for my fiance when I return to Korea.

I apologize for the depressing nature of this and the last post. I was thinking of telling a cheerful story, but that would be mostly a lie. I didn't enjoy my life here before I went to Korea, and I especially don't enjoy it now that I was forced to come back because my adviser didn't take my situation seriously and advise me not to go because I couldn't graduate in Korea. No, he said I could graduate without returning to America before I bought the plane ticket. I'm bitter about that. Anyway I decided to keep in the spirit of honestly blogging my life and my thoughts about it. I'll start blogging more now that the semester is over, so there will be ups and downs again, and the quirky insights you all tell me you love. Stay tuned!

Languages and the languages within them

Rather than give a play-by-play of my life for the last 5 months, I'll try to jot down some of my observations both of how I've changed and how my fiance dealt with the entirely new experience of living in a country he'd never been to and couldn't really speak the language of very well.

For me, it felt like I had been gone a million years and come back a different person to a totally different world, but at the same time it felt as though I had left only a day before and nothing had really changed. Upon arriving in America, suddenly my 9 months in Korea seemed like a dream that had passed in the blink of an eye but contained so many experiences. The fast-slow time paradox still hasn't faded, as I realize that this semester I had dreaded so much is almost over. As I write, I should be studying or writing one of my numerous papers due this week, final exam week at Michigan State University. This is my last full semester here; I will finish my studies on July 1st. That day can't come soon enough. But where did the time go? Was I ever in Korea? Was I ever here before, searching for a way out? Will the day I leave again ever come? Time is anything but exact. It's a subjective measure applied objectively to an abstract phenomenon. I hate time. It's never on my side. I guess that's because I only notice it when it doesn't work in my favor.

It takes about 2 weeks to get over jet lag when you fly between Asia and America. This is a generally accepted reality, and it was no different for Kyu Won and I. Amidst a dream-like state, we celebrated Christmas with my mother and brother, and then again with my brother, father, and stepbrother. Everything in my family happens in twos. If you include the extended families and stepfamily, things sometimes happen in fives. This could be part of the reason I'm good at adapting. I'm always changing anyway, why not be a chameleon? Anyway, both American Christmases were just like I remembered them, plus a feeling of awkwardness and a sense that I didn't belong. I've always had that sense that I don't belong in my family. I also had the sense that I didn't belong in my friend groups in elementary, middle, and high school. I always have a sense that I don't belong anywhere, except when I'm alone with my fiance. That's a good sign for our relationship.

After coming back to America, that sense of being an included outcast became even greater. I had two roles in conversation: telling everyone else about Korea, or listening to everyone else talk about things I didn't know about. I still think in Korean often, and at the beginning, I inserted Korean words into English conversations. I was always trying to bring up Korea because I had nothing else to talk about; it was like the "word vomit" Lindsay Lohan's character has issues with in Mean Girls. At some point it became evident that nobody cared, but I couldn't stop. I needed to be admired so that I could stand out of the group in a positive way rather than in an awkward way.

I know Kyu Won felt even more awkward, because he couldn't understand the fast speech, slang, and complicated words and phrases in American conversation. He had only heard me speak to one American in Korea, and to my best friend, who is Korean but has studied in America for like 6 years and is fluent in English. With my best friend, Jenny, we could also speak in Korean, and she could translate anything one of us couldn't understand, so it wasn't really an American conversation. My family is sarcastic and witty, and tends to talk about technical things, as both my parents and my brother are or were engineers. My mother is a lawyer now but has worked as an engineer for companies like GM and NASA. My father is an automotive engineering sales manager after working his way up the ladder. You may remember I saw him on a business trip in Korea. My brother majored in electrical engineering and is basically a wonder boy. He programs and builds things for computers, guitars, motorcycles, and more, and he once built a high-tech motorcycle with touch screen rear-view mirrors and Windows XP installed. I almost failed statistics in high school and college, and my major is International Studies and Psychology. I can't keep up with my family. I always feel like the dumb one in my family, although I know I excel in other things, like languages and music composition. The other problem with the huge difference between the rest of my family and I is that I always feel alienated, like I love them but I don't know how to talk to them. This got a hundred times worse. Hopefully I also excel in acting and nobody noticed that I was more awkward than usual. Kyu Won must have felt like my pet, calmly sitting or standing by me, listening only to me, and not understanding what anyone was saying. I remember how that felt in Korea, and I still feel that way sometimes although I've improved a lot. Everyday conversations in Korean give me confidence because I can follow them, but as soon as things get technical I feel like a moron again. It doesn't matter whether it's my family talking about microcontrollers or my fiance's family reminiscing. Both are foreign languages to me, and it was strange to come back to America and make that connection.

