surviving in korea #2

My friend remarked to me on the phone, "There's a line in the movie 'Juno' that i really liked...

Juno: I think i'm in love with you.

Paulie Bleeker: You mean as friends?

Juno: No, i mean, for real. Cause you're, like, the coolest person i've ever met, and you don't even have to try.

Paulie Bleeker: I try really hard, actually."

We talked about how lots of things...like getting your errands done, buying bread, flossing your teeth and basically keeping your life from degenerating into a state of entropy requires extraordinary effort. And when life actually functions, it looks effortless. Isn't that ironic? Like a sculpture that looks effortlessly crafted or a one handed backhand that looks so carefree...things that take enormous amounts of effort, energy, training, thought to be distilled into one object or moment that looks as though it took no effort at all. What paradox!

During the grueling orientation + training week for CDI, i felt nothing like a teacher--not loud, not powerful, not affecting much at all. But something happened once i met the students--i felt prepared and did not panic. I only thought: Weird, this is exactly what i expected.

Although moving to Korea was a meditated decision, i am sitting here in a room much too big, already bored of devising lessons plans and feeling unsure of what the rest of the year will bring. But! I am here and i want to celebrate it, like d.eggers wrote, "revel in the simultaneous living of an experience and its echoes...the echoes making the experience not cheaper but richer, aha! being that much more layered, the depth luxurious, not soul-sucking or numbing but edifying, ramifying." so there is first the experience: me, moving here. then there are the echoes from these things having been done before (i guess moving in/out of atlanta/chicago) and the awareness of what i learned then, accepting and embracing those lessons as enrichment. and above all recognizing its value in the present. so,

#2 Harder, better, faster, stronger. finally finally finally.