reunion

I went back home over the winter break. It was the first time I'd been in the States in a year. I didn't know what I expected, nostalgia maybe, relief at English signs, relaxation from seeing people who weren't only Asian.
(Groups of Asians still intimidate me, during college, one of the most stressful events was walking through Stern courtyard to use the free printers.)

But I didn't feel nostalgic, instead I felt bizarrely out of place. Nothing was familiar anymore, the loud Newark security guards who shouted "Hey you", the girls in the fake-bake tan and velour jumpsuits,... it was all disconcerting.

I had expected a tearful reunion with my family, the prodigal child's return home from the Far East. It had been a year...there would be embracing, "let me look at you", slow motion running Homeward Bound style.

Instead:
"You look like Woody Allen" -my brother backing away(looking disgustedly at my 'emo' glasses)
"Uh ok. Hi." -me
My mom pushed him away, "Tsk noo no she doesn't-"
Turning gratefully to her..
"He's thin."

Burn.

But being back was nice, eating Chipotle, being trapped in snow blizzards. And as always, reverting back to my parent's lifestyle - lots of church. Lots of books.

On my way back to Hong Kong I had to take a small 'commuter' plane from Virginia to Newark airport. The idea of a 'commuter' plane frightens me, but that's what they called it. There were only 9 rows on the plane, and only about 30 people. The ceilings were so short I had to crouch (which gives you a perspective... it was not a plane meant to be in the air). It was a minivan with propellers.

Unfortunately that day we were delayed because of wind. I wouldn't have thought this was a problem for most airplanes, isn't wind supposed to be helpful? But for a commuter one it most definitely isn't. We took off anyway, and because we never even got close to skimming the clouds, we were right in the wind channel.

I thought it could be my last flight, either from the plane's failure or my inability to deal with the constant feeling of falling.
Every time the plane shook, my whole body shook, and a few times I thought the plane would just give up and flip over. The pilot came on the intercom several times, his voice shaking "don't worry! this is just a bit of turb --" :cut off:
I wanted to tell him to stop talking to us and just work on flying, actually I probably could have shouted it, HK minibus style, the plane was so small there was no need for an intercom.

I was sitting next to a 90 year old woman from south carolina, she kept clutching my arm every time the plane lurched. And she'd say, "oh lord not yet. Not yet. I'm not ready to see you yet." Then turning to me accusingly, "This little chinese girl's not ready to see you yet. "Are you?"
As I tried not to flinch from pain, "I'm korean... but yea I mean No no I definitely am not."

And as I was sitting in the plane thinking of all the ways I wasn't ready, I also thought of these things:

1) a misquote.
There's a semi well-known quote about Kentucky girls from Ashley Judd.

"Sure, girls from New York, they are tough. And girls from Georgia, they are sweet. But those born and bred feisty Kentucky girls, they are the ones you have to look out for. We have sugar and fire in our blood. We can ride a horse, be a débutante, throw a left hook and tell you the entire UK line up all while making sweet tea. And if we have an opinion, you get to know it. We're both the pride and the downfall of the bluegrass..."

Growing up, I knew this quote by heart, I guess it made ky girls proud. Just as listing any celebrity from Kentucky would make us proud - Johnny depp, yeap and so is george clooney.. and two of the backstreet boys - yepyep, henry clay and daniel boone too. (i liked throwing in the last two, although they rarely impressed anyone)

When I moved later on to Virginia, a girl I knew at high school would always quote this quote- it was on all her internet profiles... except that she had it changed to "Virginia" girls. And somehow I guess people didn't know the difference. I hadn't had the heart to tell her it's actually "Kentucky girls". Which makes the quote mean a lot more sense that way. Particularly cause the part of Virginia we are from is more free-way than it is country. Who rides horses or makes sweet tea in northern va? And does Virginia even have a basketball lineup? (Not that I know, but I highly doubt it.)
I dont know where this girl is now, but I wished I had told her.

2) Whether Jin the rapper was succeeding in Hong Kong.
Jin the rapper came to hong kong about the same time I did - a year ago. I happened to see him give a rap performance at New Year's ball last year to a crowd of slightly dumbfounded older HK couples. His rap was a combination of English and Cantonese. He kept repeating helplessly, "put your hands up UP up. Come on! Do it with me." Commands like that don't really work across cultures or rather across generations. And after that, I wasn't sure how he would do.
But then a couple months ago I saw him on a huge billboard, advertising Vita boxed lemon teas - so I supposed he must be doing well.

3) new years resolutions.
I used to always have a lot of new years resolutions. I'd write them down on sheets of paper feeling glorious and 'alive'. Some would succeed, most would fail. "graduate. Go to class. Learn to do a pull-up".
Some were succinct. grow taller.
Some were ambiguous "learn to love without hurting others. Find a life purpose. Be. "

This year, maybe it was because I was traveling and still jetlagged.. I hadn't written any.

