Two things I'm not very good at.
Art I just never got. How do you even come up with the ideas? How do you know what to paint or sculpt or carve? I have no idea. I do, however, love art from an audience perspective and I love art galleries. Travelling around Europe back in university I sometimes saw two in a day - for sure, some would have said that I was one of those travellers who just wanted to tick things off of a list, but it really was exactly what I wanted to do. I went to galleries to see artists I had never even heard of until I read about them in my Lonely Planet and I loved it. Half of the joy of living in Edinburgh was all the free art museums and little galleries with interesting shows.
As for sports, well, I see double due to having too many muscles in one of my eyes. I could have had them sliced out but lost all interest as soon as I heard the words awake, scalpel, eye. Ummm, no. I can't even put in contacts (big goal for the next year or so is to teach myself that, so I can try scuba diving, actually). So, I can't say I was ever any good at sports, what with the fact that two balls were coming at me at speed and it was too fast to figure out which image was real. I did coach T-ball for a bit in high school, which had its moments of hilarity - particularly when an ump called the infield fly rule on one of my little five year olds. Because it's perfectly logical that a five year old dropped a fly ball on purpose to make a better out, rather than that a kid who still doesn't know which hand his glove goes on might, you know, drop the ball. Otherwise, I didn't so much do sports. I would have these impulses to give it a go every once in awhile, but really, I'm not a sports kind of gal. I do enjoy watching just about any sport live (particularly hockey, but then I am Canadian), and I get fairly into the Olympics - though my favourite Olympic sport is snowboard cross simply because people fall over a lot.
However, I do slide myself into the corners of both art and sports. I love taking photos and have at times done it with some serious intent on getting interesting, creative pictures. I took a pottery course in university that I loved, though I didn't pursue it. I do love canoeing and kayaking, which are more activities than sports, I think. And then there is my recent obsession with hashing (I miss that I didn't hash this weekend, though I needed the extreme amount of rest that I've gotten).
I was, at one time, a bit of a perfectionist. It was hard for me to like participating in art or sports because I was never going to be great. I'm really glad that as I've gotten older, I've learned to enjoy things that I am crap at. It makes life a lot more interesting.
Showing posts with label Sunday Scribblings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sunday Scribblings. Show all posts
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Monday, February 02, 2009
Regrets
I've always thought that a life without regrets is a life not lived properly. To really take chances, you have to be willing to risk a lot. Sometimes that risk doesn't pay off and sometimes that's going to be sad. The thing about regrets is that they can be instructive. They can be productive.
I just ate more cheese in the early hours of the morning. Depending on tonight's dreams, I may just regret that later.
I just ate more cheese in the early hours of the morning. Depending on tonight's dreams, I may just regret that later.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Pilgrimage
I've done a fair amount of travelling so far in my life, though nowhere near enough to satisfy me. My goal is to live and work on all the continent except Antarctica, which I fully intend to visit. I've covered three so far, though I've yet to even make any solid plans to get me through the remaining three.
Of all my travels, there was one that was akin to a pilgrimage and that was my trip across Canada. In high school and university, all I was focused on was getting the hell out of Bolton, preferably leaving North America all together. In my second year of university, I applied to an archaeological dig in England and for the exchange program through Queen's. Since there are about 3~4 applications per spot, I never imagined I'd get in. The dig was something I really wanted to do, but it was also my back-up plan, the plan that ensured I finally flew somewhere exciting. I had just sent off my money for the dig when I heard I had an interview for the exchange program - one that I never ended up attending, as I was high enough on the list that they cut sufficient applicants before even interviewing me. A huge part of me is still in awe of my luck.
As exciting as that first trip was, and it included six weeks of backpacking around Europe, it didn't really top the cross Canada trip. It was 2003 by the time I got the chance to see my own country and by then I had been living in Scotland, and hence travelling the UK, Ireland, andItaly, for two years. I moved back to Toronto to temp lazily while waiting for my travel partners, Jenni and Alan, to make some money and join me.