I realized that language is not just English, Korean, French, or Japanese. Each language has its own sub-languages that only certain sub-cultures can understand. Take generation gaps in slang, for instance. Try telling you grandparents that you lol'd when your bff friended your bf's homie on Facebook coz he's smokin' hot. Technical terms and concepts create a huge language barrier between my family and I. Instead of thinking of language as purely a country- or ethnicity- based construct, I've begun to think of it in more multilateral terms. What I mean by that, for those of you who don't speak my language, is that languages aren't just alphabets and vocabulary. Language is made up of so many different factors. For instance, I have a English conversation student from Korea who is studying for her master's degree in statistics. If she were to explain what she's studying in depth (thankfully she doesn't torture me like that), I would probably have no idea what she was talking about. Although she is the foreigner and I am the American, I would not be able to understand her speaking prefect English. What a concept! I think languages like English and Korean are just the modes of expression, and that people who speak different languages could actually be speaking the same one but not understand each other. I'll explain that with the same student. If she talked to a Chinese student studying for a master's degree in statistics in Germany, they could talk about the same thing in four different languages and never understand each other, just like a doctor, a lawyer, a fisherman, and a chef could talk about their fields in the same language and never understand each other. To fully understand a conversation, you need to be fluent in two languages: the topic and the linguistic means of talking about that topic. You could expand on that and say that culture is a language. I've always thought that music is a language, but I never saw this big jumbled picture before. All of this because I don't understand my family any better now that I went to another country for 9 months than I did before I left.

This redefines compatibility for relationships. I realize why I love Kyu Won. We speak the same language, even though he speaks Korean and I speak English. We think in similar ways, and the ideas trying to get out are similar enough that we can break through the language barrier on the surface and reach a greater understanding of each other than I can with any of my friends or family members. We can't have witty reparte, and we can't chit chat for hours about nothing without difficulty. But we often don't realize that our conversations are strange and incomprehensible to others, or that we are from different countries and ancestries. To me, he's not Korean first, and to him I'm not American first. Those things are way down the list of things we think of when we think of each other, but they're the first things we use to describe each other to others.

So how do you talk to someone who doesn't speak your language? Speak another language you both know. Although most of our early conversations were about 60% body language and 40% a grammatically incorrect, unclear mix of jumbled words in Korean and English, I remember the ideas Kyu Won expressed to me as if they were expressed fluently in English. I merely translated those conversations into a format easier to file in my memory. Try it. Talk to someone from another country. Find a language you can share with someone you can't understand. It's amazing.

Coming Back to America

On Christmas Day, 2009, my boyfriend, his father, his little brother, and I all went to the Incheon International Airport early in the morning. Those of you who have traveled internationally know that it is very stressful, and this was no exception. I was tired from our day at Everland and sleeping on a Korean futon on the floor (like a thick blanket rather than a mattress), and I'm not a morning person anyway. Although my boyfriend's father had traveled internationally for business quite a bit in the past, airline policies have changed a lot in the past ten years, so he was in the dark about what to do. After my travels from America to Korea and between Korea and Japan, I was the foremost expert on the subject. Unfortunately, I am to this day stressed out about missing planes, getting arrested for nothing, or whatever else can go wrong. What I'm trying to say is that nobody had a head about them. However, we managed to get on the right plane with plenty of time to spare despite confusing information given me by the airline desk that led me to believe we would miss our flight and thereby freak out. My boyfriend's father's last memory of me is a jittery, stressed out, snappy, tired, nervous brat. I hope he understands. As it turns out, my stress was well-founded, as we discovered during our connection in Washington D.C.. From the scheduled landing time of our plane from Japan to the departure time of our plane to Detroit, we had two and a half hours. That's more than enough time, right? Nope. Instead of docking at a different gate like normal planes do when the assigned gate is occupied, our plane waited for half an hour. Then we finally got into the airport, and I had to separate from my boyfriend because I'm an American citizen and didn't have to go through immigration. After going though customs and getting my passport stamped, I went to the baggage claim and re-check area, which is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of in my life. I found my and my boyfriend's bags and sat with them, watching the door for him to arrive. After waiting a long time and starting to worry, a security woman told me that I couldn't wait in the baggage claim area. I told her politely that I was waiting for my boyfriend to go through immigration and that this was his first time traveling by plane and his English wasn't too great. I was worried that he would have a lot of trouble figuring out this step of the process, because I even had trouble with said ridiculousness. She responded very impolitely that I was in a baggage claim area, not a waiting room. I was under the impression that one could function as the other, seeing as it had never been a problem in domestic flights, and reiterated that my boyfriend was not American and had no idea what was going on. She, again impolitely, inquired his age, to which I replied 23. She then quite rudely reminded me in an unnecessarily raised voice that he is an adult and can take care of himself and I had better get my own self taken care of so that I don't cost the airline money by missing my flight. I held back tears of stress, anger, and helplessness and also restrained from using profanities. I did as she said, hatred for United Airlines building in my chest.

