Oh yeah, and one more thing....

Due to the fact that I am no longer Stephanie in Suwon, and plan on keeping my blog despite this turn of events, I felt the need to rename it. Thus the new heading. And I like it. I plan on staring at the stars a great deal in the coming months, lying on torch-lite beaches, sipping pina coladas, and staying out way past my bedtime. I remember wishing on stars when I was a kid, and by kid, I mean up until I was in university and even for sometime afterwards. I remember frozen winter nights in my hometown, when it was clear and the sky seemed to explode with thousands of them. I remember warm, drippy summer nights at camp, lying on the dock, eating cake we’d stolen from the kitchen, and trying to find Orion’s belt. I loved how quiet everything seemed, how small we felt, how safe.
Living in Korea gives you plenty of opportunity to feel small, but not a whole lot of quiet, and you can forget about feeling safe. Not in the literal sense of the word, just the very nature of being here can seem overwhelming at times, it’s easy to feel lost, and indeed, many who come here are. I know I did at times. Still do. That’s why I want to go searching for something that gives me that same feeling that those sweet stolen moments did. That feeling of being a part of something big and beautiful, something a little mysterious.
Peace.
Being here, doing this, has given me a lot. I don’t think I’ll be able to fully appreciate it all until I get a little distance from it, but one thing I can express, is how much I’ve loved coming back to writing. And as much as I enjoyed writing the columns for the newspaper here, as cool as it is to see your name in print, writing in general has given me much more then I thought it ever would. My columns, my journal, or this. If you had told me a year ago that I’d be writing my own blog I would have laughed in your face. To be fair, if you had told me two years ago that fermented cabbage would be served to me at every meal and my days would include reading the thrilling tale “The Harp by the River” for the 13th fucking time, I also would have laughed in your face. Life is funny sometimes.