If by sitting in that plane next to a chanting old woman, I was hoping for an epiphany or a moment of clarity for a beautiful resolution, it didn't happen.
The only thing I could think of was, "wake up early."

Like most people who aren't morning people... for me waking up early in the morning feels automatically like an accomplishment. Walking around outside in morning air, still fresh because the rest of the world hasn't yet gotten up to breathe in it, feels dizzying and exhilarating. It sets off a lot of self-congratulation and "yay!" as though one should be high-fiving the other people on the street, "you're up too? yay us!"

I thought of the past year, I thought of all the law I hadn't yet learned, and how it was too late now cause I'd already been tested on it. I thought of how clever the name yo mama was for a yogurt place, and how I should really eat more hui lau shan mango drinks and try the egg tarts near the apartment. I thought about seeing the long escalators, and the view from our balcony.

And as we landed in shock and relief (relief for my arm mostly - the red marks on it didn't fade til several hours afterward) but I realized that I did have some moment of clarity..

I remembered hearing this expression of having your feet face the same direction as your heart. that when you're aligned you are where you've been longing for.

And for a time I'd always been thinking of the places I'd left - my backyard swing surrounded by maple and lilac branches, washington sq park, a library bench..
I guess I was always facing backwards.
And for once this time where I was heading was the place I was thinking about.

dress up

Holiday season in Hong Kong is quite beautiful..
Sparkly, lots of lights, I don't want it to end.

I was trying to remember what I could from holiday season as a kid.. The plastic Christmas tree, cookie baking with the psychotic neighbours' kids, bicycling with my brother at night trying to claim which house's christmas decorations we liked best. There was a house with a snoopy santa theme, or the one with the stone reindeer in front, and another with a bright 'UK Wildcats' outlined on their roof in blue lights.

But what I remember most was having those Advent calendars with the little doors on them. Every day you'd open the door and find a little picture, most people use ones with little pieces of chocolate behind each door... but ours had Bible verses. (I guess in our family a bible verse was like the equivalent of finding chocolate, "ooh no way a verse from Isaiah??")

--
I took a break from exam studying on Saturday to walk around Sheungwan and Central. We walked the antique alleyways with the old clocks and Mao watches (the second hand is actualy Mao's arm going up and down in salute), past the flower shops with poinsettias and restaurants with the women who brunch.

We stopped at the Christian Louboutin store because I'd always wanted to try on their shoes, and I suppose trying on ridiculously expensive high heels are a way to pretend that things like constitutional law exams don't exist.

Thinking now it was rather embarrassing.
The girls and women who were there were nonchalantly slipping their feet into sky high heels, sitting as they yawned their disapproval and boredom to their boyfriends while salesmen waiting eagerly. "no.. I don't like." "Any other colors?" "no...no"

And then there was me running around the shop floor tottering and tripping in 6 inch scarlet heels as though I'd just discovered flight, "I can walk omg I can walk!!" "Look look! This is the height I was meant to be! wooooooo!"
While the salesmen waited anxiously, what a disaster.. please don't fall...

But it was like dressing up again. Becoming the little girl in a disney fantasy, spinning around with my friends at the church reception hall, lemon cookies in one hand and the other outstretched in a competition to see whose dress could pouf up the highest.
Our competitions always ended in a dizzy tie (I think we just liked spinning) and we'd collapse in a heap of tulle, lemon cookie, and pastel colored dresses. Until we found our way back up again to run outside with the boys and play tag while the snow fell.

strangers alike.

I'm at home on a Saturday alone. Studying and ill.
Angrily wrapped in a fleece blanket thing and leg warmers because Hong Kong suddenly got super cold and there is no indoor heating. I've lit all these ikea candles but there's no warmth from them and for some reason they keep melting and within an hour the candles turn into a flat 2-d thing of wax.
so sad. are there no candles that can light for me?
I feel like the little matchstick girl.

I keep thinking. what if.
what if I fail my exams.
what if
I look at my test paper and realize the only thing I have to say about hong kong's basic law is that I have no basic idea of what it is basically. but it is basic.

somewhere my elementary school nerd self is looking at me and shaking her head in disapproval and disgust.
-
It's strange - I see the same woman every time I go to the gym. (Well maybe not so extraordinary because I don't go very often).. But anyways, she's a woman in her 60s, although from a distance she could pass for 20s. She's asian - but her skin is the same color as the Southern country club grandmas I grew up with - baked a bizarre brown-orange color from too much time in tanning beds (on wrinkly skin it makes the person resemble a walnut).