After making it through security, I took a look at the departures board and realized that we didn't have much time left before missing our flight. I asked the nice (no really, the guy was as helpful as he could be) information kiosk guy how far away our gate was and how long it usually took incoming flights to get through immigration. As it became evident that we would probably miss our flight unless I could get my boyfriend through some lines faster, I asked the kind guy if he could radio downstairs to get my boyfriend to the front of the line. I've experienced that in security often: people with flights really soon are ushered to the front of the line. This saves the airline money and unwanted customer dissatisfaction at missing a flight because of the airline. Well, turns out, the nice man wasn't even allowed to talk to security or immigrations people. Isn't a pillar of good customer service communication between employees? Now I was really mad at United Airlines. At long last, my boyfriend emerged through the doors, and I wiped my tears that had been streaming down my face at increasing intervals as the minutes passed because the next flight to Detroit was five hours later and we had already flown overseas and were on our second connection. I told him to run, and we ran to the terminal. We were five minutes late. The plane hadn't departed yet; the doors had closed. I asked if there was any way to get us on the plane before it left in five minutes, and the guy working there walked away talking into a radio without answering me. A couple of minutes later, during which minutes my boyfriend and I were waiting hopefully and breathlessly from running on nearby seats, an angry man who had been waiting at the wrong gate because that's where a United representative told him to wait came yelling at the gate guy who was still there (not the one who walked off with the radio). The guy told him that the doors had closed and he would have to wait for the next flight five hours later. I became livid and yelled something like, "you mean we've been waiting here for you to tell us if we can get on the plane or not and you were never gonna tell us that the answer is no?!?!" He made some cocky remark, but I was already in tears. After stressing out in now three airports in one day, after the stress of waiting helplessly with no way to contact my boyfriend for more than an hour, after being snapped at by now four United employees (including two snotty flight attendants), I had missed a flight for the first time in my life. It was totally out of my control and nobody had tried to help me.

We then waited for like an hour in a service counter line and although I had all these grand ideas about bitching out the service counter person, I realized that a lot of the people in line were on the same flight we were that waited too long outside the gate. I'm sure the service counter people had already been yelled at, and I just didn't have energy. So I switched our flight and called my mom on that phone because she was waiting to pick us up in Detroit, and I complained very loudly so that everyone could hear about how much I hated United because of the events of the past few hours. I suppose they were thinking similar thoughts. My mother was also thinking similar thoughts, because she had to drive over an hour back home and then drive back to the airport again later to come get us.

We ended up eating hamburgers and fries while waiting, and spending some relaxing time watching my boyfriend experience his first moments in America relaxed me a bit. After finally arriving at Detroit Metro, we had a little baggage confusion but nothing too bad, and had an awkwardly emotionless meeting with my mom. Everyone was exhausted and annoyed about the flight change, so after nine months in Korea the first moment I saw my mom had no tears or laughs. Those would come later, as will the next post.

The gist of this post is... NEVER FLY UNITED AIRLINES! To back up my point here is another person with a similarly angry outlook on United: United Breaks Guitars

Remember December?

At long last, I will elaborate on what I mentioned in the last entry.

As I mentioned in earlier entries, I really wanted to try dog meat once before coming back to America. I love controversy and culture and food, and here was one thing that encompassed all of those. My boyfriend's mother has, for years, enjoyed a good dog meat dinner once in a while, so when she heard that I wanted to try it she was kind of excited. Also, it's a well-known fact in Korea that foreigners don't eat dog. If you didn't catch this when I said it before, many Koreans also refuse to eat it on moral grounds. Anyway, we went to a dog meat restaurant, where my boyfriend's mother and I got spicy dog meat soup, and my boyfriend got a dog soup with a mild flavor. We also had a dish of dog skin, which made my skin crawl when I ate it because I don't even like chicken skin. In case you're wondering, dog meat has a lot of connective tissue, which makes it hard to chew, and the flavor is a little strange- definitely something I will not eat again by choice. Anyway, I'm glad I tried it because now I'm not wondering what it tastes like.

My boyfriend and I wanted to do a lot of traveling around Andong while we lived there, but it didn't really end up happening much. One day in December, we just got up and did it. We gathered his old watercolors and paper, bought some bread from a bakery and some convenience store snacks, and hopped on a bus to the countryside. Now I know it's taboo to cite Wikipedia, but whatever. What we saw was Korea's 15th national treasure, 봉정사 (Bongjeongsa). For more information about the architecture, look here. Anyway, it was really cold, but we had a lot of fun. We walked up a mountainside to get there, including a little rice farmer path my boyfriend's mom tipped us off about that got us around the entrance gate where you have to pay something like $3. We saw some women coming down from recreational mountain climbing while we were going up, so I guess it's an insider secret. After looking around, taking tons of pictures, and talking to some monks, we found a little pond my boyfriend remembered from a few years ago when he visited with his mom. We ate our bread and sat on a bench, freezing, and then painted the pond in watercolors while the sun set. Then we walked back down the mountainside in the dark and hopped on the bus back to civilization. It was a great, romantic, relaxing day. I recommend it for couples and families, but try to pick better weather. Autumn or spring would be best. I don't think that will be our last watercolor picnic in the countryside. :)

