Beginning to feel like home

Hello readers and friends,

It's beginning to feel like home.  Yet home is elsewhere, as well.  Paradoxical, I suppose. (My students like the phrase "a juxtaposition" and would use that here.)

Home because. . . well, frankly, because the fridge and pantry are finally full.  That and the fact that we have a few pictures of family up on the wall and around the apartment.  What a difference it makes to open up the refrigerator or the cupboards and be able to make a meal.  Other things are making it feel like home, too.  I'm getting used to the bus ride to school in the morning - all the chatter of fellow colleagues and our kids for the 10 minute ride.  I know several different routes to get to the bus now.  Also, if I need to get home on my own from school, I can do it.  I know how to use the appliances in the apartment (even though all the buttons are labeled in Korean).  Certain things are becoming routine - walking through certain subway stations to certain queues or certain exit gates to get on a certain bus to go home, for example.

AK Plaza - my spot of exploration today

Today I explored a little ON MY OWN.  Brent stayed at home with the kids.  We finally have a babysitter (an American student) so that we can go and see Inception.  I've been told by me seniors that it has similar overtones to a summer reading novel for AP Lit, After Dark (Murakami).  So I decided to scope out the theater we'd heard about, see if I could find it on my own, buy tickets, explore, and return home safely without any wrong turns.  And I did it!  Yeah for me!  How fabulous to travel by myself by bus, subway, and on foot (got my 10,000 steps in today).  It brought back long buried memories of France.  I'm sure it was because back in '89 I was on my own, too, riding the subway and exploring the big city of Paris.  Perhaps connecting something in the present to something in my past also helps this feel more like home.

6 hours later. . . 

Okay.  This strays from the usual ESSAY structure, but I'm going to do it anyway.  I'm going to entirely change the subject.

Inception!

Freaky.  Wow.  Loved it.  Woah.  If you haven't seen it, go see it. Holy WAH!
And by the way, seeing a moving with Leonardo DiCaprio in it, in ENGLISH, and eating at BURGER KING afterward also contributes to the feeling of HOME.

Even so. . . I miss my friends back in GB.  More so today because I know they've begun returning to school and to the life I used to live.

Thinking of you all!


B