questions from 6,000 miles away:

how ARE you?
the week flew by thankfully. i'm also trying to get ridiculous amounts of sleep. and hopefully it's not just the anxiety talking. i had a really good chat with LL and i'll recap more about reorienting my focus from "it"to Jesus instead. and contemplating a hair cut.

how are things?

a loaded gun. a rollercoaster. i'm afraid i'll bottom out again like a child when j # 1 leaves in 1 week, or when j #2 leaves in a month. and the cat, aka the ward, still have. still trying to control the whole thing. still haven't gotten to the bank. still haven't been to the postoffice. and the wind currently is raging out there- so the startlingly clear weekend we've got is going to be cold. insert viscious bouts of whining and dish breaking here. who wants to see their tan fading, and not being able to relish the dress size diminishing? yes desert experience but still.

how are the kids?

-you know, classroom management = ugh. just behave already. and shut up! to the director seeing that i had let kids play with yo-yo's for 20minutes and trade cards in the back for the same amount of time...in my defense they were paying attention... it was a bad day i tell you and i had other things on my mind= lecture on being more strict. here to learn, etc. blah. yes, yes. ok. she was nice about it though.

-i really am loathing kindergarten. i just really don't have the energy. i walk in defeated. they need immediate focus and attention and i'm just like ugh, shut up! sit down! stop making each other cry, and hitting each other with umbrellas. stop. stop asking for water, for pencils, for the bathroom. snarf. of course i didn't ask for that class and still.

-one kid i have obsesses over his shoes. the ones he has on. sometimes the soccer cleats he's brought with him, tying them, untying and tying again, straightening them... oh and smelling them. yes. i suppose anything to distract you from english. yah i know. it just takes him someplace. the other kid just sort of yawns, clearly wants to die, and is only slightly apologetic about it. the other one takes quite a while to snap back to reality. for obvious reasons.

-i'm trying to work through candy and treats. some kids are way too competitive and that bag i bought is gone one week in.

-i think they like me though?

do you feel settled yet?

mentally yes. physically no. emotionally apparently not. apt. wise yes. but i think i've got the buying food thing down.

when did things start to feel more 'ok, i live here now'?
um no.

do you think you'll be going to church there?

i am. i've got a church 10min from my house. it's a bit formula and there's not really anyone my age but it'll do. some worship. some songs. a word. and maybe lunch with the youngins.

 

what do you do in your free time? 
mostly i sleep and watch downloads. i mean really i don't even turn on the tv, or draw, or exercise (blaming weather). on weekends when i'm not ill i walk on the beach if the weather is good, i go into shin which is 35min away at least and buy fancy groceries at emart, i go to church. i may try going to the coffee shop tomorrow and the local dime store for some frivilous decorative items. i watch the exchange rate and think, ok i'm feeling better to go into town to the big bank, and then i think *eh* (which really was only just today), besides that lay on the heated floor and talk to God or not. i also spend a lot of time staring at the cat, my ward. tomorrow is unusual in that my flatmate is in the vagayjay monologues and i'm going to see her in it, and have dinner with some foreign peeps from church. the only other activities like the fire festival and the haiku death match have both been fails due to death flus. so free time for me feels more like, everyday figuring out what i'm going to eat for lunch (mostly yogurt and fruits) to dinner (at my lowest instant rice noodles and best marinated chicken with vege and rice), and sleeping, and keeping up on the shows, and saying, damned anxiety, and oh shit my pants are getting way too loose and god, wont' somebody please send me some lunch meat and brown tortillas. that havarti cheese i snapped and bought cost me $7+.

k.

ps. say hi to those mountains for me. i miss them. and i'm glad you get to see them upclose. 

