to hell with writer's block

so i haven't written anything in an ENTIRE year due to this mythological wall that has been blocking my creativity, so i've been telling myself, and i'm SICK of it telling me what i can't do!!! so i'm just going to write about whatever comes to my mind and we'll see where this goes...

so i'm currently re-adjusting to celebrity-ship, according to my facebook status, by returning to my position as, insert pretentious British accent, "Professor of English Language and Literature" (if you can call "Worldview 2 - Intro to English Coversation" *literature* , here at Kosin University.) Yes, that's in Korea. And yes, I'm still here, it's been 2 1/2 years, but that's a whole other blog post.... The thing is, I've never felt so ridiculously and quite shallowly *idolized* by so many people. I walk into a building, and i am welcomed by waist deep bows and screams and hyper-quick waving hands and many lines such as "Hi Professor!!!" and "I love you!!" and "Hello!! Hellooooo!!!!" It's just insane. Today I (and the other foreign English Professors) were called on to welcome the English students back for another semester at an opening Chapel service (it's a Christian university, btw), and the SCREAMS were so deafening, you would have thought Wentworth Miller walked in the room(or ok, Brad Pitt for you non-Prison Break people - and, side note - good for you, i just found out they KILLED SARA and i've never wanted 51 hours of my life back so badly). I've almost started to picture myself as some high-fashion skinny little Hollywood goddess, struttin' her stuff down the freezing cold cement hallways, and then I catch a glimpse of my reflection in some glass doors and I see nothing but a pasty-white, plumper-than-normal, older version of myself, wearing something i never EVER imagined myself in - a pinstripped chocolate brown suit that i got made in Thailand for a price i should have put towards my debt and darn-it! - i don't even like the cut of it anymore. But despite the delusion, in the end, it *is* endearing. Because I ADORE my students. This week back at work has been so much better than I expected. After returning from a blissful 3 week holiday wandering around Thailand (which was SO divine), I was fearing that Depression would welcome me back with its cold, ugly familiar arms. He (depression has just *got* to be masculine) opened them up for an embrace late last week, especially after i found out that my dear old high school friend had been killed while skiing, in an avalanche. I wanted to go home and say goodbye, to properly remember her, to be with her family. But there was this problem of a giant body of water called the Pacific in the way....blast.

And THEN there was this whole deal at the Professors retreat, an hour away at a fancy-smancy hotel in Gwanju. Three things that REALLY irked me happened: 1) They announced that they were cancelling the fine art program (stab in the heart! I think the arts are SO incredibly worthwhile and desperately needed, but this culture simply does not value them - "no job for art students! can not become rich!"). 2) A woman working for a broadcasting company, while addressing us Professors, encouraged us to "teach the students to have an obedient heart while new in the workplace, not to express their ideas and opinions." Awesome. *Please, no independent thinkers! No creative ingenuity! No democratic mindsets! Obedient, subserviant little clones, only, for us!* And 3) A woman who was supposed to give a speech on the school's sexual harrassment policy (a gov't requirment) skirted around the issue by giving a 5 minute schpeel entitled, "How to do Mathematics" that mentioned SQUAT about sexual harrassment and too much about men and women being "different" because they have different centers of gravity which can be figured out by some ridiculously complex math equation. 5 minutes of this, and i'm waiting for her to address the seriousness of sexual harrasment, but she doesn't - she just wraps up her neat little speech about gender differences and sits down, with a hearty *applause* even, by the entire Korean faculty, all straight-faced and nodding with approval! The foreign staff all just looked at each other, with jaw-dropping stares and fits of laughter - like we just could not *believe* that just happened. So there's this culture for ya: hatred of the arts, love of obedient little workaholic slaves, and suppression of anything slightly related to sexuality. SO, needless to say after that, Depression was running straight for me, as I was thinking, "WHY do I work in this country again??" But i rejected the embrace and decided that, after all, I have a LOT to keep me content in this country. Since working at Kosin, I've made a LOT more Korean friends than I've had in the previous 2 years in Korea (I had been doing the typical English Teacher thing, hanging out with other English Teachers who were, just, way too comfortable). And they are *delightful* . So fun, and giving, and loving, and so it's easier to love Korea when there are Koreans that you just *adore* . Along those lines, I'm learning more about living in the present and enjoying the people who are in my life RIGHT NOW instead of longing for past relationships or dreaming of future ones. I have a job that allows me to befriend people from totally different cultures - Kenyan, Cambodian, Fiji-an (i don't know what that culture is called), and Korean, of course. Yep - there's many international students here - its cool! SO i guess what i'm trying to say is that despite the cultural, er, *differences* , and the overtly enthusiastic response to my blonde hair and blue eyes, I'm deeply, deeply BLESSED to be in the position I am and I refuse, from now on, to accept any other ideas about it. Freaking blocks and walls and ugly embraces, you can control me no more.