April is for Avocados

April was a pretty awesome month. It started with white-water rafting and jungle hiking in northern Costa Rica, plus some really awesome news that made me jump up and down on the side of a Costa Rican highway. (Hopefully May will be the month that I feel certain enough about the news to talk about it.) I spent the next thirteen days bouncing around Costa Rica: Sarapiquí, Sarah's village, San Jose (twice) and Manuel Antonio National Park to see some monkeys.


After Costa Rica, I spent a week at home and my oldest youngest brother came home. He been building a log cabin in the woods of Arkansas since January, so this was the first time I had seen him since February of last year. Then, the next day, my other brother came home for Easter break and for the first time since Christmas 2009, the whole family was together under the same roof. It was... loud and my little sister, who was briefly an only child for the first time in February, informed us that she liked the idea of having siblings more than the reality.

The next day, my parents, sister and I set off for Mexico. For years, my parents' church has supported two orphanage (one in Colima and one outside of Puebla), but this was the first time I wasn't working or in school during the annual mission trip. This year we went to the orphanage outside of Puebla (about three hours southeast of Mexico City) and it was so lovely. I can't say I was thrilled with traveling in a group, but the orphanage was amazing and the kids were precious and hilarious and endlessly forgiving about my butchering of their language. Also, the food was amazing. (I ate everything put in front of me, including every bit of sketchy chili-doused roadside fruit and had no problems. Almost everyone else in the group, the people who avoided anything that could have possible come in contact with the water and totally missed out that time we went to a market in Acatzingo and I tried to eat everything in sight, was ill at least once, which just goes to show that chili powder and lime cures everything.)


While April is now over and I'm probably going to stop getting fresh avocados every time I turn around, my travels aren't quite done yet. I'm heading to Washington DC on Thursday to spend a week with Riah, one of my closest friends from Korea. I've only been gone from Korea for two months and I've already lost touch with so many people, and I'm really glad Riah and I have managed to keep in touch.

Friday Five, or March in Review

1) I left Korea on February 28th and the culture shock of returning to the US was both easier and harder than last time (i.e. the time I ended up with my hands over my ears in line for security at San Fransisco because I'd lost the ability to tune out other people's conversations and was going into sensory overload). It was easier because I knew what to expect and harder because Korean habits had had two full years to form. It took me a few weeks to stop bowing at people and I'm still muttering in Korean. The one thing that I didn't have trouble adjusting to was having a car again. I still make sure to hand cashiers my money with both hands and slip my shoes off before entering a house, but I'm loving being able to drive again.

2) No sooner had I made it home than I left again. I got home Monday night and left Wednesday morning for Chapel Hill to go to a wedding and see friends from college. Unfortunately I didn't get to see much of my university friends, but the wedding was lovely and I got to meet my senior year roommate's new baby. I also bought a new computer. (In my first 48 hours in the country, I went to the bakery, the library and the Apple store. I have my priorities in order.) My old computer had been slowly dying for the past eight months and I'm loving having a computer with a working mouse again.

3) Being home has been really nice. I've spent a lot of time with my family, specially my little sister, who is now 16, holy crap, when did that happen? I've also been cooking a lot, taking advantage of my mom's kitchen, which has all sorts of fancy utensils I didn't have access to in Korea, like a blender, measuring spoons and an oven.

4) I've also been to the library at least a dozen times. I have a Kindle, which was easily the best purchase of 2010 and is great if you live in a country where English isn't spoken, but not so good if you want to build a fort out of books. I also have a new library card for the first time since high school. I've never been good at returning library books on time and by senior year, my fine had reached an amount so large that I stopped using my card and started using my mom's instead. For years, I've been convinced that the fine was eighty or a hundred dollars, but when I finally checked, it turned out I only owned twenty four dollars, which might have seemed huge to me ten years ago, but is easily payable now.

5) Being home has been nice, but also a tad boring, since I don't know anyone in Brevard anymore, so at the end of March, I left for two weeks of vacation in Costa Rica. I spent the first week with a friend who lives here, and now I'm on my own, trying to remember to speak Spanish instead of Korean.

The Trip Home

Musings on my trip home, AKA, no I wouldn't like to talk about it, but I'd sure as hell like to yell about it.