I can't quite say what it was exactly about that trip that made it so special. Part of it was that I was travelling with two of my best friends. Part of it was the train - I really enjoy train trips. But mostly, it was just Canada - the North, the Rockies, the Prairies. For the first time I was starting to understand the Canadian imagery and symbolism that I grew up absorbing.
We took the train to Winnipeg first, stopping only to change to another line. The trip up to Churchill, my first time to a place considered actual Arctic (it isn't that far north, but Hudson's Bay alters the climate in such a way that it is arctic). Seeing polar bears in the wild. Seeing the Northern Lights - I'd seen them before, where I grew up, but they were considerably more spectacular. The cold. The forests slowly giving way to a flat expanse of ice and snow.
After spending only a day in Churchill, sadly all we could afford, we headed to Winnipeg and spent five days there. That may well have been four days too many, considering that it was November. I now really understand Winnipeg weather reports, right down to my bones. We had anticipated sleeping through the prairies, but a huge train delay meant that we got to see them slowly pass by from the bubble car on the train. Grain elevators and so much sky! Edmonton was a much more interesting place than I had anticipated, though I wasn't overly impressed by the mall.
And then, the Rockies. Seeing them for the first time was incredible and Jasper was by far my favourite part of the trip. Granted, I'll never be able to forget the stupidity of thinking I was going to see those green waters of Lake Louise, but I did get to see a classic mountains-reflected-in-a-lake scene, so I was happy. We also saw a lot of wild life - though those deer are pretty tame!
We ended up in Vancouver and settled there in late November until August. I didn't love living in Vancouver, but I am incredibly glad I had the chance to do it. It is a beautiful city in the spring and summer - Toronto really has nothing on it there. I did miss the opportunity to do lots of cultural things without spending a small fortune - I'd been spoiled by Toronto and Edinburgh and it just wasn't my kind of city, in a way I can't really articulate. However, it was an important year for me, one in which I made the decision to come to Korea for the first time and that's a decision that has had the most impact on my life since the day I decided I was returning to Scotland after finishing my degree.
I am vaguely planning some more trips that might feel a bit like a pilgrimage - in particular, seeing Russia. Both of my parents studied Russia, history and literature, so it's one country I have always wanted to go to. Returning to university would certainly fit the bill. I'd also love to make it home for a holiday - at this point any holiday would do, but Christmas next year seems the most likely. We'll just have to see how the next year plays out, I guess. As always with my life, your guess is as good as mine!
The adventure began in Toronto.
The train ride through Ontario and Manitoba.
Polar bears in Churchill.
Winnnipeg and the Praries
Edmonton was fun.
The Rockies Rock
The trip ends in Vancouver.
Pics of the trip.
Of all my travels, there was one that was akin to a pilgrimage and that was my trip across Canada. In high school and university, all I was focused on was getting the hell out of Bolton, preferably leaving North America all together. In my second year of university, I applied to an archaeological dig in England and for the exchange program through Queen's. Since there are about 3~4 applications per spot, I never imagined I'd get in. The dig was something I really wanted to do, but it was also my back-up plan, the plan that ensured I finally flew somewhere exciting. I had just sent off my money for the dig when I heard I had an interview for the exchange program - one that I never ended up attending, as I was high enough on the list that they cut sufficient applicants before even interviewing me. A huge part of me is still in awe of my luck.
As exciting as that first trip was, and it included six weeks of backpacking around Europe, it didn't really top the cross Canada trip. It was 2003 by the time I got the chance to see my own country and by then I had been living in Scotland, and hence travelling the UK, Ireland, andItaly, for two years. I moved back to Toronto to temp lazily while waiting for my travel partners, Jenni and Alan, to make some money and join me.
I can't quite say what it was exactly about that trip that made it so special. Part of it was that I was travelling with two of my best friends. Part of it was the train - I really enjoy train trips. But mostly, it was just Canada - the North, the Rockies, the Prairies. For the first time I was starting to understand the Canadian imagery and symbolism that I grew up absorbing.
We took the train to Winnipeg first, stopping only to change to another line. The trip up to Churchill, my first time to a place considered actual Arctic (it isn't that far north, but Hudson's Bay alters the climate in such a way that it is arctic). Seeing polar bears in the wild. Seeing the Northern Lights - I'd seen them before, where I grew up, but they were considerably more spectacular. The cold. The forests slowly giving way to a flat expanse of ice and snow.
