Home Sweet New Home

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10 days.
And it’s too soon to make any broad discoveries about culture, history, world view, thoughts, ideas.
But, I realize that I am here.  And I’ll be here for some time.  So my mind has tricked itself into some eerie calmness, which I feel is going to pass soon, once I know the full effect of what I’ve done to myself.  Why come to South Korea?  I had so much at home.  I was surrounded by people that I love, who love me too.  I was doing things I’ve always wanted to do.  I collected myself while moving forward.  But yet, I left it all.  I suppose I’m still trying to figure it out.  Knowing that there is a whole world out there, full of things I don’t know about and things that I can learn about, is the force that drives me to do the things I do, I guess I would say if I had to put it in words.  And reading that sentence again seems to over simplify things.  But maybe it really is that simple?  I just err towards team complicated, maybe to justify a lack of explanation.
But, I regress.  What I don’t want to do here is ramble on about myself.  No sir.  I want to grab this opportunity and position myself as a type of cultural liaison, if you will.  Looking at myself before I started thinking about coming here and talking to people before I left, I realized people generally don’t know a whole lot about this country. (“Bet you can’t find a hamburger there, aren’t cows sacred in South Korea?”)  So, I hereby declare that I will do what I can to portray a fair and accurate picture of South Korea, in personality, in history, in culture, or whatever may come my way.
To start, for those that didn’t see the first time:

Voila!  Lesson Number 1!
I’m stationed in Gwangju.  The rest is self-explanatory for intentional reasons.
For introductory reasons, I’ll show you around a bit first.  I live in a loft style apartment above an abandoned school called Little America.  It’s not entirely abandoned, just moved down the road about 15 minutes of a walk worth.  So I’m up four flights of empty classrooms.  I don’t have a camera right now, it turns out, so I took some pictures with my laptop.

My bedroom corner!  With the mighty goddess Durga, protecting me, as always.

My closet corner!  With Neon Space Cow to keep me company.  (I love you Erin.)

My office corner!  The weather is quite nice in Gwangju right now and every part of my being is eagerly and impatiently yearning for new growth around me.  I just got gardening supplies today to start my herbs that I brought with me from home.  I will have to do home cooking for my neighbors with herbs they haven’t tasted in a while.  The spray bottle I bought today says “It makes extra moisture.  It makes natural moisture.”  :)

My kitchen corner!
This apartment is only everything that I need.  This efficient use of space makes me feel like a more deliberate person.  And I like that.
What else is there?  There is so much else.  But, for now, I’ll leave this as is.  Yes, this is a good thing, I think.