Flight

I was having a "korea is hard" day today, and if i get any flack for the motorcycle riding, I will post the detailed, whiney breakdown of how and why I feel isolated and alone and how this is the longest I have been without a vehicle since I was an undergrad at IU about a million years ago and how it is driving me crazy.

Whew. I have some issues. Anyway, with that being said...

I have run, lifted (and finally am able to bench 50kg for reps again! yay for being stronger!) and got the knots in my back pummeld by the incredibly forcful jets in one of the tubs at the gym/jimjilbang.

When I was in the market on my way home, I ran into a bunch of girls from my school. I thanked the cashier in Korean, and the girls all gasped and asked if I knew how to speak. I replied (in Korean) that I couldn't and the lady who works in the store told them that I could, and indicated that I was doing well.

This is what I like about my neighborhood. I see the same people everday, and while I still get a lot of looks and stares, it feel a lot different than it does when I'm in bigger towns. To borrow a line from someone, I'm still a freak, but I'm THEIR freak. The baker, the lady who works evenings at the hannam market, the lady who runs the DC123 (kind of an "everything" shop) - they see the teacher from the middle school who lives up the s treet, not just the tall foreigner. At my gym, most of the men seem to be okay with the fact that I lift pretty close to what they do. (Someone new said something to the guy who runs it and he just said something about me being American. And because I'm the only one, I guess they now think that all American women are strong, which is kind of cool.)

I guess part of what it comes down to is that I have a place in this community, and even though I can't speak or read very well and most of the time I have about 1/8th of a clue I wish I had about what is going on, I'm being accepted to some degree.
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I finally realized earlier today that there is something I need to learn about being alone and being away from more populated areas. I mean, Gallup was 2 hours away from ABQ, and now here I am, about 2 hours from friends here, too. I keep being given a chance to learn something, I and I guess it must be pretty important lesson for me because it keeps happening. But I hope that I can get it this time, because this is hard.