After spending only a day in Churchill, sadly all we could afford, we headed to Winnipeg and spent five days there. That may well have been four days too many, considering that it was November. I now really understand Winnipeg weather reports, right down to my bones. We had anticipated sleeping through the prairies, but a huge train delay meant that we got to see them slowly pass by from the bubble car on the train. Grain elevators and so much sky! Edmonton was a much more interesting place than I had anticipated, though I wasn't overly impressed by the mall.
And then, the Rockies. Seeing them for the first time was incredible and Jasper was by far my favourite part of the trip. Granted, I'll never be able to forget the stupidity of thinking I was going to see those green waters of Lake Louise, but I did get to see a classic mountains-reflected-in-a-lake scene, so I was happy. We also saw a lot of wild life - though those deer are pretty tame!
We ended up in Vancouver and settled there in late November until August. I didn't love living in Vancouver, but I am incredibly glad I had the chance to do it. It is a beautiful city in the spring and summer - Toronto really has nothing on it there. I did miss the opportunity to do lots of cultural things without spending a small fortune - I'd been spoiled by Toronto and Edinburgh and it just wasn't my kind of city, in a way I can't really articulate. However, it was an important year for me, one in which I made the decision to come to Korea for the first time and that's a decision that has had the most impact on my life since the day I decided I was returning to Scotland after finishing my degree.
I am vaguely planning some more trips that might feel a bit like a pilgrimage - in particular, seeing Russia. Both of my parents studied Russia, history and literature, so it's one country I have always wanted to go to. Returning to university would certainly fit the bill. I'd also love to make it home for a holiday - at this point any holiday would do, but Christmas next year seems the most likely. We'll just have to see how the next year plays out, I guess. As always with my life, your guess is as good as mine!
The adventure began in Toronto.
The train ride through Ontario and Manitoba.
Polar bears in Churchill.
Winnnipeg and the Praries
Edmonton was fun.
The Rockies Rock
The trip ends in Vancouver.
Pics of the trip.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Organic
8. of or pertaining to the basic constitution or structure of a thing; constitutional; structural.That is how I feel about my bouts of sadness. They are, unfortunately, part of my structure. The only bonus to this knowledge is that last time round I finally forced myself to examine drug options and they work. I don't like the idea of them as anything beyond a solution in a pinch, because they dull everything when they dull the sad parts. However, it's a reassuring thought.
In the meantime, it remains to do my best to pull myself out of this. It sucks to have some defective brain chemistry, but that is what it is. At least I'm presently living a life that I am generally happy and content with, which is a distinctly better place that I was in last time, when I basically hated everything about myself and my life - some of that was the depression talking, but some of it really was a series of choices that took me too far away from myself and who I wanted to be.
I'm setting my alarm for tomorrow now. I have plans that I really want myself to actually follow through on. I hope I go. However, now that I am home and in bed, with no mandatory tasks to be done tomorrow, I want to hide under my blankets and sleep. Except that I can't sleep, and that's one of my main problems right now - which is odd, as usually the sadder I am, the more I can sleep like it's an Olympic event I'm competing in and I'm going for the gold.
I should go, but on top of the incredible inertia that hits every time I walk through the door of my house, I feel incredibly unsocial. I can't imagine I'll be any fun. I know though that once I am there, it'll mostly be ok. I forced myself out on Wednesday and only felt like crying a couple of times - lately for me that is a good run of something approaching normal. I need to get some sleep, read the book club novel so as not to have a convenient excuse not to do that on Sunday, and then go out tomorrow.
I wonder how many times I have to tell myself to do it, before it feels like something I am actually going to do?
For richer or poorer
When you work overseas, you become richer or poorer every time the exchange rate moves. In Scotland, I was making almost 2.5 times as much as I could have in Canada - though when I was a student and exchanging my student loans, I also had 2.5 times less. And it really was less or more by that amount, because things in Scotland often cost the same numerical amount as those in Canada, just with a pound sign in front, rather than a dollar.
