an imperfect equilibrium

four weeks from now i will be back in the united states. i can't even begin to describe how strange that feels, to think about leaving life as i've known it for the past thirteen months and to return (even just for a few months) to a culture that feels as foreign to me now as this one did when i arrived last spring. it's not a position i've ever been in before. but then, that's pretty much in keeping with how everything has been here. i came into korea with no expectations, no idea of all the new situations in which i would find myself, and nothing to go on when it came to dealing with those situations. challenging? for sure. but it's been a brilliant year because of that, a year in which i found truth and value in the phrase "sink or swim", a year which has given me a new perspective that i will carry into the months of uncertainty and processing that i know lie ahead. 

i don't want to leave korea. there's a lot here that i love and this is my home now, this is my life. the thought of leaving this place which has become so important to me truly makes me sad. but my life in seoul has just about run its course and it's time to go, at least for a little while. i'm tired and i'm beginning to see all the alcohol, the short skirts, the plastic faces, everywhere i look...these things that i've done a decent job of looking past all year are suddenly impossibly conspicious. i harbor no illusions about the culture here in seoul; i've known what it's like since i got here. for some reason, though, lately it's seemed to be much more in my face.

one thing korea has shown me as i think about leaving is that no place is perfect on its own accord. everywhere is only as good or as bad as you make it. i could leave here thinking about how it's just about destroyed my trust in people, caused me to become cynical about the existence of many good, solid people out there, and showed me how to bulls**t with the best of them because that's how they play the game here. or i can leave focusing on how it's played an undeniable and necessary role in my growth as a person, taught me (among other things) the importance of understanding the other in all situations, and led me to this place in which i now find myself--a place that is constructed of equal parts certainty and uncertainty, questions and answers. and it's good...so good. 

it's a balance that i didn't know i wanted, or even really know i was looking for. balance in my time and energy is something i've sought with mixed results over many months here, but this is balance on a deeper level. this is not the kind of balance that people typically seek; it is an imperfect equilibrium in that its parts are unpredictable and ever-changing. but i think i've now come to realize that it's the kind that works best for me at this point in my life. for example, i say i'm going to come back to korea in the fall, but in reality i won't be sure of that until it happens. there are a million factors in between now and then that could affect that move. that's okay. no matter where i find myself in four months i know it will be where i'm supposed to be. and that certainty, coupled with the knowledge that in wherever i end up i will get out exactly what i put in, solidifies a stability within me that i've been in search of for a long time. 

hope this finds you all well! i can't wait to see everyone in a few short weeks. i'm enjoying the end of my time in seoul but i'm getting more and more excited to be back in the company of people i've missed, to be back in my family's home in perkasie, to breathe some clean air... :) below are the links to my photos from april. 

love and hugs, 

heather

album 1:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012619&id=148800130&l=9d5c8c9c2f

album 2:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012742&id=148800130&l=58c88236c2

one year later

recently i discovered a slightly horrifying fact: the man for whom i've now worked for a full year thought i would enjoy pink wallpaper in my new apartment. pink wallpaper. as in, the entirety of the room covered in pink. he looked truly surprised when i blurted out a very serious "are you kidding?" it was slightly funny at the time, but it begged the question: does he know me at all?

doubtful.

in korea (seoul in particular), as i'm sure i've mentioned before, what's on the surface is very important. it's all about the image. your personal image, your family's image, whatever...everyone is concerned with others' perceptions of them.

this is something i struggled with when i first arrived. in fact, for the first several months that i was here, i cared more about what others thought than i ever have. then i realized what i was doing and stopped. i started dreadlocks two months ago, and i'm using those, given how concerned with the surface people are here, as a way to challenge myself and challenge those around me. my dreads looked like crap for a full month before they finally started to look a little bit nicer, a little bit more like dreads. at first i was a little self-conscious about them. the kids laughed at me every day and i knew every teacher in school was wondering when i would be done with this strange new hairstyle. but after a while, i didn't care. i wasn't doing them to look good or to fit in. i was doing them because i wanted to try it. and once i remembered that, i truly began to embrace it. i liked grossing out the people sitting behind me on the subway with my unwashed hair, and i enjoyed the stares. that's because my reasons for having dreads began to grow deeper. while i don't think i'll truly change anyone, i at least want to make them think. i want the people who stop and stare at me walking down the street to think about why they're staring. i want them to realize that they don't all have to be so much the same, to realize it's not all about appearance and what everyone else thinks, and to realize that there's so much more than the surface.