short side of anxiety,

saying it one way:
i'm on the downside of the flu- chest congestion, fatigue, par for the course on this the 2nd week. Feeling better enough for the anxiety to tap at my door demanding entrance. I've never had anxiety like this before- my fears normally take the face of hopelessness, never usually short of breath trepidation disconnected from my mental state and burrowing deep into my emotional core. I can't say it's pleasant. And I walk around bewildered a lot. I lose my appetite. And i really don't want that to be the excuse for having gone down two sizes. It's sort of appauling and interesting all at once. I wake up, but nothing sounds "good". I half-heartedly eat a yogurt, not quite satisfied. I go to work. I force myself to eat an apple and some nuts maybe (over the course of an hour). And that's it until dinner, where i sigh over the tasteless nature of everything in my sight. Be-wildering! me. I tell you. Body, not this way. Really. Really. It could be the meandering vestiges of sickness but even the smell of things Icould do without. And my meal usually supplemented by the other teachers feeding me.

My flatmate lists all the reasons of course for why little karen is freaking out, but no amount of saying "your safe" is doing the trick, or consolment in the guise of "perfectly understandable". I suppose i need to get myself to have a good complaint session, beyond the mask of fortitude. But it's hard to find the breath. And somehow I also suspect that they might be lies. Probably why the karens are fighting and at this point nonintigrated in the telling. I absolutely understand why people chose medication because it's this "thing"and you just want it out of you. You just want it to stop. It's a hard road everyday to take a walk with it and find voice to it, question it, counter it. And say why the fuck are you here!? And not just go away! Which sadly is not at all helpful. And actively realize that though I didn't bring this on myself and that circumstances and upheaval have pushed it to the fore- it is warfare, but it's going to take more nurturing and less attack.

But let's get at it.

I'm safe because God is with me. Full stop.
I'm safe because He is watching over me.
I'm safe because He cares for me.
I'm safe because He knows right where I am at all times.
I'm safe because He is my anchor and nothing else.

I'd like to say I'm safe because I have a job, a room, and food, but I know God wants me to see bigger and wider than that. He wants me to dream, and feel safe to dream. He is not a prison warden in which if those things are met I shouldn't complain or find a breadth to desire.

I want everything else to be my anchor and not God.

I feel unsafe because my director isn't teaching me.
I feel unsafe because it's new and unfamiliar.
I feel unsafe because it's new and it's going to take time.
I feel unsafe because it's always cold and someone is always sick.
I feel unsafe because time is scheduled and relentless.
I feel like it's going too fast and I'm still too slow.
I am impatient. and impatient I don't know another way to be.
I want more space in the day to excel and not just survive.
I want more vacation time.
I want to wake up to were I am.
I want to see the record of God's goodness running through my fingertips.

-------------
saying it another way:
barely eat. and wish you could weep tragically. enact tragic posture and mutter. get ready for work, wondering if eggs ever tasted good and how long before i have to get my pants taken in. put worship music on to block the prowling lion in the night that goes by day, take a walk to where the river meets the sea which is mostly dry. understand the comparison. you/river. feel relief trickling out already despite. siddle your way through the concrete divides and make your way onto the rocks. stop there. read a psalm. understand why john the baptist could die happy is the same reason you can die happy. go further down as the wind gets less. reorient yourself to the truth of jesus and how he saves. john it's the truth. rest at ease. find 3 shells that are perfect for crab homes. carry them to the water so the crabs can find them. don't take them home. like you want to. shake the bits out and watch them hit the water. pretend to look for things as other wanderers look on at you looking on. sit some more. read another psalm. keep listening to music. find a beaten up dinosaur head fit for a pencil. put it in your pocket and smile. find that you have to go now. back up the rocks. thru the divide. up the hill. stop to take it in. touch the volcanic rocks running up the road. say to yourself, feel where you are. feel it in your hands. place both hands on the rough rock. see where you are. see the sea. there it is. see the onions growing. see that worker over there. keep walking. turn around again. take a deep breath. close your eyes as you take each slow step to the top. to where the grandfather statues are keeping guard. cross the wide road. kick a rock in pace and lose it to the left or to the right. let it go. walk through the apartment village, past the taxi stands, and tous les jour bakery, past the school, and the small park, across another road, to the school, take another deep breath, find the woman and the man working the soil to be applicable to your working of the soil, it's just a different kind of turning over. don't wish you were them. know you are them. keep going. keep breathing. keep listening. when you say, ok, i can do this, correct yourself. Say, no. No i can't. But he can. He must. It is all i have.

