From 30,000 Feet

As I write this I am sitting on an airplane bound for Portland, Oregon, for the weekend, so that I can attend the impending nuptials of my dear friend Jimmy Smith. I have already spent the last 15 hours travelling and I have another 9 to go. I will be spending as much time travelling as I will at my actual destination. I am currently hungry and exhausted, but the beverage cart is on the way and with any luck a beer and a glass of water will help me solve at least one of those issues. So, what brought me to this current endeavor…
It all started last February or January or whenever it was that I visited the States. I’d just re-contracted in South Korea and as such was given two weeks off. I took the first week to go to Vietnam, and used the second week to go to the US. While I was there visiting Jimmy asked me to be the best man in his wedding. After everything Jimmy and I have been through together there was no way I could or would say no to such a request. Unfortunately the wedding was going to occur in October, a month devoid of anything even closely resembling a holiday in South Korea.
When I got back to Korea and got ready to start my second year teaching English I went to my new Co-teacher and asked if I could have the days off. She said yes, which surprised me since I was expecting to have to put up a fight. Alas, luck appeared to be on my side. So I went about business as usual and started looking for tickets. Until a week later when the same co-teacher informed me that, as it turned out, I could not, in fact, have those days off. Upon learning this information I reacted by carefully applying some very choice expletives and getting pissed off at Korea in general. (Side note: my beer has arrived and with it… peanuts. Life has taken an unexpected turn for the better.)
I was not faced with a difficult series of decisions. My options were as follows: 1. Tell Jimmy I couldn’t get the time off work and thereby skip out on my best friend’s wedding and the honor of being his best man. 2. Buy tickets anyway and then try to use sick days. 3. By tickets and threaten to quit if they didn’t let me have the days off. 4. Throw my pride out the window, get down on my knees and beg.
After much careful consideration I concluded that skipping the wedding wasn’t even an option. I would rather quit my job than miss the wedding. Calling in sick seemed like a last resort. I was talked out of threatening to quit by cooler heads than mine. And so, with Jimmy Smith on my mind, I went back to my co-teacher, and begged.
This time I explained things better. First of all, Korean weddings are weird as shit. In a Korean wedding there is no wedding party. The ceremony is relatively unimportant. People come and go as they please, children wrestle in the aisle and occasionally there are strobe lights and fog machines. So culturally speaking there’s a huge difference between a Korean asking to go to a Korean wedding, and a Westerner asking to go to a wedding to be the best man for his friend. I explained these differences and I explained that being someone’s best man was a huge honor in our culture and blah blah blah. Then I pulled out the big gun. By this point I had been working at the same school for well over a year. I knew the English Center inside and out. And I had never missed a day of work. In my contract I have 11 sick days per year. And I had, and still never have, used a single one. I’ve been a very good, very diligent teacher for them. I was asking for this as a favor.
Two days later my co came back to me and informed that our principle, having heard my plight, granted me the days off. So I bought my tickets and here I am, cruising between Tokyo and Portland while sipping on a Heineken and typing out this story to put on my blog. We’ll see how the trip goes. My hunger is now slightly abated, and upon finishing this beer I imagine I will be sleepy enough to pass out for a while… Or not, the food cart just passed, which means dinner/lunch is coming. So I’ll wait for that, THEN go to sleep.

What else can I say to bring you up to speed on things in Korea…? Let’s see, I was asked to re-contract for a 3rd year the other day. I’ve been given until October 31st to decide. I was pretty on the fence about it. I really didn’t know what I should do. I find myself terrified of being unemployed given the current economic climate in the US and the rest of the world. I also KNOW that I don’t want to go back to America. Not yet at least. Korea offers security and comfort. Buuuuuuuuut, I have to ask myself, when I left for Korea, was it comfort and security I was after? The answer is very much no. I went in search of new experience and adventure. Korea was supposed to be the first step in what would be the grand adventure of my life. I fear that perhaps I had/have lost sight of that. And I am very afraid that if I stay another year I’ll lose sight of that forever. So, given that, I think I have to move on. As Matt Smith through Kerouac so kindly reminded me, ‘The road is life’. I have to keep moving forward. I can’t let myself get bogged down in a comfortable situation because it is secure. Life’s too short.

On a lighter note, I joined an Ultimate Frisbee team and have been playing that a lot. It’s been really good for me. It’s really helping me get back in shape and has given me the motivation to kick certain bad habits. Our team is awesome… not skill wise, but it’s overall level of awesomeness is through the roof. As far as skill goes we are terrible. 0-9 so far. But we have a lot of fun.

In September I finally completed a long time goal of mine. I live near the place where the sun first rises in South Korea. So I can regularly go and see the earliest sunrises in the country. Well, I decided some time ago that I wanted to watch the sunrise on my side of the country, then travel to the other side of the country to watch the sunset all in the same day. So when I had a three day weekend and some motivation I went. The Sunrise was phenomenal, but the sunset left something to be desired, might try to do it again before I leave if the weather looks like it’ll be better. Time’ll tell.

Well, food just got here, so I’m going to leave this post at that. I’ll try to write again soon to let you all know how everything ends up working out. Hope everyone reading this is well.