Forging New Paths

It is becoming increasingly clear that despite my fleeting ambitions otherwise, I am most likely going to end up teaching ESL for the rest of my life. It's been my safety net, my fallback plan, often my main career, for the past 6 years. I'm good at it and I enjoy bonding with students and watching them improve. That look that plays across a person's face when understanding dawns is priceless, especially when the thing being understood is useful in daily life or more complex than the person expected to be able to understand. Many ESL teachers treat their adult students like children, which often doesn't go over well. I aim to learn as much from them as they learn from me, and I show them the respect they deserve for working hard to learn another language. I could build many good relationships and be content as an ESL teacher. I guess that's all I can ask for in life.

How Salsa Saved Me (and helped me ruin my life)

I wasn't going to post this because I've done my best to keep this blog rated PG and keep the exploits I'm ashamed of off. But, as I was reading over it and fixing things here and there I realized how important salsa was in my life in Korea and how it's become an integral part of my life. My friend, Kiki in this story (all names are aliases), asked me to write about the impact dancing has had on my life. She said it could be any length, and as I'm very wordy, it ended up being 10 pages in MS Word. To my regular readers, some of this may be repetitive, but I guarantee there are some things I never told you. Enough of my introduction. Here is the story of how salsa saved me (and helped me ruin my life). Nothing is embellished or fictional.

Fragments

Shattered
Fragments scattered across the world
My sanity littered around the universe
Multiverse
Confused verses
Uttered curses
In tongues
Screaming in my brain
To drown out the thunderous shame
At the memory of what could have been
And what I chose instead
The fighting in my head
My life in tatters
Glaring daggers
At the mirror
The future's looming nearer
I am unarmed and ill-prepared
I don't dare try again what I dared
Luck was on my side
But now I hide
No confidence in my stride
No definition in my character
A smiling caricature
Ready to burst

Insomnia and Fogged Windows

I am not neglecting this blog because I'm busy or forgot about it. I merely have nothing to write. The days are blurring together. I have no idea what to do with my life or how to do it. I don't know where to start. I feel useless and small, unimportant and afraid. I am a child in an adult's body. The day after my 21st birthday, I was on a plane to the other side of the world to start a new life. The day after my 25th birthday, I felt like I was still 21 and that my time in Korea was a dream.

Settling In

I am no longer miserable. I no longer despise living in my own country. I can't believe I'm saying this after how vehemently opposed I was to returning from Korea, but I am happy to be home.

The moment I realized this was yesterday when my roommate in Korea sent me a message saying she found a job that could give me a visa, and it wasn't English teaching. That's exactly what I wanted, what I had been waiting and hoping for. But when I saw the message, my heart dropped.

Spreading Myself Thin

I've been looking for a job unsuccessfully in San Jose since I got back from Korea in mid-December, so I widened my search to include the whole San Francisco Bay area.

But in the meantime, a friend from Korea asked me to go to Dubai, and I've wanted to try living there since I worked at Samsung C&T (which was the main contractor on the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world). So I'm also looking for a job in Dubai. Turns out I have more connections in the UAE than in the US. Funny how life works.

And, of course, I'm still trying to get back to Korea doing anything but teaching English. I really miss Seoul and all my friends there, and I miss the culture and food and everything but the weather, really.

I realized through all of this that I don't like living in my home country.

Where to Work?

San Jose is a global city. It feels small but don't be fooled- there are brilliant people from all over the world gathered here in Silicon Valley. And there are a lot of job seekers and not enough jobs for all of us. Happy New Year everyone, from an unemployed, soon to be homeless, Kristin.

But don't worry! I will get back on my feet! Speaking of feet, I was walking to a mall that's about a 40 minute walk from my current place the other day and I smelled something familiar. The stench of rotting ginko under my feet brought me back to the streets of Seoul in the fall and early winter. I never thought I'd close my eyes and take that in as a pleasant fragrance, but I did. I stopped in my tracks on the sidewalk and sucked the stench into my nostrils and was transported to my walk to the subway station from my studio apartment in Gangnam (Yeoksam). I remembered the crowded subway line number 2 and the station two stops away (Samseong) where I worked in Trade Tower above COEX mall. I remembered how in the summer my life was right on track: a great boyfriend, a great apartment, a great job, great friends, walking distance to great salsa clubs.... What happened? Life happened.