I've only ever seen her in the locker room, standing on the scale in her underwear or putting on makeup in front of the mirror. Each time I see her I want to feed her something. Like a bag of lard or maybe a gotta have it coldstone. Her legs are easily half the circumference of my arms, and she has a gap between her thighs that a 'little person' could walk through without worrying about bumping their head on anything(weird image). Her arms look like fingers, and her chest is the definition of concave. She always stands on the scale wearing only underwear, moving the silver lever back and forth back and forth, impassive but somehow also upset.
I looked over once out of curiousity, the lever hovered around 78 - 80 pounds. Although I couldn't really tell because she kept moving the lever so much.

I don't know, I've always hoped that with age, you earn the right to care less about what you look like, or at least not have body issues. Maybe next time I go I'll bring a bag of lard... It's hong kong, can't be that hard to find.
-

newly discovered -
cappuccinos. Who knew foamed milk could be so good. whenever I drink one it reminds me of three failed weeks I spent as a barista in london. I could never figure out how to foam milk and had to rely on the Polish bartender from the shop next door to come in and do it for me... mostly I remember because of what I can't remember. I can't remember the name of the cafe, the street it was on, the name of the polish bartender, or actually even how I came across that job.

portraits. Outside of our apartment building there's a man who paints portraits in oil paint. He hangs his canvases on the side of a brick building. It took me a few weeks to realize that the paintings were commissioned, because every few days, it is a different group of faces on the wall. He paints faces throughout the morning, working on several faces at once. One hand holds a photograph, the other hand paints the eyes of a woman and then the hair of a man - so that every face takes on some resemblance to each other.
Strangers who become alike - it's kind of a beautiful thing.

By the time I come home in the evening, the paintings and the man are gone. And the only hint of the faces from before are the colors of oil fallen on the sidewalk.

-
I know it is silly to be deeply affected by celebrity deaths. Why should the death of one person mean that much more than anyone else's? But I have to say I was really sad to hear about Daul Kim. She seemed very charming, and while not conventionally beautiful she had a beauty that seemed dangerous, sharp like a knife. the edges of a line.
I'd kept one of the things she wrote:

i never thought i was innocent
but i was pure

i believe that i am pure

now i just feel misunderstood.


guilt.

-
When you're a teenager and in your early twenties [love] seems desperately eternal and excruciatingly painful. Whereas as you grow older you realise that most things are excruciatingly painful and that is the human condition. Most of us continue to survive because we're convinced that somewhere along the line, with grit and determination and perseverance, we will end up in some magical union with somebody. It's a fallacy, of course, but it's a form of religion. You have to believe. There is a light that never goes out and it's called hope.
— Morrissey

Things learned:

It is embarrassing to walk around Central in a backpack.
In a city where girls don't switch to flip-flops at lunch and wear heels no matter if it's raining or typhoon status black rain or whatever - then there's me shuffling through the sidewalk with a backpack like Sam going to Mount Doom.

I carry a backpack that looks kinda like those LL Bean ones, the ones that used to be cool in middle school. (Ok maybe not everywhere, but at least in kentucky, LL Bean backpacks with the initials were the rage... I think).
The backpack stunts my growth (potential growth) and makes me look pretentiously 'studious', when sadly I wear it because I pulled my back a month ago and carrying even a handbag on my shoulder makes me want to flinch.
On the bright side, the backpack is an effective defense tool - anybody who tries shoving past me in a "queue" finds it impossible. Hah.

Hong kong minibus system. (This might not seem very momentous but I feel so native now) =]

Haven't learned:

How to teach. I tutor every weekday, with a new batch of students in IB English. IB English is quite difficult - asking a high school sophomore to figure out the incestuous themes / Greek tragic elements in a play seems a bit overdone.

Most embarrassing moments: explaining that a scene with "kind, loving uncle character" is actually supposed to be about incest.

Defining what impotence is. I still don't think I explained that one quite well.

The law. It's a bit dangerous teaching so much because sometimes I forget that I'm in school as well - and now exams are coming and three months in, I still have no idea what the law is about. Panic panic.
It's like the longer I stay in school, the worse I get at it.
I can already imagine my professor saying "DUHH. As if!" as he reads my exam. Completely possible reality because that's his favorite phrase to say in class. Well not the "as if" but "Duh" is his catch phrase as he looks at us in disgust.

---

It's been awhile since I've read anything... but the last book I read was Shantaram the rare kind that stays and colors everything that goes on outside of it while you're reading. At points it gets draining and overwritten, but at the same time it's so generous in what it's saying and trying to give, you have to respect it.