Here in Korea, my first three contracts were golden. Because the American dollar was on par with the won, it was easy to just drop three zeros to make the exchange in your head - thus, if I was sending a million won back home it was like a thousand dollars. Except, of course, to the Canadian dollar it wasn't, leading to the lovely feeling of being given several hundred dollars of "free" money every time I sent money home. Brilliant, right?
Now, not so brilliant. I still love my job and I am still so much better off than many back home in the middle of the present recession or depression or whatever it is that we seem to be in. My job looks pretty stable - certainly there are starting to be rumours of lowering enrollment as belts tighten amongst workers, but there has also been increasing demand for teachers here. They've even started to lower the standards for teaching in public schools to allow people with only two years of university to teach. So, it looks ok, stability wise.
Also, for all that I'm making a couple of hundred less a month and prices have gone up here (as of last winter I was seeing things go up between fifty cents to a dollar for food in restaurants), I do live in a country that has an extremely low cost of living. If I had to, I could live here on $500 a month - maybe even less, actually, if I had to. I can't imagine another situation where I could live off less than a fourth of my income, allowing me to pay down debt and still do some travelling. At present, I send half home and spend half. It's not the most financially agressive strategy, but it is one that makes me happy.
I'm horrible with budgeting and in the past, the lack of ability to make payments on my student loans easily and cover my rent (which comes straight out of my pay before I get it, convienently) without stress led to a very unhappy time in my life. Here in Korea, none of those things are worries.
It may sort of be for poorer right now, but I'm very lucky. I need to remind myself of that more often.
Here in Korea, my first three contracts were golden. Because the American dollar was on par with the won, it was easy to just drop three zeros to make the exchange in your head - thus, if I was sending a million won back home it was like a thousand dollars. Except, of course, to the Canadian dollar it wasn't, leading to the lovely feeling of being given several hundred dollars of "free" money every time I sent money home. Brilliant, right?
Now, not so brilliant. I still love my job and I am still so much better off than many back home in the middle of the present recession or depression or whatever it is that we seem to be in. My job looks pretty stable - certainly there are starting to be rumours of lowering enrollment as belts tighten amongst workers, but there has also been increasing demand for teachers here. They've even started to lower the standards for teaching in public schools to allow people with only two years of university to teach. So, it looks ok, stability wise.
Also, for all that I'm making a couple of hundred less a month and prices have gone up here (as of last winter I was seeing things go up between fifty cents to a dollar for food in restaurants), I do live in a country that has an extremely low cost of living. If I had to, I could live here on $500 a month - maybe even less, actually, if I had to. I can't imagine another situation where I could live off less than a fourth of my income, allowing me to pay down debt and still do some travelling. At present, I send half home and spend half. It's not the most financially agressive strategy, but it is one that makes me happy.
I'm horrible with budgeting and in the past, the lack of ability to make payments on my student loans easily and cover my rent (which comes straight out of my pay before I get it, convienently) without stress led to a very unhappy time in my life. Here in Korea, none of those things are worries.
It may sort of be for poorer right now, but I'm very lucky. I need to remind myself of that more often.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Traditions
A Sunday Scribblings post, only three weeks late. It's like most writing I have done in life - essays, belated birthday cards. Late. Which turns out to be this week's topic, so conveniently, with one sentence, I've managed to catch back up!
I was thinking a lot about the traditions prompt, but it's taken me awhile to come up with something to say. The thing about being an expat is that you generally have to leave behind a lot of the traditions you started back in your home country. I spent Canadian Thanksgiving eating galbi and singing cheesy songs at norae bang, for example.
My family has lots of interesting traditions. There's the naming thing - boys only get one middle name, but somehow all the girls get two. There's the British foods that we still all eat - like coddled eggs, which even the British have barely heard of these days. My egg coddlers may not be with me here in Korea, but I wouldn't be a part of the family if I didn't own a few. I'm hoping that the tradition of how the roll-top desk gets passed on continues, because I'm pretty sure I've got that one in the bag. There's the familiar socks and underwear tradition - and since my mother is quite honest on the customs forms, I know that one is being followed this year.
