It's the end of November. Fall has come and gone in Korea. The leaves are off the trees and I have to wear boots, a scarf and a coat to work every day. I realize that I have been increadibly remiss about writing my blog the past couple of months. I blame the weather. When in doubt it's always a good call. But the fact is, that i have been plenty busy this Fall being in love and that too sounds like a fairly good excuse.
Seoul is a very large city, but over the last year it appears to have shrunk in size or possibly I have just not made as many efforts to spend my weekends scouring various tourists sites. Rather, I have spent nearly every day off with my sweety; biking, watching movies, hanging out with friends, making coffee, drinking coffee, and then making more coffee just because we both love it soooo much.
This Fall has been great! Being in a relationship with a South African has given me the chance to learn more about SA culture and traditions. Mind you, I don't think I've found out anything I didn't already know in the last couple of months, but I've sure had my suspicions confirmed. South Africans like to Braii! Heck yes they like their meat and they like a lot of it!!!!!!! Meat and booze and rugby and dancing and lots of potato salad (but only with lots of mayonnaise.)
Being part of a couple is like joining a secret club that you never really knew that you weren't a part of but that you always kind of suspected was there. It's strange but pretty awesome to think that you don't plan things without consulting another person first after so many years of doing things on your own for yourself. All of a sudden you realize that you are at a party and not the only single person there any more. You seem to get invited out by other couples to do couply things like double dinner and movie nights out on the town and weekends away where you rent your respective couple rooms.
It's like switching teams and never realising that you would have previously totally gaged at your curent self for daring to be so publicly and dispicably mushy and romantic. I think that I would have made myself increadibly jealous if I were out as a single with my curent coupled up self. In a way that's a good thing, because it means that what I have going on right now is enviable. And in the words of Martha Stewart "That's a good thing!"
Nothing says Halloween like 'the Rocky Horror Picture Show',
and I think our Brad and Jannet costumes were pretty kick butt is I do say so myself!
This Fall in Korea has given me the perspective to realize that when you have a good thing and supportive love in your life, everything else becomes by comparison less difficult and slightly less of a big deal. I think of all the time I spent unhappy and depressed about my life in Korea when I first got here and how EVERYTHING just seemed to be such a huge deal.
It's not that nothing ever goes wrong here these days. Believe me, plenty still gets on my nerves on a regular basis, but somehow it all seems easier to brush off, move past and look on the bright side of things because after all, at the end of the day even if someone has pushed past you on the subway, called you a waygooken (foreigner) and talked about you while you were standing right there or completely disturbed and discombobulated your cultural understanding of what is right and normal, you know that there is someone at home who is thinking of you and giving your hand that little squeeze of encouragement to shrug off the resentment and carry on with the rest of your day.
So thanks to my hun, who has made this last year a revalation in more ways than one. I guess in the end, we were both just ready to FALL in love.
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