a friend of mine wrote a song about living here called "my city." the whole song is really good, but the last lines in particular stood out to me:
it's knowin this place, may never quite fit me
but at least in this moment, this is my city

those words are speaking to me so strongly these days. i have been here for exactly a year now, and i am leaving in just over two months. the following is my most recent journal entry:
“this place is my world right now. it's exponentially larger and yet infinitely smaller than worlds i've known in the past. at times it broadens my horizons and perspectives, and at times it shrinks around me.
this place is pain and joy, laughter and tears, brokenness and growth, discovery and being lost. it is everything i am and everything i'm not. it has made me who i am and reminds me who i don't want to be.
this place has changed me, and i am terrified of going home, because i don't know how i'll ever begin to explain that to people who can't truly understand.”

i should clarify that i am definitely excited to go back to the states and see everyone. there's a substantial amount of fear in me, though, as well. that journal entry is my best attempt at explaining korea and what it is to me now, but i don't know if those words are enough for those who used to know me best to understand.

and therein lies the irony of this place. the ones who understand all the little things—all the nuances and minor amusements of korea and what it's like to live here as a foreigner—they're the ones with whom it's nearly impossible to make deeper connections. there's often just not enough time because their places here are just as temporary as yours. that's what adds to the overwhelming feeling of superficiality i've continued to struggle with in korea. in addition to the appearance side of it, relationships are more of the same. it's so very rare to develop friendships here in which people truly know each other. and at the same time, you've removed yourself from the context where you used to exist and left it, and its familiarity and depth, behind. it's like this weird limbo-land in which the only person who truly knows you is you. that is why the potential for growth and maturity is so high when you move to a brand-new place that's miles from everything you used to know. i realized that several months ago and i took it and ran with it, and that is the reason i find myself in the place i do: with friends, but alone, and with no idea what the coming months are going to feel like.


on a lighter note, spring has finally come to seoul! the temperature is perfect, the sun is shining, and it's given me more energy to be out doing things. i'm also in a new apartment that is roughly a two minute walk from school, and i've got all next week off of work...nice-uh :) there are now eight weekends left before i get on a plane to the u.s., and ellie and i are trying to make sure we do everything we want to before heading out. some of those things include:
-getting silver suits and wearing them around seoul
-doing the dmz tour (i remember saying last year that we didn't want to save it till our last month here, but that that's what would probably happen...and it did)
-going hiking in jeollanamdo (south-easternmost province in south korea)
-going to everland (big amusement park outside of seoul)
-exploring islands off the western coast near incheon
-spending more sunday afternoons in olympic park
-going to our korean co-teacher's house in incheon and making korean food with her

miss you all a lot and hope this finds everyone well! i will be posting more photos from march and april to facebook soon.


love and hugs,
heather

dance through the fire

people get held back by the voice inside them
-from “in the beginning” by knaan

these last few months are like a final exam in life for what i think i've learned in korea. last week it took everything in me to avoid yelling at someone and getting on the next plane out of here. between the hellish months of january and february, schedule changes at the beginning of this month, a new head teacher coming in and making unnecessary changes, and the fact that i've been teaching and living here for almost a year...i'm exhausted, i'm jaded, and i hate it.

which brings me to the feeling of taking this massive, real-life test for which i haven't had time to study. i just have to hope that i've absorbed all i need to know throughout the year. subject: how to do better than just survive in korea.

that feeling of being exhausted and jaded has been hard to deal with, and has been made especially hard by a look back at some of my posted writings and photos from when i first arrived. one thing i re-read was the first blog i wrote after arriving here. i titled it “first impressions” and i talked about everything from teaching to seoul to kimchi...ah, i was so excited to learn everything then! it was all new and there was so much to explore and experience. it wasn't all great for the first few months—far from it—but that was more than balanced out by the feeling of being alive that living in a brand-new place brings.

