Chasing Daylight

Alrighty!

I've been here for almost two full days and I am beginning to familiarize myself with my surroundings. I've been in nesting mode since I got here and I keep rearranging the few things in my new apartment. It's an odd thing, living in an apartment. I've never lived in one before. I've always lived in houses, or as was the case with my last living arrangement, in a guest house, but it was always separate from anyone else's space. Most everywhere I went back in the U.S. was full of single family houses with a few areas designated to apartment buildings, but it's not like that here. South Korea is a place where people live stacked up on top of each other. I guess they do it because it's a very functional use of space. They don't like to sprawl themselves on every last bit of land that there is just to make themselves comfortable. I guess it makes sense. It seems almost respectful of them to not want to dominate the land.

Anyway, I'm now living in a tiny studio apartment in the fourth floor of a small building in Daejeon. It's very different from living in Los Angeles. There are very few ethnic minorities here. The vast amount of people that I've seen are, or course, all Korean. But I have seen a couple of people who were Caucasian, a man in his 20's who looked to possibly be Indian, and I also thought I saw a black man sitting by the window inside the Angel-in-us Coffee near my place. That was very exciting for me and I almost went inside just to introduce myself and try to talk to him because I'm used to talking to African American people at home, but I thought better of it and I just kept walking. I didn't want to freak him out or come off as desperate for conversation, which I am. More than anything, though, I think I'm desperate for someone to actually call me by my name. Nobody here has been able to pronounce it and so they keep calling me "Tina." They like Tina because it's an American name and they're somewhat familiar with American culture and they also seem to strive for their own Americanization. I've met a lot of Korean people here by now who all introduce themselves as "Mary" or "James" or "Becky" or "Peter" or something else equally American. They're completely willing to give up their given eastern names and trade them for western ones. I think that's why when I introduce myself as Marisol Tena, they just go, "Hi Tina!" and then I can't get them to even really try my real name.

I miss my name. I want someone to spot me walking down the street and yell out, "Hey, Marisol!" so that my ears can perk up once again at the sound of being referred to as what my mother intended me to be called. It might take a while, but hopefully I can make it happen.

Aside from that, coming to Korea has been an awesome experience thus far. The flight from LAX to Incheon Airport was 13 hours long and I thought I was going to go crazy, but it was also very interesting because, due to our westward travel, there was daylight the entire time until we finally arrived in Incheon. It was as if the plane and everyone in it was on a mission to never let the daylight fade. In a way, I think that's how I feel about life in general; never let the daylight fade. Chase that daylight for as long as you can because with light comes clarity, a better understanding of the world around you, and hopefully inner peace which can translate into love for your fellow human beings.

Anyway, I think that's enough for an initial blog post. I will continue to update on here regularly so that my friends and family back home in L.A. can keep up with what I'm doing.

P.S. I hope you can all appreciate the close-up picture of the side dishes I had on the plane. On the right is kimchi, which I've had before. But on the left is a little bunch of gray thingers that, if you look closely enough, you can tell are tiny little fish. YUM!!... Not! LOL. At least I tried them. :)