Stephanie in Suwon

I’m working it out. I’m sorting through it. It being the gong show that is my life and wondering how I got this far without actually having a clue as to what the fuck I’m doing. I look around at the insanity of Korea and sometimes I want to explode from frustration. Other times I look around and acknowledge with a wry smile that this place, right now, is the perfect embodiment of how I am feeling about my life these days. Today is one of those days. Today started out the way every Sunday should, with no alarm clocks going off and a slow swim up out of sleep that ended with me groggily looking at the clock and watching the hour of ten pass into the hour of eleven. It continued with me rolling into my biggest, most comfortable sweatshirt and climbing onto the bus that took me into Gangnam, into Seoul, where I sipped coffee and meandered through streets lined with carts selling everything from deep-fried squid to knock-off Dior, Prada and Chanel. I slipped into the subway and headed for a...

These past few weekends have seen me involving myself in such activities as: sleeping in, drinking coffee until two in the afternoon, matinees with girlfriends, date nights with Dave, sitting alone in coffee shops with my computer drinking black tea lattes and listening to the white noise that is the Korean language reverberate around me. Shots at Pavox with friends, glasses of red wine at home with Dave, movies and episodes of CSI and Scrubs found on the internet. In other words, dear readers, I’ve been relaxing. And let me tell you, it’s been a while. Weekends in Korea, for the vast majority of our stay here thus far, have ranged from fairly busy to jam-fucking-packed. Seoul is a variable cornucopia of sights to see, places to go and things to do. If New York is the city that never sleeps, Seoul is the city with perpetual insomnia that keeps forgetting its medication because it’s drunk most, if not all, of the time. Museums, art shows, shopping, restaurants, movies, theatre, shopping...