a week ago i had found that kind of feeling again, that feeling of being alive and of wanting to get the most out of my time here that i could. i wrote this in my journal:
“down to less than three months left now. what a weird feeling. it's been such a journey, too...where i was a year ago seems so distant that to be honest, i'm having trouble remembering it. i'm such a different person now than i was twelve months ago...the growth i've gone through is astounding in how much it's defined me. and it has not been a perfect year. far from it. but it's been a good year. a year that god, i needed. the great thing, too, is that i feel like i'm coming full circle, although it's like full circle with a twist. i'm arriving again at this point where i'm excited to see everything, do everything, experience everything...but this time around i've got the context in place already. i know from past experiences what it can should will feel like. i also feel a sense of urgency that wasn't there before, a feeling like there's not enough time to do it all.”

then i had a particularly bad week at school and i wanted to leave. i was feeling, to put it nicely, screwed over. by the school, the economy and the horrible exchange rate, and my own weaknesses. much of korea felt old and seen and explored and i was having trouble finding the vitality in life here. i could left, too. i could have said, “you know what, [director] sam, i'm just going to leave in april when my contract's up. i haven't signed that extension yet and i'm tired of dealing with all the crap here. so thank you, goodbye, and good luck keeping foreign teachers around.”

i didn't, though (and by the way, i would never speak to my director that way, even though i desperately wanted to last week). there were a few factors holding me back, one of the larger ones being that i had just bought a plane ticket home for may 31st and didn't feel like dealing with the hassle or the cost involved in switching it. but a smaller factor at the time (which probably should have been the biggest) is that i just don't feel like i'm done here yet. i don't know if i will be done when i leave in two and a half months or if that won't be the end of korea for me. but i do know that i've got to give this time the best shot i can. i have to enjoy it fully or i will regret it. and yeah, right now so much feels old and seen and explored that i'm having trouble finding the vitality in life. but there's still a lot to see and do here, a lot that i haven't experienced. and i won't spend my last two and a half months here wishing i could get on that flight home sooner.

all these thoughts and feelings of late have ultimately served to remind me of one hugely important thing: we always have a choice.

you know that quote from charles swindoll? the one that goes “i am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how i react to it”? well, that rings true no matter where on this earth you may find yourself. it's been the core of what i've learned and how i've grown here. and remembering that is how i'm going to not only survive these last ten weeks but make them a beautiful conclusion to this chapter of my life.

i have been through some of the toughest situations and some of the most intense emotions i've ever experienced here in korea. there have been times when i was so unsure, hurt, confused, or lonely that i had no idea how to take the next step. it's like this photo i took in thailand that's currently my desktop background—the photo was taken on the beach on new year's eve, and it's of this guy trying to double-dutch jump rope in flaming ropes, but it kind of looks like he's dancing around. i want to apply that to my thoughts on the next several weeks in that the best way to approach the fire is to dance right on through it. something may appear tough. sometimes you feel surrounded by flames. and you'll tell yourself it's going to be a struggle. if you let that be your sole mentality, then of course it's going to be be hard. if, though, you can learn to not only get through it but to enjoy the process...oh, it's so worth it.


at the end of this post are links to recent photos, but here are some things i'm looking forward to in the near future:
-getting OUTSIDE again when the weather warms up soon! this includes more hiking, more exploring the city, and more riding bike along the han river
-a bike tour of gyeongju during peak cherry blossom season on the first weekend in april
-possibly hitting up the seoul world dj festival again in may
-getting a week off of work mid-april to do nothing but relax and reenergize for my final month and a half in korea
-another city-wide scavenger hunt sometime in may
-finally doing the dmz tour
-giving my mom a HUGE hug when i see her on may 31st :)


thanks to everyone who's been emailing and facebooking me and commenting on photos and blogs...it makes me happy and makes me feel like this writing has got a bigger purpose than just being an online record of my thoughts. i apologize if i've been lax about replying to anyone; the last several weeks have kept me fairly stressed and left me with very little energy once i finally get home in the evenings. but please know i love and miss you all and i can't wait to see everyone in a few short months!

much love,
heather


link to photos from february:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012250&id=148800130&l=3e062a13d7

link to photos so far from march:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012276&id=148800130&l=bdd448fc51

and we thought winter would be boring...part two: recent thoughts

so it's been a crazy, busy, ridiculous month, as i mentioned. everything that's gone on in the past few weeks, as well as the start of a new year, has meant a lot of thinking and reflecting.

