oh no oh dear

I'm feeling slightly worthless. set off by my uselessness. less ness use.

Judith (my buddy from India) was in Myanmar with her son and just got out yesterday. The letter she had sent me last week spoke of the struggle of the people living there, and this was before the shit hit the fan. And now the shit has hit the fan, the decrepit fan, the falling apart fan where there are bad sparks when you plug it in and there's not even enough motion to create a wind to send those ribbons attached to the cage flying. i can't imagine or understand the struggle of those people and this was before the cyclone.

Oh no, here we go - i feel worthless and existentialism is telling me to go and do something significant and give some meaning to my life. aim, design, end goal, intent, mark, pint, purpose, target, view. WHY.

I'm feeling guilty because i cried over stupid king kong when he died in that stupid movie that cost a milliondy dollars to make. I feel guilty because i want to buy new shoes. I feel guilty because i want to help people for my own selfish reasons. but doesn't everybody? mother Theresa was totally doing it for her own reasons.

I sound 19.

time to stop being 19 and figure out a solution. that's being at least 21. but my problem is that i don't want to spend time inside of myself. I don't know how. that's why i love distraction. give me a good ol' distraction any day. so, how do people self-reflect and move on and change and all that shat? make decisions about life. figure it out. or do they just get drunk or fall on their head and suddenly "get it".

probably not or i would have REALLY gotten it by now.

anyway, this disaster will fade and the flowers on my windowsill will die and i will feel this way time and time again (unless i just get up now and run away).

this here is a distraction for both you and me. me and you. and you and me.

eating sugared squash

for breakfast is nearly as good as 구고마 (delicious sweet potatoes) and i have to thank Bradley hall for the introduction into the world of squash and the baking of it, which i now do in a tiny little toaster oven in my tiny little box of an apartment. I've been thinking about what i want. and i think bad things about thinking about what i want, i want not to want. and what i really want is a house with a garden or balcony. which lets face it, is NOT possible here in korea, and the problem is that i want this NOW. now now now. gimme. greedy.

(Teri i'm jealous of your pig and garden, it's like we could change lives for 10 min to realize that we are ok where we are )

A sleeping boy lies in my bed. pillow stained faces and stiff arms from sleeping in a mass mess of hugs. I am not comfortable sleeping with people and I am not talking about sex here, because well, that's not what i'm talking about. I'm talking about getting used to sleeping beside someone, listening to them, thinking about them. and for me this is incredibly hard. maybe for others too? i dunno. but usually when i meet someone and we fall asleep next to each other i have the worst possible sleeps ever and this goes on for awhile. their breathing annoys me, and it's too hot and my god, how i can stop thinking about them and put my brain to sleep when here they are skin lightly brushing my arm and hands rubbing my back. can't turn brain off.

It's a 3 day long weekend and next week i fly to japan for 5 days. so 2 weeks of only 3 day teaching! may is my kind of month. Today is also my sisters bday and i feel lousy cuz i bought her a card and was too lazy to go post it. i'm sorry.

now i will go jump on someones head and drink coffee and relax before going into seoul to do some dancing and dancing and well drinking.

hey guess i'm feeling better, a little displaced tho.

bushwacker

i'm feeling sad and sleepy-headed today, maybe too much booze lately.

and then my thoughts turn to detoxing and reorganization. re-org of life. re-org, bjork.

what i'm obsessed with today:

the randomness of life.

seeing a glass elevator full of balloons.

reading till my eyes hurt.

making lists of things that i miss (my record player, my sewing machine, a typewriter in a mint green box that never worked, toronto times, family dinners, friends).

making lists of things that i want (a sewing machine, a typewriter in a mint green box that works, brown boots, friends).

i joined a new gym in my little sunae village, ok there is no gym like my old gym and the ladies i did the yoga with every morning. but maybe i'm sad because there are no longer mornings. well there are but i spend them inside a classroom with the little tinker tots. ok i gotta shutup! life aint so bad. sorry for the vent.

sleepyhead should go to bed. enough said.

rainy days

make me sleepy, sad, happy and lonely all jumbled into one Andrea in a giant yellow raincoat biking in the rain. The yellow raincoat makes the world sound different and I feel like I'm inside a tent (which gives me that instant- happy- tenty- feeling) because the raincoat makes the rain sound like how the rain sounds when you are hearing it from inside a tent.. you know?!

Alternatives journal is publishing my piece on Sambhavna's garden in their summer issue, and SAGE is doing the Chingari story in their spring issue - how freaking exciting is that!! I finally feel like I'm doing something - not that i feel like I've been doing nothing forever, but you know, i guess yeah, i sort of feel like I've been doing nothing for awhile now.