• Dear people who asked me how my trip was,
  Think of Monday. Think how fun Monday usually is.  Now imagine a Monday that lasts for THIRTY FOUR HOURS. THAT was how my trip was.
  Love,
  Cait


• Things started so well. I allotted myself so much time to get from my apartment to the airport bus stop that I was actually able to catch an earlier bus than planned. I was at the airport three hours before my flight, check it only took fifteen minutes, neither of my bags were overweight AND since my school didn't force me to overstay my visa this year, I didn't end up in a small room filling out reams of paperwork while being yelled at by immigration officers. I was sitting at my gate two hours before my flight.


• Incheon has free wireless for the entire airport! This is the last time on this trip I can say that, and one of the reasons why I love love love Incheon, my all time favorite airport. I sent my mom an email saying, "Already at the gate, two hours in advance. Totally going to make my flight!"


• On the flight to Narita, I discovered that the downside to having a Kindle is that your book is an electronic device that must be turned off during take-off. I read a lot of SkyMall and was cranky. Next flight, I'll make sure I bring a paper book too.


• Also speaking of books, I bought The Hunger Games for the flight and it was omg, so awesome. I was told that it would be hard to put down, that I would end up finishing it at 4:00 in the morning, tired and exhausted, but too caught up in the story to stop, so I bought the book to read on my 24 hour trip from Korea to the US and ended up being the furiously cranky girl in line at customs because she had to stop reading briefly. My full review at Goodreads is here.


• My flight to Narita was uneventful. I didn't have yen, didn't want to deal my card being flagged if I used it in Japan and also, my carry-on bags were really heavy, so I didn't buy lunch during my layover. My flight out of Narita was delayed an hour, but I got a seat at the gate, so all was well. Man, this trip is going well.


• We board the airplane, buckle ourselves in and sit. And then sit some more. Finally, the pilot announced that we were waiting for a delayed flight from Taipei with several passengers who were making a connection to our flight. The Taipei flight was suppose to arrive "soon" and folks, we're just going to wait a short bit for them to arrive, but we'll be gettin' on our way real soon. You could tell it was an Atlanta based flight crew. We finally left an hour and a half later, bringing our total delay to two and a half hours which, consequentially, was about how long my layover in Atlanta was.


• The flight, omg, the flight. The flight from Narita to Atlanta was terrible. There were turbulence THE ENTIRE WAY. ALL TWELVE HOURS OF IT. Some were mild, some were more serious, but the fasten seat belt sign was never taken off. I don't mind turbulence, they're like a mild roller coaster which is welcome entertainment on a long flight, but eventually you need to use the restroom and stretch your legs. Luckily, the flight crew was understanding of people ignoring the fasten seat belt sign and the pilot warned for mild turbulence vs. severe turbulence.


• Somewhere over Colorado, the pilot came over the intercom and asked that anyone on the plane with medical experience please go to the back of the plane, there was a passenger of need of aid. I'm a little disappointed he didn't ask if there was a doctor on the plane (Hollywood, you lied to me), but relieved to see several people responded and even more relieved that the passenger wasn't ill enough to necessitate an emergency landing.


• We finally reached Atlanta, several hours late, and were put in an holding pattern. Luckily we only circled Atlanta for thirty or forty minutes, but the weather was terrible and the landing was even worse. I've flown on a lot of planes in a lot of different weather and I have virtually no fear of flying, but this landing was rough enough that my stomach turned over and clutched my armrest a little tighter.


• I reached Atlanta, cleared customs and immigration (filling out my customs form was a delight after having lived in Korea for two years; I have acquired a lot of stuff) without problem and rushed off to the gate for my connection to Asheville, only to get bowled over my exhaustion (I didn't sleep at all on the flight to Atlanta), hunger (turbulence interfered with food service on the flight from Narita and plus, it was airplane food) and the weight of my carry-ons (I was worried my checked bags would be overweight, so I crammed as much as I possible could into the bags on my back). I staggered up to the nearest eatery (a Burger King), was stunned by the idea of ordering food in English, took two tries to find the correct currency to pay with, carefully handed my money over with both hands and then bowed to the cashier. Culture shock, I has it.


• I arrive at my gate, ten minutes before my plane was suppose to depart. Lucky for me, the flight was delayed an hour and I didn't have to go running to the gate, shouting and waving my arms, to catch my plane. (You laugh, but it's happened to me before.) I borrowed a cell phone to let my parents know I was delayed and they told me the delay was because of the torrential rains and a tornado watch in Asheville. I looked at a weather map and the forecast of the weather front in Asheville making its way south to Atlanta and swore. A lot. And not under my breath (I'm still adjusting to the idea that people around me can understand me). All in all, I was only stuck in Atlanta for four and a half hours, which could have been so much worse, but I had been away from home for a year and traveling for over twenty four hours and I just wanted to get home, hug my mom and go to bed.