yesterday i enjoyed a lunar new year crepe brunch with a few of my closest friends here. it was really nice to have that, especially since we weren't around for christmas/new year's celebrations with people. the conversation revolved around life, marriage, and culture—three topics that have been on my mind a lot lately.

i'm now almost done my tenth month in korea, and let me just say, WHAT? the time has flown by faster than i ever could have anticipated, and it feels good to look back and see the process. ellie and i just extended our contracts from the end of march to the end of june, and i am excited to spend a few extra months (and another spring) here. so many people who come here do their year and leave without a backward glance. but as i told a friend the other day, i know that this is where i'm supposed to be right now regardless of how strange it may seem. so i'm staying until that feeling changes. most people i know who are my age (consider that most people i know are part of mennonite communities) are finding a good job, finding a good person, and getting married. they're settling down and starting families. i remember thinking when i was around fourteen or fifteen that i'd be doing that by now.

yet i'm far from ready for it, in the typical way at least.

it took coming to korea to truly realize how fulfilling it is to do things on my own and do things that i want to do, to find meaning in them based on whatever they are to me at the time. i did what was typical, what was expected, my whole life until i got to college. at some point during those four years, though, that shifted into me wanting something different. wanting to take steps, on my own, beyond what i was "supposed" to do. and when i look back on the time from now to that shift, the growth and changes i see are incredible.

the point is that while what i'm doing with my life right now is far from typical compared to what i grew up thinking i'd do, i am happy and i am growing. i can think ahead more than a few months (something i haven't done in years) and make plans with the knowledge that there's no fixed commitment involved. there are definitely days when i think it'd be nice to have someone (besides ellie, although it's awesome to have a best friend like her) to share it with, but even then, that person would have to want the same things i want—which right now do not include marriage, kids, or settling into a comfortable life back in the states. there's still too much world to experience and too much to learn.


speaking of experiencing the world, what a interesting time it was in vietnam. one thing that's important to understand is that in korea, politeness and respect are unspoken mandatories. they are part of society that are ingrained into everyone as they grow up, they are built into the language structure, and they are what we have come to know as a way of life. confrontation is almost non-existent; koreans hate confrontation and don't handle it well. so to encounter what we did within mere hours of leaving seoul was a rough introduction to my first asian country outside of korea.

from what i've heard, the people in saigon and in the rest of the country are not like those we encountered in hanoi. but it was really interesting to experience what we did because so far, countries close to each other that i've visited haven't had that much of a gap in societal behavior. in both latin america and europe, i've spent time in various countries and each time found the people to be similar in comparison to those in neighboring countries.

that said, i really enjoyed hanoi in one regard—it was so much more third-world than seoul. trat and koh chang in thailand were more of the same, and when i arrived in thailand i had the feeling that i had come to this place i never knew i wanted to go. it is similar to how i've found south korea to be the place i never knew i needed to go. asia has never been at the top of my list, and south korea in particular wasn't even on the list. but coming here has been this amazing experience that i had no idea how badly i needed to have. in the same manner, thailand is a country i knew little about and might not have ever visited had i not moved to seoul to teach. but when i got there, i realized how badly i wanted to experience all of it. the really cool thing about thailand for me was that it was third-world, like the cultures i love so much in latin america, yet i couldn't speak or read the language. while i was there i felt so fully like i was in a completely new place, like there was nothing known and everything left to learn. that is the true passion of traveling for me and the reason traveling makes me feel so alive.

seeing these differences between countries that i've always [ignorantly] assumed were very similar has made me really excited to go other places in asia. part of our talk over crepes was about the identities of various countries around the world. i just read "eat pray love" by elizabeth gilbert, which is about a woman who goes to italy, india, and indonesia and focuses on one specific thing in each place. there are countries around the world which, when you think about them, bring certain images or thoughts to mind. countries that have a natural pull and invite learning and understanding through personal experience. south korea is not one of those countries--it is still changing, still developing its identity. because of that and some of the cultural aspects it has developed, it is not a place that welcomes foreigners to actively learn about it. all the ways i've become actively involved in understanding the culture have been the result of great individuals, not because south korea itself has been an eager teacher. all that said, i am excited to see what else is in store for me this year.