For my boyfriend's mother's birthday, we tried to do something simple that she would love. We went out a little before she got home to do some birthday shopping and trick her into thinking we forgot it was her birthday, and also because we woke up late. We bought a chocolate mousse cake and some persimmons, because she doesn't like sugary things like cake, but everyone loves blowing out the candles. She eats persimmons all the time- at least one per day. I, personally don't like them the way she does: she waits until they're soft and eats them with a spoon. But I did try something in Seoul I thought I mention. It was a hot milk and cinnamon tea with a slice of soft persimmon in the bottom. It's really delicious, really healthy especially if you don't use much sugar, and if you serve it at parties or with holiday dinners, it will be something your guests have never tasted before because persimmons aren't as common in America. Anyway, for the birthday party, we also bought some tortilla chips, which are an exotic foreign food in the international section of the grocery store. I introduced chips and salsa to my boyfriend and his family, and his mom likes to eat just the chips by themselves. Finally, we rented Mamma Mia, which she loves and listens to the soundtrack all the time. We all sat down to munchies and a movie for her birthday. All in all, a toned-down version of American birthday parties. Why toned down? Well, I'll tell you. Age in Korea is counted differently than in America. When a baby is born, it is one year old. Then, everyone turns one year older on the lunar ("Chinese") new year. That has two big effects (well, more than two but I won't talk about them): one, everyone is one or two years older in Korea; and, two, people don't turn older on their birthdays, making them less meaningful. Recently, the cake and candles and presents tradition is normal with some people, but it hasn't caught on in other circles.

Before coming back to America, I wanted to see all the people who were important to me, and my boyfriend did, too. We started with a day out with my friends from 울산 (Ulsan), 성동 (Sungdong) and Reza (from England, no Korean name to romanize). We went to 하회마을 (Hahoe Maeul, traditional village). It was, again, cold, so we didn't get to see it at its' prime, and we didn't see any dancing people with traditional costumes and masks. But we did see a guy who makes pottery, and he helped Reza make a coffee mug, which was cool. After that, we got pizza for dinner, and the boys went back home. It was nice to see them one last time in 2009.

The next day was a family party at our apartment. My boyfriend's aunts and uncle and cousins all came over. We made Christmas decorations from paper with the little girl cousin, who came early with her two friends to play games and eat snacks... basically so she could show off her chef cousin and his American girlfriend. I taught them how to make snickerdoodles, for which one of the aunts asked the recipe. We ate homemade spicy chicken, 삼겹살 (samgyeopsal, like bacon but thicker cut), pizza, fruit, and various alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. I sat at the adult table and understood about half of the conversation! Yay~! It was exactly the same as my family gatherings in America, except in a different language and with different foods.

The day after that, we lugged three suitcases and some bags to Seoul via bus, where we transferred to the subway and made our way to my boyfriend's father's apartment. We were greeted with hellos and offers of food. My favorite. :) We crashed and woke up the next day to hang out with our friends in Seoul. We invited about ten people, and we ended up seeing my friend Julia, whom I met in Korean class at MSU last year and moved to Seoul over the summer. We went shopping, had dinner, and caught the subway home. Well, close to home. We bought some chicken, snacks, and sodas and went to my boyfriend's friend's apartment. He made even more food for us and we ate and talked into the night. After sleeping in the morning, we got up and went home to get ready to go to dinner with his father and little brother. We went to VIPs, a popular Western food buffet. The one we went to was a special all-you-can-eat ribs buffet, and we ate and ate and ate all we could eat. Let's just say we got our money's worth. Like the rest of my boyfriend's family, his father and brother like me. That's a good thing.

On December 24, we had a special couple day at Everland, the Korean equivalent of Disneyworld. We won a contest by telling our couple story, and won free entry, free cute mittens and a little red Christmas cape and reindeer antlers, a free special safari in a jeep (during which we fed lions and siberian tigers), free dinner, special reserved seats in the ferris wheel timed for us to see fireworks from the sky, and we were the key feature in a stage show just after sunset. It was amazing- a great last day in Korea before coming back to study.

Next time I'll tell you about our long plane ride, why I'll never fly United again, and our life in America up until now. I'm not stopping this blog just because I'm not in Korea anymore, because I think that both my reverse culture shock and my boyfriend's experiences are interesting and related to this blog. Anyway my fingers are tired. See ya~