However, traditions don't have to have been around since childhood to be important. For the last two years, I've gone to Geckos for Christmas dinner. The turkey is good and the company has always been great. Each year I've gone with different people - Korea is a revolving door for teachers and army and those few other people here doing something different. It's the company that makes it special though - the first year I was there with Vanessa and Sheila and crew and the second with Samarra and Brain. I anticipate this year's being great too.
As much as I will miss everyone back home and all the things I recall doing for the holidays with them, tradition doesn't have to end when you are far from home.
I was thinking a lot about the traditions prompt, but it's taken me awhile to come up with something to say. The thing about being an expat is that you generally have to leave behind a lot of the traditions you started back in your home country. I spent Canadian Thanksgiving eating galbi and singing cheesy songs at norae bang, for example.
My family has lots of interesting traditions. There's the naming thing - boys only get one middle name, but somehow all the girls get two. There's the British foods that we still all eat - like coddled eggs, which even the British have barely heard of these days. My egg coddlers may not be with me here in Korea, but I wouldn't be a part of the family if I didn't own a few. I'm hoping that the tradition of how the roll-top desk gets passed on continues, because I'm pretty sure I've got that one in the bag. There's the familiar socks and underwear tradition - and since my mother is quite honest on the customs forms, I know that one is being followed this year.
However, traditions don't have to have been around since childhood to be important. For the last two years, I've gone to Geckos for Christmas dinner. The turkey is good and the company has always been great. Each year I've gone with different people - Korea is a revolving door for teachers and army and those few other people here doing something different. It's the company that makes it special though - the first year I was there with Vanessa and Sheila and crew and the second with Samarra and Brain. I anticipate this year's being great too.
As much as I will miss everyone back home and all the things I recall doing for the holidays with them, tradition doesn't have to end when you are far from home.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Words and Meaning
Winter is a funny season for me. All seasons are funny for me - no matter how far I go from Bolton, in my mind the weather I experienced as a child defines my notion of seasons even today. However, with every move, I've taken myself away from those simplistic categories of winter, spring, summer and fall.
Koreans are always touting themselves as a country with four seasons. Coming from Canada, the excitement behind that claim boggled my mind - of course you have four seasons. That's just how it should be. Korean springs and falls do a decent job of mirroring my notions of those seasons, but in the extremes Korean weather fails to comply with everything I bring to mind when I think summer and winter.
Korean summers really come in two parts - the nice, sunny, hot months and the humid monsoon months. Korean winters are cold enough for me, but lack the all important snow. In Seoul, snow seldom falls and is unlikely to stay around. Korean winters also lack that impending Christmas sensation that you get back home as early on as Halloween. While people back home bemoan the way Christmas has slowly but steadily pushed its way back into months in which it doesn't belong, I instead feel a bit of sadness that I don't even feel Christmas on the 25th, much less any earlier.
But Korea wasn't the first challenge to my sense of the seasons. Edinburgh had its seasons, but they were so different. Winter was rainy and the damp sank into my bones. Spring started out dry but often quite dreary and moved into more rain. A Scottish summer is just a warmer rainy - one year I was there the radio announced that it had rained every single day in the month of June. I'm pretty sure the rain started as I left work each day - usually without an umbrella. Fall in Edinburgh is dark, chilly, but most importantly, windy.
Vancouver was a challenge to my notion that my seasons were Canadian. I arrived in Vacouver in November, sure that its rainy reputation would not faze me after my years in Scotland. However, the prevelence of trees blocking what little sun there was made the Vancouver fall my least favourite season ever. Once Vancouver moved its way into winter, the sun started to come out more, but there is something disconcerting about walking to have Christmas dinner with a friend and her family in a t-shirt. Spring and summer are the most delicious seasons in Vancouver, however, and possibly the most so of all of the seasons I have experienced as yet.
Travelling has forced me to lose the absolute four-season framework I developed over 21 years in Ontario. I now want to know when dry and rainy seasons are, when the off season starts and ends, what the wind will be doing. But no matter how far travelling expands my understanding of the many shades of meaning that the word season represents, it is still a snowy winter, rainy spring, sunny summer and crisp fall that my mind returns to. There may be many kinds of seasons, but there will always just be four in my heart.