i hope you are all well and that the new year has brought and will continue to bring new learning and new opportunities for all of you. keep in touch!

love,
heather

and we thought winter would be boring...part one: recent happenings

hello! happy 2009 a few weeks late :) this will be a long, two-part post as it's been quite an interesting month since my last blog entry...the past four weeks have held some (much-needed) vacation, a new school building and new classes as well as two foreign teachers leaving our school, and a lot of thinking and discussion about culture and life. this first part will be everything that's happened since christmas...


first, the saga of our winter vacation in vietnam and thailand.

i've said this before, but generally when ellie and i travel together things don't always go smoothly, and there are many moments of trouble/annoyance/frustration that we look back on and laugh at (or not) later. i've said this before too--this trip was no exception.

ellie and i traveled with our co-worker sebastian to hanoi and then on to bangkok, where we parted ways with him. we had a layover in hanoi that allowed us enough time to leave the airport and spend about 15 hours in the city. so we got our bags and found a taxi..."only $12," the man said. "12 u.s. dollars, right?" we all emphatically double-checked with him, thinking we had found a great deal. he confirmed, put our bags in the trunk, and we were off to hanoi. the man was very friendly, making a bit of conversation along the way and even pointing out a load of skinned, dead dogs (on their way to be cooked and eaten) strapped to a motorcycle. the taxi pulled over in the old quarter as we had requested, and it was time to pay. the man wanted 1.2 million vietnamese dong which at the time was equivalent, we figured out later that night, to somewhere around 90 u.s. dollars. in the taxi we were struggling to convert from vietnamese dong to south korean won to u.s. dollars, not really figuring it out, but aware that it did not equal $12 and was in fact way, way more than anyone should pay for that taxi ride. the man did not take kindly to our refusal to pay what he wanted, and a flurry of rapid vietnamese mixed with broken english ensued. we tried reasoning with him and reminding him that we had agreed on $12 at the airport and were yelled at. we tried writing on paper what we thought was an acceptable compromise and were yelled at. we tried giving him about half of what he had asked for and had the money thrown back in our faces.

eventually we ended up paying him roughly $40, apparently enough to avoid him driving off with our bags still in the trunk, and went to find a hostel. after wandering in circles throughout the old quarter for a half hour, we found a decently-priced hostel and dropped our stuff off to wander around hanoi for a while. ten minutes into our exploring, a friendly old woman carrying pineapples in baskets strung to a wooden pole resting on her shoulder approached us. "photo, photo!" she said, and without waiting for a reply placed her fruit carrier on my shoulder and her hat on my head. we were surprised into agreeing so ellie took a photo, promptly after which the woman proceeded to thrust two small bags of pineapple into our hands and demand that we pay her for the photo and the fruit. she, like the taxi driver, wanted more money than what we should have paid, and for the second time in under two hours a friendly face turned nasty.

after paying her some crazy amount for three slices of pineapple, we finished our walk and found dinner uneventfully, and then made our way back to the hostel for some sleep. in the morning the hostel desk clerk called us an airport taxi and we were on our way to thailand.

or so we thought. i'll spare you the long version, but it includes a changed gate, a turn-around back to vietnam due to "a technical issue" (either they forgot to fill up on fuel or one of the wheels was coming loose, we remain unsure), meals served and cleaned up halfway through twice, and an arrival in thailand four hours after planned.

once in the bangkok airport, we split paths with sebastian, who would be spending a bit of time in bangkok before returning to vietnam for the rest of break. we were ready to be out of the city for a while, so we found a bus to the ekamai terminal on the east edge of bangkok (there was no way we were taking a taxi this time). our plan was to bus to laemngop and ferry to the island of koh chang, but we had missed the last bus there because of the plane issues. so we took a six-hour bus ride to trat, a small city close to laemngop, and spent the night there. we stayed in a great, cheap hostel with helpful owners and taxied to laemngop for the first ferry out the next day. it felt so wonderful to finally be on that ferry, sun on my face and wind in my hair, watching the island get bigger as we approached.

on koh chang we found a bungalow place and rented a hut right by the water. over the next week we relaxed, rented motorbikes (not without difficulty and hilarity) and kayaks, swam in the beautiful turquoise water, enjoyed fresh fruit for breakfast every morning, swung in hammocks, saw elephants, and took in thailand at a wonderfully slow pace.