By Bus,

this is my trip home from the museum. a jawachingly gorgeous day as i flew home to what would be impending illness, malaise and listlessness, but i did have my camera, and some honey, ginger lemontea. i'll have to post more pics soon... once i uh, take them and aren't suffering from some hideous airborne virus that sucks the will to live out of most hair folicles. ps. dont' let those palm trees fool you.

For the Lord,

I can easily skew that to be for a fallen commrade in arms or make it seem more like a favor or some elderly man I ask if he wants help across the street, so if he says no i'm off the hook and if yes, then it's done quick enough and i can go on with my day. My meditation though off and on since i've been here is this verse "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord, Christ you are serving."...

My labor is for Him. It's a hard thing to put at the forefront everyday when i so keenly feel success and failure. Having been done in with the flu this week brought newer lows of my boss saying my kids didn't learn anything in an entire hour (check) followed the next day by, I'm surprised you didn't call in sick and it's much harder to replace someone during the day (hint/hint) to friday when a fellow teacher plummeted into chills and had to leave, to, don't martyr yourselves. But sick people don't think logically and in my head i'm thinking i'm feeling horrible at home with nothing to do so i might as well go in... to my other illogical thought of well why take one day off when the next day brings no improvement... God entered into the week simply because there was very little of me present in the classes to one night in the shower I remembered the thought that I had gotten used to asking when there was nothing else left- well, Lord, what do you want me to do today? And that simple, it's up to Him to be the better for me, to guide me and help me, even in my improvements and irrational half fevered thoughts- give me that desire, point the way for me and open my eyes. I mean granted i don't want to do horribly, but it's hard to know that even in my weakness just being present is honoring God?... I think.

It was an interesting and quiet shift of relinquishment. When at the last you can say, whatever you want. Bringing the struggle to rest, at least for now, and finding peace in your incompetence. There was a sermon over at bethel that talked about all sorts of inadequate people being put in places and told to do a job- so when i begin to think about it being about me, at least for now i remember, oh, it's something else. This is something else. This is not just provision via paycheck and mental challenges because I'm bored and needed adventure in my life no matter what the cost, but that i was called, and never would've gone if the road hadn't been so plain, to yes, i get up everyday because otherwise whatever the Lord is harvesting and doing will spoil in the fields if i dont go do it like he wants me to.

It's almost more that the examen of conscience goes something like- did i fail gracefully in that? When i completely messed up that one thing was I kind to myself, to my students, was i humble when one student said, bad teacher... or did i imagine backhanding him and stomping on his angryb/rd pencil case?

Anyway, all this talking is wearing me out. Sure I went out with the teachers against reason to a noreabang (aka karaoke room)...last night. i sang Creep and Loser by Radiohead and a couple others that spoke to those hard and negative places. Ifailed at ade/e bcs my voice was too hoarse and gone to do anygood. We drank soju and had dakgalbi and it was a good time listening to the mix of korean rap and pop music and some western standards like zombie by the cranberries or alanis' ironic. And now I'm going to rest the day away. There was only one other thing i was going to tell you- besides cursing the air that i didn't have my camera.

It was that listening to the same sermon yesterday, in part it was very loosely about JohntheBaptist, and i was half paying attention and I suddenly found myself emotionally caught up in the last hours of his life as he sat in prison, and Jesus told his followers to tell him that the blind can see. I was stabbed with a painful part of joy, that comes as overwhelming relief- which is pent up and stuffed in the heart. It was like being quickly and unexpectedly whacked with a stick in the face. His life wasn't wasted. I was moved and overcome in such a brief space that it had to be from God. Everysoften Ifind myself sharing those spaces and I was and am still so curious as to why i was given the insight. Perhaps it speaks to me feeling in a desperate condition myself- to hope that God's purpose outstrips my dreams, and know that you could be sitting in jail about to be executed and God will say, but see John, the blind can see. (thank you for the internet- luke 7). And that Jesus is concerned about the kind of ends we make. Jesus quickly reported the earthshaking fact that Johns entire life was built on the truth of His coming and that there is something to dying (the self, literal or figural) not in a desperate hope but with relief and joy. Don't worry about it John. I'm here.

