Schii’s...

1. Exercise my language skills.

The ticket has been bought, the date set.  I've already started saying goodbye.  Boxes sent to a foreign address, phone calls made, and baseball games & battlefield visits already arranged.  An apartment being dismantled, bicycles facing idle times, food in the freezer that might face an unsavory end.  Currency needed to be exchaged, photos needed to be taken, souvenirs needed to be bought from a place nobody has ever heard of.  Mount Ishizuchi still capped according to the view from  my porch I'll miss very much.

Farewell, farewell, Japan. 

The summer may have had a rough start, but it has been one of the best I have had since I met my friend Wes in 2003.  I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to travel and see my family in New Zealand this month and forge better friendships with those here in Matsuyama.  My one-year anniversary from my American departure was celebrated this past week at a soccer game.  I remembered it slightly with a tear and a few minutes of melancholy.  However, being here and participating in this culture now has been an enlightening experience.  Forcing me to open my mind further and develop a sense of understanding of how things work/ how people are/ and learning the practice of acceptance.   I don’t think these fruits would’ve bloomed for me anywhere in the States. 

This week I returned to Matsuyama after two weeks away in Korea and New Zealand.  I enjoyed the many comforts of western living with half the travel.  I think I enjoyed flirting with the gorgeous ski instructors the most.   I count down the seven months in Japan now hoping that I will fill these months with beautiful photos, writing, reading, and music.

I am spending my last few days in Korea living out of  a love motel  and I am totally lovin' it.  When I first arrived in Korea my native co-workers had thrown my naive and paranoid behind in one of these for a few nights since my room wasn't ready in Gupo.  I was terrified, I had read about them while researching life in Korea prior to my arrival and had no desire to take up many nights at these kinds of places.  Upon my arrival  I passed a madam laying out pictures of girls in the front of the motel.  My enterance to the foyer was a shocking collage of florescent and  blacklit immages of  women in various erotic posses, the floor was a glow in the dark fishtank and the innkeeper was only communicated through a slot no larger than a text book in length and width.  

After the two Korean co-workers that barely spoke a lick of English between  eachother dumped me off into the room I just sat on the round red pleather bed and looked around...I changed into a pair of leggings and a longsleeved hooded sweatshirt.  That night I slept with the hood over my head, thinking "God only knows who had done what on this bed and if they even changed the sheets".  There was this lightly present stench of musty sourness in the air.  After a great night's rest of four hours I wake up and venture out of the motel ending up in distant cities because I confused the national railway with the subway and had to spend the rest of the day trying to find the motel walkin' through protests, getting spat on, being chased around a block by a nice man trying to give me an unbrella, and trying to figure out what to eat there  (concluding that dounuts will not be a bad diet for a year). 

I totally laughed at myself and how I was about six months ago.  Everything in Korea has come full circle and made some sense (or I have rationalized it in my usual pathetic fashion).  I now stay at a love motel that is in the same area and similar to the one that I had stayed in for my first few nights in Korea for the luxury price of 30,000 WON per night.  I have a maid that comes in and she cleans my room, gives me two small orange juice boxes daily.  I have remote controlled moodlighting, spring water available to drink, a bathtub and a comfortable bed to sleep in.  This feels like paradise compared to the windowless cubby hole I stayed in for six months, showering out of the sink with a flooded floor to constantly tend to with my shock-hazard bulb lighting that would hang like a noose from it's fixture it was once attached too. 

 Tuesday, I leave for an eighteen day excursion around Thailand. I.  I hope to get a lot of sun and swim in before my move to Japan on the 28th.   I'm also set to take the BIG exam this fall.  Sooooo much to do, so happy doing it all.