Remember the Lanterns

YS

After a fairly normal week, I am on the subway downtown or home, I hadn't decided yet. It's surprisingly busy given the time of day. I'm not sure if it's me, but everyone seems tired. Like they too had a non-eventful, tiring work week. Most people hang their heads while the overhead handles sway to the train's movement. Earlier in the day though, I had received a compliment from the boss, who told me that the students were happy with my teaching. I'm not sure how this kind of information is passed on. Excuse me front desk, I'd like to say that I am happy with Hannah's teaching. Thank you, goodbye. Compliments were cheap and dirty though in Korea.
It explained the LBH phenomenon: the losers back home – which was an awful thing to say, because in a way, everyone could be considered a loser back home – why would one move to Korea otherwise? But the LBH's were the ones that stuck out a bit more than most of us. These were the socially awkward, usually unattractive and overall odd people that made it big in Korea. Almost always male, they had hot girlfriends, a decent job and an amazing social life. They were constantly told that they were 'handsome' and for someone who has never received this kind of attention before, it is naturally endearing and confidence-building. I use to wonder if I was kind of an LBH. I used to love when I heard 'you are so beautiful' from people. Now, I took it with a grain of salt, and I had a decent job, or at least one that I liked, and had hot boyfriends or dates. I always used to say that I could leave and do better at home if I wanted to, but there were oftentimes when I really wasn't sure of this. But, getting a compliment from the boss about the quality of my conversational abilities (it wasn't really teaching) is I suppose a good thing. Or just another empty compliment which. I'm not sure which. It's a dangerous thing getting comfortable in Korea. One could end up stuck there for years, moving from hagwon to hagwon, occasionally changing cities, picking up a university position if lucky. The problem with this is that the experience one builds in doing this, does not have much clout outside of the English education world of Korea and maybe a few other Asian countries. Japan needs higher qualifications in general, China pays less (although is cheaper) and Taiwan faces the same kind of struggles that my Korean students do (declining birth rate, competitive universities, competitive job environment, extremely long working days, increasing cost

of private education for children). I look around at the people on the train. Are they stuck too in their own country? In their exceptionally long work days? Slaves to their bosses and in some cases, their children's increasing education costs? What do they dream of doing? Am I stuck here? I could be. This new contract new start isn't shaping up that well so far - YS is constantly on my mind. What do I dream of doing? It hit me then. I had no idea. I had been so focused on YS that I hadn't considered what would happen if we did end up getting back together, nor if we didn't. I decide to go home.
It's another one of those days where I get home, walk the five steps over to my bed and crawl in. Not a sound, surprisingly. Usually the school across the street is on their lunch break about now, with kids screaming and running around in the playground. My refrigerator fan switches on. Friday again, with nothing in particular to do. Didn't I used to look forward to the weekends? I fall asleep. The working hours are tough. It's about 8pm when I wake up – I had slept for 5 hours. Of course my thoughts, just as surely as it will soon be night and tomorrow day, turn back to YS. I'm pathetic, I continually tell myself. He's here though, in Daegu, isn't he? It's Friday. We used to love going out on Fridays. Sometimes for coffee, sometimes for drinks, sometimes for movies, DVD bangs, walking around, pretty much anything. I wonder if he's out tonight? With his doctor friends maybe? Or on a date? I wonder if he ever thinks of me at these times. Aren't I wasting my time waiting for him? How could he possibly move on when I'm so so stuck? I close my eyes again and enjoy my self-pity.
Why in the world am I back in Korea?
I have derailed myself since being here, and unless I change something, I'll keep going further and further in the wrong direction.
I consider calling someone, maybe Tae jin. I'm sure he'd distract me for awhile. But considering how I'm feeling, I doubt I'd be much company, even for someone who is strangely obsessed with me.
Instead I decide to clean my entire house. It shouldn't take long, considering that it's a one-bedroom, but I spend the next three hours scrubbing the entire shower/toilet room (still not sure how to describe those rooms where the toilet is next to the sink and there's no real shower, just a showerhead hung up on the wall so that the entire room ends up wet when you finish showering), cleaning the fridge (it probably didn't even need it)

and organising and sorting through everything I have in the house. This ultimately led to my YS box. In it there is the ring he gave me when he first asked me out (hidden in a glass of milk while we were once at my place enjoying some milk and white chocolate cake), the remnants of a Body Shop gift set he got me for helping with his American grad school application, and a photobook I had made for him while I was at home. Since we had travelled a little bit, and had gotten couple photos taken together, we had a sizeable collection of beautiful photos together. He always looked good in photos and the book was quite beautiful. Now, I wasn't sure of what to do with it. I shouldn't have touched it, but instead I went through it again, admiring the arrangement I had done and noticing, on every single page, how happy we looked together. There's us at Woobangland – Daegu's strange old theme park. There are a few from our random trips around the province – to Gyeongju, Korea's ancient capital, during Cherry Blossom season, to Busan, Korea's bustling beach city to the south, and of course our couple photo session at Mr. Kim's photo studio downtown. Those are fantastically corny and amazing. We had so much fun doing those. Plus my boobs look good in every photo. There are photos of us at Juliiard, the bar we sometimes went to when we just wanted a cocktail without all the side dishes that typically come with Korean drinking parties. It was dimly lit, never that smokey if you were there before 11pm, and they played good music. There were also a few from some of the Korean bars we went to – with me pouring soju cocktail for him, him eating pajeon or kimchi jeon, our favourites. And for some reason, the first and only letter he ever wrote me was there as well. He had written it after returning from a trip with his co-workers to Jeolla-nam-do, one of the 'countryside' provinces in the south-west. The letter describes the beautiful views everywhere, the drives they took, the amazing food (and how he had no doubt, put on weight), and how the highlight of the trip was the temple on a cliff-top that I had recommended they visit. He then said that he was missing me and that he was looking forward to seeing me and that he had never felt this way about anyone before. This was before he had said that he loved me so it was very reassuring at the time.
I started to get all misty-eyed again. Pathetic. So I shove the book into the bottom of another box, with the stupid letter and I decide that I am sick of packing everything up and so the rest of the stuff ends up dumped in a box and into the laundry/storage area of my place. I flip on the TV to one of the three or four channels which is playing English television. One shows action or sci-fi films or tv shows, another shows girly shows like the ghost whisperer or re-runs of The Hills. The others seem to be a mix of these two genres. Of course flipping through the 30 or so cahnnels that I have, there's also a music show featuring the latest pop artists, a variety show featuring comedy groups, a documentary about traditional Korean something on Arirang TV, the educational chHannahl, often with English language instruction, other variety shows, and like 5 different soap operas from different periods of Korean history. The phone rings.
It's Mr. Kim. I ignore it.
One shot on TV reminded me again of the weekend YS and I once spent together in his place at the public health centre in the countryside, where he was finishing up his equivalent military duty. Three years of countryside living. Fortunately it wasn't that far from Daegu, so he was able to come home on the weekends and during the week in the evenings if he wanted to. It was a fantastic weekend. The next shot was of one of the old dynasty's palaces. This reminded me the weekend we had visited Andong Folk village. Was everything here going to continually remind me of him? Was I going to waste the next year pining over him? In constant limbo? Wondering if he would ever change his mind, call me and we would get back together? It didn't seem likely, but for whatever reason, I couldn't move on from it.