I suppose the point is that God speaks. The internal churning and wrestling does yield something. It doesn't do anygood to come to a place of detachment and freedom if it's one that dwells in despair right or mmm, dejected futility - but one that hopes in the Lord, and how he redeems the desperate parts of all of us... He answers. Are you Him, the one I hope in? Are you real? Is it all in my head? He hears me and he answers. Yes I am. I am. Follow me.

Anyway, it's undoing me a bit. I wish i could explain it better.

Haze,

I  might have to start a running ticker of "shit my boss says". Like on Monday when she wants to talk over having lesson objectives which yes, absolutely i should. And repeat things, she's said before but still dont make sense to me, and then says casually like a thought flying out of an impolite place "they didn't learn anything in the entire hour"... i note the bullet come whizzing by me, fragments shrapnel into my brain and I'm left with that sentence of death working it's way into me bit by bit... i spend the rest of the... oh, god, it's only been 3 days...stopping bloodloss, and then on tuesday feeling i've overcome another obstacle by even showing up with the flu and working, she says, oh i thought you were going to call in sick. I waited, after 1030 though too late. It's much harder to replace someone if they leave during the work day... (insert subtext)... there was more but because of the sickness it's all whirling around me in vapors. As ive spent the midafternoon portions of the day with an unnatural sweat on my brow and convincing myself vomiting is unnecssary.
They didn't learn anything. Ah, awesome. Good thing i'm intuitive and self-aware or her comment might have actually been fatal... but let's not dwell on it as i do everytime i now lesson plan for them, ok? ok. Let's focus on how each day has seemed longer than the last, and that i wake up in a sweat, and wonder why i'm not well yet. Or how i'm out of food and spending $6 a day on taxis.

Anyway i better not go on. It's bedtime anyway right. And no, don't tell me it's going to get better or easier. i may well just send a giant butterfly to carry off your head... as i suggested to one class just a couple of hours ago. They laughed. They weren't at all taking me seriously. Then again, another class I said I liked soju and they all were in an uproar which led to a downspiral in conversation, and they were asking what the word was for "ugly" to "beautiful"... i finally figured out- plastic surgery and how to say "i took too many sleeping pills"... not to be beat by my other class going on about how nkorea was sure to send missiles to jeju and kill us. I'm glad they're at least working the language barrier. I could think of a few i'd like to send my boss but i'm lost in translation currently- and as i said, night.

night.
night.
come on thursday!

Well, all right-

Dust was actually gathering on my camera. Sad.

There's no follow up statement really. It sort of just says it. Maybe i need an assignment. It helps the weather is turning warmer. And that i'll gradually be less consumed with trying to feed myself, find a bank (StILL) and postcards... But nevermind.

Updates- I still have the cat, which i call my ward. I think the korean is neku? It doesn't really roll off the tongue, so I may settle for the korean word for wind which is param (padam- or swallow the r while rolling it a bit and say it really fast) which they said was masculine but well... what to do. Han-ee isn't cutting it, whatever it means. Maybe neku param. One of the teachers without any prompting is calling vets for me and figuring out what i need to do to bring the cat back to the US with me. . . hummmm. I'll leave it at that. Poor cat. All i see is $$$. But i overwhelmingly feel God gave me the cat to take care of- for how long? I don't know. At least I don't have much anxiety about her at the moment. Except for this whole last week when i was pretty sure she was in heat... ach. So,