"We should've built a life from the stars and the sea and the sand. And I should've listened to her- she told me almost nothing, but she did give me clues, and I know now that she put signs in her words and expressions that were as clear as the constellations over our heads."

spelling

In the past couple of weeks I've become a law student. HKU is a campus on top of a mountain.. well built into the side of one. Going from class to class is like living in an escher fantasy, a neverending trail of stairs, elevators, escalators, and then more stairs.

I like going to the classes, but I've realized that sitting in a 3 hour lecture is something I'll never get used to. There's always a lull period - maybe at the 1 hour mark, where inevitably, I can feel myself start to fall asleep. Coffee doesn't work, neither does sugar, so I've taken to doing what I used to do in college - stabbing my arm with sharp asian pens. (The asian pens have the best points, especially the .38 ones, which could double for ninja weaponry.)

I still have a few students that I tutor. My youngest student is in 3rd grade, a very artsy kid. At first it was hard to learn what would help him pay attention, but after some trial and error, I figured out that he likes to play hangman, mostly the part of adding extra bleeding heads around the hangman's feet or other creative accessories -
-is that a belt?
kid (ignoring me): yea. for the dress.
-It's got sparkles on it?
kid: yea.
-why's he wearing a dress?
kid: cause it's a girl. Duh. (starts to thoughtfully draw teeth falling onto the ground)
-oh. right. oh hey. now you're adding books? why's she holding books?
kid (carefully shading in the hair): cause it's you. hahahahaa.

yay...

stop

*patrol on the border of Texas*


"The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal."
C.S. Lewis

summer's end

I tried to overcome my fear of deep water by learning scuba diving for a trip to Malaysia. I had to take a four day workshop in Hong Kong in order to get licensed. It was very humbling, 3 of my 4 classmates were under the age of 11. For example while I almost failed my swimming test, the 11 year old girl in the lane next to me swam butterfly stroke.

By the time I finally got under the ocean in Malaysia, I had mentally said all my goodbyes. I tried to remember that I just had to breathe through my mouth, and I shouldn't worry because I didn't have any life insurance on me so no one was going to be turning off my oxygen (haha. actually apparently some horrible guy killed his wife underwater by turning off her oxygen tank. on their honeymoon. for her life insurance. o.o)
Supposedly going underwater was going to feel 'calm' and peaceful, something "automatic" and nirvana-like would happen. It didn't.

I gamely held on to my guide's four-fingered hand (he was missing his left thumb, probably because he had some compulsion to touch everything that was underwater, including giant clams and eels with teeth. We saw a shark and he was racing to get to it, dragging me with him.)
I thought of mermaids, and Ariel and Sebastian, I sang Under the Sea in my head - well the parts I remembered, which was just that line, 'under the sea, under the sea', and tried not to imagine octopus Ursula appearing behind me, for some reason I remembered the part of her song 'And don't underestimate the importance of booooddyyy language! Hah!'. Repeated in my head about 20 times, it became a bit annoying, even to myself.

The rest of Malaysia trip was pretty amazing, kayaked, mountain biked, fished (for them big fish). It was the first time I'd felt remotely sporty in my life.
The possibility that I could replace that Survivorman on the Discovery channel became that much closer. No crew, no cameras, just HIM, battling to survive in the toughest places on earth. (I don't understand how they do that anyway... they have a camera shot of him setting up his camera... it's confusing. Maybe he has more than one camera? He's filming himself filming himself filming himself?)
--

Whenever I needed anything in New York, my working method was to pick a direction, and if I walked far enough I would eventually find what i needed. Whether it was a hammer, rope (for hanging curtains - the sales person did ask me what the use was for, apparently it was a 'liability thing), a portable map of the world, gum... The method doesn't really work in Hong Kong, a search for Post-its lead to streets with stores that sell only wheelchairs, then a street of stores for crutches, a street of clothes for pregnant women, sports gear, wigs, lights (Actually the street of lights I see everyday, and it's beautiful. A small block of shops and each shop is blazing with light from the inside - the lights bounce and reflect from their own reflections, multiplied glass chandeliers and lamps.)

I've been trying to prep myself for law school, we have summer reading assignments that are supposed to be relatively light and helpful. I usually read them during the day but inevitably after a few chapters I'm not sure if I'm asleep or awake. One is an advice book that the author writes to a fake law student named Sam(the disclaimer that Sam isn't real is on the first page. I guess he wanted to save me from feeling HORRIBLY cheated.)
But anyway his advice included "put down a boring book immediately! If you find yourself bored by your text, put it down...2 pages of filler explanation later...it could be the author's fault in not engaging you, the reader, in the material."
Hrm. dilemna.

things to be thankful for: tea with lemon, the sound of a dial on a diver's watch, sugar syrup, olives, lee byunghun's eyes in GI Joe, vermouth, the tram.