going back to seoul, the original plan (and what our plane tickets were for) was to fly from bangkok to saigon, have an eight-hour layover in the airport there, and arrive back in seoul monday morning with just enough time before starting work that day. we realized partway through the week that a day at home before jumping right in at a new building would be not only nice but almost necessary. so we left koh chang on thursday afternoon to spend the night in the same hostel we had previously stayed at in trat, and returned to the bangkok airport by friday afternoon in hopes of switching to an earlier flight. there were none available so we spent the night in the airport and the next morning tried again. no luck. by this time we were really tired and just wanted to get back to seoul, so we bought new one-way tickets on a flight leaving saturday evening and spent the rest of the day making a movie of all the funny things you can do in an airport. it was a lot of fun, but by the time we boarded that flight we had spent 32 hours in the bangkok airport. once we arrived in seoul there was a long, slow line for immigration and the bus back into the city ended up dropping us off nowhere near our house...i don't think i've ever been so happy to see my apartment as i was that morning :)


second, all the craziness at school.

when we returned from break, we began at a new building closer to the center of seoul. it's a beautiful facility that is in a nice area, although we now have to bus to work because it's too far to walk. things have been fine with teaching; the kids seem to have made the transition fairly well and so have the teachers. however, two situations within the past two weeks have made things a bit ridiculous at school. one was expected, one was not.

the first is that sebastian, the co-worker with whom we traveled to vietnam, was accused by parents of inappropriately touching their daughter. he did not, but the parents wanted a spoken apology and a signed confession stating what he had done. he refused, the parents became more angry, and within about four hours on that friday, sebastian was no longer teaching at our school.

the second is a situation that's been gradually building over the past two months. a teacher joined us in the beginning of december from japan. she is married to a japanese man and has spent the past nine years teaching in thailand, taiwan, and japan. i got a bad feeling from her almost immediately but hoped i was wrong. unfortunately, i wasn't. i won't go into detail, but basically she a) has some issues, b) refused all help anyone offered, and c) made life miserable for everyone at work. she gave two months notice just before christmas but, after a situation that was apparently the last straw last friday, was asked to clear her things out of her apartment and not come back.

it was hard seeing sebastian leave, especially because it could have happened to any of us. as far as the other teacher, no one's sad to see her go. but this means that now we're down to three foreign teachers when there should be five.


so there's all that's been going on here! i'll post the second part soon with my thoughts and reflections on everything, but in the meantime here are links to recent photos :)

december (more added since i included the link with my last post):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011190&l=6f921&id=148800130
vacation (two albums):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011557&l=25693&id=148800130
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011559&l=509a4&id=148800130
january (will probably add a few more within the week):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011837&l=4409b&id=148800130


hope everyone's holidays were good time spent with family and friends...love and miss you all lots!

peace,
heather

breaking things

things get broken in our lives sometimes without our consent. bones, spirits, trust...the cause can be an accident, a relationship gone bad, or anything lying in a wide spectrum of circumstances beyond our control. there are also times when things break because we have made a conscious decision to risk it. we have put ourselves into situations to test our beliefs and perspectives or to challenge the strength within ourselves, and we find that things fall short of what we thought they were. we're not as whole, as solid, as we thought. but whether the breaking happens because we allowed it to or not, ultimately the healing of those breaks serves to make us stronger.

over the past nine months i've experienced much of the first two kinds. i've felt like my spirit's been broken by loneliness, my trust in people has been damaged by a failed friendship, i've discovered that my convictions weren't as strong as i liked to think, i've questioned almost everything about myself and not always come up with positive answers, parts of who i am have seemed lost.

i'll be honest...every one of those times sucked. some of the hardest things i've dealt with emotionally and mentally have happened during my time so far in korea.

but anytime anyone asks me how korea is, the first thing that i say is always, "i love it!" and this is because all that negative stuff, all those tough times and all that brokenness, they have been positives in the end. they've brought me to the point i am at now—a point at which i've come to understand the best kind of breaking: the kind which we do on our own terms. it can't happen until we've healed from past breaks and begun to recognize the strength we have. the way i see it, everyone has layers that must be removed before they see who they truly are, and sometimes it takes being broken down gradually to get to that person within. that's definitely been the case for me.