The classes- they go up and down and in and out like the tides. My problem is severing the emotional tie to said performance. My artistic nerosis is at full peak in these situations. And though today I became completely nervous when the head teacher decided she had time to sit and observe my class, I actually was able to fill the time. She was encouraging though I'm sure her inner perfectionist, i felt, was screaming through her skin. She said, she liked my energy, and said the phrase, you're a great teacher... i read that to mean hypothetically, if not exactly definitively- and then she helped with one lesson I completely didn't know how to communicate, (aka i printed it out, looked at it and thought i'm sure they'll get IT = fail) and said, she would help me with the school objectives... which frankly = what i've been waiting for. It's akin to saying, here let me help you to swim and not just to keep your head above water. And I think she also saw the full demand that 11 students age 5 put on one person in a small space, who are already at rapidly different levels, and with varying moods to ancy, angry, bored, interested, or disheartened- i mean it's not like she doesn't know- but maybe reminded is better? Otherwise the class that i dreaded like i've begun to dread the little ones has turned around in that they know i'm not out to get them or torture them and i had them laughing with my drawing on the board at end... and on the bus ride home thought, hmm i need to bring snacks or something, or what kind of games can we do that help with language and spelling and are rolickingly good fun... tall orders really. Mayhaps pictionary if i remember. And also the kid who was shooting me with a machine gun the other day, started to do it again and i went, whoosh, invisible shield, pingpingping, which got the 2 boys laughing. I know you wanted to know. I mean, no kill teacher, am i right? The only other incident which i'm going to try to relate more regularly as i get my balance- is this one girl is obsessed with my largesse. As we were talking about food just today, she said, as if remarking on some important fact, teacher heavy. I said, yes, teacher heavy. And i laughed. Of course when she tries to poke my stomach i bear hug her and dangle her in the air... as with the wee kiddos who try to lift my shirt up or touch my large earrings, or gasp when i take off my sweater to reveal my (gasp) bare arms. I had to put the sweater back on, it was that distracting.

So besides all that, and teacher, hair long! Y. and teacher, how tall! 175 how many kilos! X to teacher GAME! I am beset every morning by a scorching anxiety. My flatmate J insists that this condition needs to be embraced and not done away with- that our perpetual condition in life should not consist of a linear road on a straight trajectory and that to feel that way is not good or bad but something to be handled and processed. Yes, yes... ok. Lift it up, open it up, talk to it, but who wants it there really, as i've said before. It kills the 4 hours or so i have before classes. up to the stressful 2.5 hours i have lesson planning to the mind numbing and pressured place of teaching where really time does fly and i'm released. And though i've been here about 7wks now entering on 8. I've only been teaching full time for about a month. So whatevs right? And i've had a unprecedented 4 caffe lattes this week on the way home- probably not helping. But anyway, back to downloading, and tell me what you want more updates on-- it's too early for this to already be routine and boring for me. May God grant me the ability to see.

k.

Day Off

It was perfect for a day off. It didn't insult you by putting on bad weather. For the first time I put my feet in the water, climbed on the volcanic rocks and thought, this rock here is where I'd pictured myself. And I saw trips to the beach in the future come spring were i would just sit or wander and it would connect me to the island and refresh me everyday before work. Winter though is a hardtime to come to anyplace- and i'd think harder still to come in fall- you witness the beauty of transition and are ushered into silent dormancy with no memory of what Spring will be like when it finally comes. I mean i see the signs, and what looks like terminal rain but don't really believe it it will break away. The days of average temps in the 50's and no bright and beaming sky will become just as monotonous. Nevertheless, the day had a grounding influence which led way to violent feelings come work on friday, back to softer feelings come Saturday to now more anxious feelings today. As true to the forecast it's been raining steadily still and the sky is awash in felted somber tones.

That's what reading Dickens does to a girl.

I keep wanting to relate other things but can't manage it. I'll leave off and try again tonight.

nevermind i'll jUst publish this and try and remember to blog about spiritual detachment and lost loves later. makes me think, oh man, this year is going to be something... emphasis on some... thing.