Koreans are always touting themselves as a country with four seasons. Coming from Canada, the excitement behind that claim boggled my mind - of course you have four seasons. That's just how it should be. Korean springs and falls do a decent job of mirroring my notions of those seasons, but in the extremes Korean weather fails to comply with everything I bring to mind when I think summer and winter.
Korean summers really come in two parts - the nice, sunny, hot months and the humid monsoon months. Korean winters are cold enough for me, but lack the all important snow. In Seoul, snow seldom falls and is unlikely to stay around. Korean winters also lack that impending Christmas sensation that you get back home as early on as Halloween. While people back home bemoan the way Christmas has slowly but steadily pushed its way back into months in which it doesn't belong, I instead feel a bit of sadness that I don't even feel Christmas on the 25th, much less any earlier.
But Korea wasn't the first challenge to my sense of the seasons. Edinburgh had its seasons, but they were so different. Winter was rainy and the damp sank into my bones. Spring started out dry but often quite dreary and moved into more rain. A Scottish summer is just a warmer rainy - one year I was there the radio announced that it had rained every single day in the month of June. I'm pretty sure the rain started as I left work each day - usually without an umbrella. Fall in Edinburgh is dark, chilly, but most importantly, windy.
Vancouver was a challenge to my notion that my seasons were Canadian. I arrived in Vacouver in November, sure that its rainy reputation would not faze me after my years in Scotland. However, the prevelence of trees blocking what little sun there was made the Vancouver fall my least favourite season ever. Once Vancouver moved its way into winter, the sun started to come out more, but there is something disconcerting about walking to have Christmas dinner with a friend and her family in a t-shirt. Spring and summer are the most delicious seasons in Vancouver, however, and possibly the most so of all of the seasons I have experienced as yet.
Travelling has forced me to lose the absolute four-season framework I developed over 21 years in Ontario. I now want to know when dry and rainy seasons are, when the off season starts and ends, what the wind will be doing. But no matter how far travelling expands my understanding of the many shades of meaning that the word season represents, it is still a snowy winter, rainy spring, sunny summer and crisp fall that my mind returns to. There may be many kinds of seasons, but there will always just be four in my heart.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Grateful
This is what happens when a procrastinator does things like Sunday Scribblings. At least this is only three days late, unlike my three month late electricity bill. They finally sent me a bill - one detailing the three months that I just paid. Curious.
Anyway, I was busy on Sunday with friends - brunch, Hello Kitty with Martha, fondue for dinner, and then the usual quiz. My friends are absolutely one of the things I am most grateful for. My family is also at the top of that list, and I've been getting some hilarious emails from my youngest brother recently - apparently I am an "old chap". He's looking into a female version of chap he tells me. I notice that he didn't consider the old part something in need of change. Hrumph.
In addition to friends and family though, I have another thing that this week is high up on the list of gratitude and that thing, my friends, is a turkey dinner. With all the trimmings. As an expat, I am also grateful that I have come to celebrate American Thanksgiving. Here in Korea it is both hard to get turkeys and hard to cook them - ovens are not at all standard kitchen appliances here and, mysteriously, Koreans haven't gotten into turkey. This baffles me even more than the all-pervading love of kimchi. And the overuse of the construction let's.
What I say is, "Let's eat turkey!"
Around Canadian Thanksgiving the best one can hope to do is make the trimmings and have a roasted chicken, which can be easily procured from trucks on the street. They are indeed yummy. In fact, I eat myself a roast chicken for no special occasion at all, and quite regularly. Sometimes I can't even be arsed making anything resembling trimmings and just have the bird all on its own.
However, thanks to the American Army presence in Korea, for American Thanksgiving we can order a bird, some pumpkin pie and many other delicious foods off of the base. Assa! I've been invited to several Thanksgiving celebrations and intend to show up at two. I will wear my most comfortable pants, obviously.
Since I love Thanksgiving, I am also grateful to my expat life for starting me on the road to what will one day be a fabulous tradition - one of these days, after all, I will likely move back to Canada. When that day comes, I will not stop celebrating American Thanksgiving. Why would I? Who doesn't want one more turkey dinner? It makes total sense to me - October, November, December. Awesome!