so now here i am, all these layers taken away by korea and the situations it's led me to and through, and i'm starting to see myself for the first time. or rather, who i truly want to be and how to work toward that point. ah, i'm on such a journey here! it's a journey whose destination i did not know when i set out but which is now suddenly so clear.

let me explain. i can break boards now, and not just one at a time. tonight i put my fist through three and my foot through two! you should have seen my reaction the first time i did it, about two weeks ago. i didn't stop smiling for at least an hour. here's the thing, though. it's not even hard. anyone can do it; you just have to know how.

and there's the secret: you just have to know how. not in a million years would i have thought i could break boards. i thought that that cool skill was reserved for black belts and other such martial-arts-y types. but as it turns out, it's quite simple. you learn the process, the technique, and the steps, and then you make sure you follow through.

that understanding has applied directly to other things in my life that i wish to change...habits, reactions, interactions. things that i don't like about myself whose patterns i can now, thanks to korea and taekwondo, break. things that don't need to heal to make me stronger because my strength grows in the breaking itself. all i have to do is work out how and then commit to following through. in the past, that would have felt like a huge easier-said-than-done task. but now...well, to understand what this realization feels like, know that i've never seen myself as an especially strong person. so to get to this point feels a little like i've finally been able to reject a not-so-great opinion i had of myself. in other words, it is the first break in a sequence of many that i look forward to initiating.


in two days i leave for a trip to my second and third countries in southeast asia, vietnam and thailand. this is the first christmas ever that i'll spend away from my family, and that's been hard. but skype is a lovely, useful invention—thanks to that, i was able to talk to everyone who was up visiting pennsylvania :) and i am very excited to travel...things i hope/plan to do include washing an elephant, bicycling around bangkok, relaxing in a hammock on the beach, go rock climbing over water, and eat lots of awesome cheap vietnamese and thai food. i will definitely have many photos to post when i get back! but for now, here's a link to december in pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011190&l=6f921&id=148800130


i love and miss you all! have a wonderful christmas and enjoy ringing in 2009 :)

peace,
heather

remember you're alive

yesterday morning i was woken around 11:00 by a call from my friend erik. "wanna go bungee jumping today?" he said. a few hours later, surrounded by beautiful mountain scenery, i jumped off of a 160-foot metal tower with an elastic cord harnessed to my waist. i screamed bloody murder as i plunged toward the lake below, and then alternated between relieved laughter and small shrieks until i stopped bouncing and was lowered into the boat waiting below. it seemed like it was over in the blink of an eye, but the adrenaline rush lasted for hours afterward.

let me point out two things in regards to this adventure:
one, this past month has been all about taking risks. conquering fears. doing things i've never done before, things i never wanted to do, and things i never thought i could do.
two, i am terrified of bungee jumping. i have never wanted to do it, and until about three weeks ago when we all first talked about going, i didn't think i ever would.

so i jumped.

it's korea's fault. living here has opened me up to so many new things, put me into so many tough situations and challenged me in so many ways; when i learned and grew in the face of those things, it drove me in turn to begin challenging myself. in the past two or so months in particular i have pushed myself to do crazy and/or scary stuff and put myself in situations that made me nervous, and it has been amazing. some days i still can't believe i came here, but that thought is always immediately followed by an immense gratitude that i did. i feel like all of this, the past seven and a half months, has been leading up to this weekend and the incredible sense of feeling alive that i now have. it's deep and it's beautiful, and i can't imagine any other road that would have led me to this point. every new thing i do is another step on the journey to becoming the person i want to be, a person i was just starting to see before leaving. that leap into thin air is a true affirmation of the growth i've experienced since coming here.

and to think i was going to spend yesterday relaxing in bed.

my wish for all of you in the days and weeks and months ahead is that you experience some moments that remind you of what it means to truly be alive. savor them. breathe them in. take them and run with them.


i hope this finds you all well. i miss everyone and appreciate all the emails, photos comments, and wall posts. keep in touch! here is a link to my photos from november:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010982&l=b64ab&id=148800130

much love,
heather


it is the passion flowing right on through your veins
it is the feeling like you're oh so glad you came
it is the moment you remember you're alive
it is the air you breathe, the element, the fire
-nelly furtado, "forca"