• I made it home! Eventually. It took 30 hours from leaving my apartment in Korea to pulling up at my parents house in America, but I made it and I'm home.

Korean Officetel

Tonight is my last night in Korea. I finished packing Friday night and spent the weekend searching for the corner of my apartment I surely forgot to pack, because there was no possible way I was finished packing two days in advance. I've been having nightmares of weeks where get back to America and realize that I had completely forgotten to pack up my apartment, but I think I'm finally done.

I spent the week before last last week cleaning my apartment, partly because trying to pack a messy apartment means you end up packing the mess and partly because when I was cleaning, I didn't have to be packing. I ran out of things to clean on Saturday, but I took some photos of my apartment before I started to tear it apart and stick it in boxes.

So, my apartment. I live in an officetel. Officetels, which comes from office + hotel, are usually one room studio apartments. The first four floors of my building are commercial (a pharmacy, a half dozen clinics, a billiards hall, a couple of restaurants and a butcher shop), and the top five floors are apartments. Some people complain about noise or smells from the businesses below, but other than getting the side-eye from clinic patients in hospital gowns hooked up to IVs taking a smoking break by the back stairs when I take my trash out at night, I've never had any problems.


This is the main room of the apartment, looking from the door. The bathroom and kitchen are to the left and right. On on the left side of the room is the table, couch and bed. On the right side is the closet type thing, the dresser and my desk. The far wall of the apartment is all windows, which was nice during the summer and really cold during the winter.


Standing next to the bed, looking back at the door. The recessed area by the door is the only part of the apartment you're suppose to wear shoes in. The light over the shoe area is motion sensor, but it's erratic and I sometimes trigger it when I walk into the bathroom or the kitchen.


A closer look at the closet thing. It was put up by the previous teacher, and while I'm grateful for somewhere to hang my clothes (the dresser isn't very big), it did severely limit how I could move furniture around. Underneath the clothes are my crafting stash bags, luggage and spare bedding.


A closer look at the desk, which is the only part of the apartment I really decorated. The red box is full of stationary products which, yes, I know, I have a problem. Stationary is ugly and overpriced in the US, so it's a get-it-while-you-can situation. The painting was done by my little sister. The trashcan has pandas in airplanes quoting R. Kelly lyrics. Also, my light-up devil horns from the World Cup.


This kitchen isn't technically a separate room, but it's tucked away in a corner and if I pull out the counter space from under the stove, it almost has four walls. I have a hot plate, a rice cooker, a electric kettle, toaster, microwave and, after I absorbed Margaret's spices while she was in America this winter, a spice rack with four different containers of curry powder. The contraption above my sink is the sterilizer, so I can UV my dishes after I wash them.


The bathroom was my least favorite part of the apartment. The sink-shower meant that the bathroom was *always* wet. I can't keep anything in the bathroom since it would get soaked daily, the floor stays wet for hours after a shower (or a load of laundry, since my washing machine drains onto the bathroom floor) and standing water on the counters means I risk electrocuting myself every time I blow my hair dry. Also, the hot water heater only runs at night, so once the hot water is used up, that's it for the day. It's more than enough for a shower but, let me tell you, washing the dishes with ice cold water during the winter was LOADS OF FUN.

So, that's my apartment. I actually really like it. It's small, but how much space does one person actually need. It's in a good area - buses to my school stop in front of the building, a subway station is three minutes away and a much larger bus stop is only a ten minute walk away. There's a Daiso next door, a market two buildings down and in that three minute walk to the subway, I pass six coffee shops and a ho-tteok stand. In good traffic, I can be in Seoul in half an hour. It's smaller than my last apartment, but the bed's a double, the ondol worked all winter and I don't have to stick the AC hose in a trashcan to keep from flooding the apartment, so I count it a win.

It was a good home.

Misconceptions

Yesterday was my last day at school. I spent the morning cleaning off my computer, and then left around 11:00 to finish packing. A group of my former 6-1 boys were playing soccer in front of the school when I walked out and they shouted hello.

"Teacher," they told me, "we going to middle school now."

"I know," I said.

"Where are you going, Teacher?"

"I'm going to America," I told them.

"Why?

"Well, I'm from America. My family is in America."

They huddled together for a quick consultation and finally the most advanced boy asked, "So, Teacher not Canada person?"

Turns out, my ENTIRE school thought I was Canadian all year.