I taught a class on Monday that had 21, 13 year old students in it... 21!!! that's 3x what I'm used to, and for some reason i became nervous and was blushing, omg, the constant blushing! I'm pretty used to teaching the 6 year olds who never question and just want to give you their undying love. "why is your face so red teacher?" .. omg kid, shut up because now I'm a cherry!

so in regard to the subject of my cherry red face, here is a picture i took of the river by my house. banks lined with the most beautiful cherry blossoms in full bloom on the trees, and how sad...they have all floated away now on the wind, and a lot of them floated into my mouth/face/hair/eyes while i was biking, but hey, being showered in cherry blossoms petals by the wind can't be anyone's complaint!

fin

dancing to the music in my head

I now live for the weekend. I've never lived for the weekend before. when i lived in Toronto i didn't even have a weekend, my off days were weekdays and hey, when i lived in Toronto everyday was Friday (well..especially during those nash and andrea days...) but now it's weekday flying by and HEY! here's friday and let's party. this weekend was a party. dancing my pants off, well, my shoes off (why do i always take my shoes off? dirty tights, dirty feet and killer sore feet the next day) of course this all night dancing happened after Justin and i did an all day biking to the han river beside Seoul, a 4 hour biking experience that i do once in awhile to remember just how sore your ass can get from a bike seat.

Sunday was an impromptu picnic in the park where we found a hidden tennis court that was like a ghost town..(well we took the back road way up to court, so maybe it just gave us the feeling of an abandoned ghost town tennis court in the middle of a huge park in Korea...) drinking wine, eating bread and cheese and talking till the wee hours... I'm really into eating onions these days.

goodnight pumpkins of the world.

all i want to do is ride bikes with you

how beautiful is spring in korea? Even though the cherry blossoms don't last longer than a heart beat or blink of an eye, it makes you appreciate them so much more. And all the colours and the warmth, oh i feel like I'm in love. Last year at this time I was watching Teri and a million Korean men run a half marathon through all the spring time wonder. I think about this time last year, and i feel like I'm in that same place, with a little difference here and there (accumulated knowledge about myself and accumulated travel etc) and it's strange. strange because it seems the last whatever with whomever didn't even happen. a fog covered hazy whatever. and you know, not upset about it at all. at first i was pretty upset. "I'm in the exact same place i was a year ago" type of feeling, but now, i realize the differences and the realization feels good.

Justin, Aer and I went away for the weekend, hiking, staying in minbaks (little rooms attached to a Koreans home for people to rent out) going to the most famous temple in Korea. There was even a farm festival. For the first time in my Korean life i completely noticed the difference in the Korean accent between the city folk and country bumpkins. it felt great, like I've been here long enough and let in to some secret group - the group for those who have lived in korea long enough to distinguish the different Korean accents.

I met a lot of people who have lived here for 2 years or longer. There is a lot of stigma attached to foreigners who stay in korea a long time, and this stigma is attached BY other foreigners. It's like they are saying " what?!!? you have been here 4 years?!?!?! what the fuck are you doing with your life?" And even being here nearly 2 years I've gotten this from many people who just came here. And i hate it. who the fuck cares how long you stay here, maybe it's their career choice. After meeting these people I could picture myself hanging out in Asia for a lot longer. Time moves strangely after a certain period. I remember last year counting down the months, the weeks (till what? i have no idea, but i remember doing a lot of counting ) now, time flies and i hardly notice it at all. I'm rambling.

xo

eating sweet potatoes, cuz i aint sweet enough.

spring comes in and we take those cutie-pie kids to the park to learn how to plant flowers. not that we actually got to plant the flowers, no no, we just put them in pots and brought them back to the school. kind of funny, kind of korean. but hey a day out in the sun, well actually an hour, because that's all i have to work on Fridays.

This weekend was sun shine and sun smiles, and sometimes i grin so wide and of course because I'm the big white headed rainbow i am, people are always ALWAYS staring at me, but then the grin catches and they're grinning and I'm grinning even wider and laughing to myself. ok maybe i am going crazy. I feel different though, I don't know if India changed me or if i had to change once I came back and really really had to change, but I feel different, calmer, oh so much calmer. i can't even remember the last time i threw a pot at somebody's head (ok so that never happened, but boy could it have). India was all about learning how to relax because let's face it I'm pretty much a freak that can't sit still for any amount of time because there is too much to do and i don't have enough time to do it. why am i like that. terrified that if i don't do this or that or go here or there or stand on my head while reading a book and eating soup I'm going to collapse? I'm glad I'm maybe getting over it? and hey it only took 28 years or India or a heart break. chose your own adventure.
and i don't ever feel like I've eaten a bowl of glass for lunch or brunch or brinner. which unfortunately used to happen all the time. ohh life learning lessons my friends.

ok enough banter.

It was Cindy's wedding today. And here we are, so cute and whoah all wearing white like little angels, except for the woman of the day wearing her traditional hanbok (she did get married in a huge white wedding dress though, and there was this woman there, and her job was to fluff! fluff dresses, and wipe away tears with a q-tip. "what do you do?" "ohh i wipe away tears with a q-tip"). I miss working with these people SO much, that is the shitty thing about working at my new job, 6 pregnant women who don't talk to me and one western dude that doesn't really work at the same time as me. Korea weddings are pretty much like their western friends. people, dresses, pictures, posing and food. but the concept here is get in and get out. and then the loudspeaker came on "10 min till you have to leave". hahah. no wedding nori bangs here.




1. mascara stained pillows no longer exist in my world - I've decided.
2. I'm sorry i led everyone to believe i was coming home and ready to borrow couches and beds and hearts when I'm not. but you still love me!

3. Teri mcneil should come back to Korea, because i say so.