Perhaps I'd better learn to start cooking it all. So far, I've never been required to do more than participate in a pie plate hunt (Thanksgiving in Scotland, where apparently people only cook tortes at home) and make some mashed potatoes for potlucks, when I am as likely to bleed into the potatoes as not.
My mouth is salivating just thinking about Saturday. And then brunch at Suji's on Sunday.
I am grateful for turkey, brunch, and all the lovely people who have shared, now share, and will share these meals with me. Love and food are two things that go together beautifully.
Anyway, I was busy on Sunday with friends - brunch, Hello Kitty with Martha, fondue for dinner, and then the usual quiz. My friends are absolutely one of the things I am most grateful for. My family is also at the top of that list, and I've been getting some hilarious emails from my youngest brother recently - apparently I am an "old chap". He's looking into a female version of chap he tells me. I notice that he didn't consider the old part something in need of change. Hrumph.
In addition to friends and family though, I have another thing that this week is high up on the list of gratitude and that thing, my friends, is a turkey dinner. With all the trimmings. As an expat, I am also grateful that I have come to celebrate American Thanksgiving. Here in Korea it is both hard to get turkeys and hard to cook them - ovens are not at all standard kitchen appliances here and, mysteriously, Koreans haven't gotten into turkey. This baffles me even more than the all-pervading love of kimchi. And the overuse of the construction let's.
What I say is, "Let's eat turkey!"
Around Canadian Thanksgiving the best one can hope to do is make the trimmings and have a roasted chicken, which can be easily procured from trucks on the street. They are indeed yummy. In fact, I eat myself a roast chicken for no special occasion at all, and quite regularly. Sometimes I can't even be arsed making anything resembling trimmings and just have the bird all on its own.
However, thanks to the American Army presence in Korea, for American Thanksgiving we can order a bird, some pumpkin pie and many other delicious foods off of the base. Assa! I've been invited to several Thanksgiving celebrations and intend to show up at two. I will wear my most comfortable pants, obviously.
Since I love Thanksgiving, I am also grateful to my expat life for starting me on the road to what will one day be a fabulous tradition - one of these days, after all, I will likely move back to Canada. When that day comes, I will not stop celebrating American Thanksgiving. Why would I? Who doesn't want one more turkey dinner? It makes total sense to me - October, November, December. Awesome!
Perhaps I'd better learn to start cooking it all. So far, I've never been required to do more than participate in a pie plate hunt (Thanksgiving in Scotland, where apparently people only cook tortes at home) and make some mashed potatoes for potlucks, when I am as likely to bleed into the potatoes as not.
My mouth is salivating just thinking about Saturday. And then brunch at Suji's on Sunday.
I am grateful for turkey, brunch, and all the lovely people who have shared, now share, and will share these meals with me. Love and food are two things that go together beautifully.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Stranger
I have found that there are times in life when you become a stranger to yourself.
This has happened to me numerous times - the sensation has been caused as often by external factors as internal: becoming a university student, at the worst of my relationship with Alan, moments abroad when everything around me has been so different I can't figure out who I am much less what's going on where I am, moments of extreme emotion.
Lately I have absolutely found that I am a stranger to myself. Which is just fine, as I have discovered that the stranger phase is one that usually precedes positive change.
Disconcerting, though, isn't it?
Perhaps it's time to spend a little less time wrapped up in my head and more time gazing outwards.
Granted, navel gazing has always been my thing.
Sunday Scribblings
This has happened to me numerous times - the sensation has been caused as often by external factors as internal: becoming a university student, at the worst of my relationship with Alan, moments abroad when everything around me has been so different I can't figure out who I am much less what's going on where I am, moments of extreme emotion.
Lately I have absolutely found that I am a stranger to myself. Which is just fine, as I have discovered that the stranger phase is one that usually precedes positive change.
Disconcerting, though, isn't it?
Perhaps it's time to spend a little less time wrapped up in my head and more time gazing outwards.
Granted, navel gazing has always been my thing.
Sunday Scribblings
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