Showing my Floridian roots.

I took Mochi for a walk down along the Little Econ Greenway yesterday. The high was 52F. I wore a couple of sweaters, and this is how Mochi was decked out:

Honestly, Mochi probably would have been just fine without the coat (having a built-in one and all), but here in Florida, I rarely get the chance to bust out my own winter wear, let alone the dog's. That's not to say that I'm feeling overly nostalgic for cold weather. I mean, I was excited when the polar vortex made it cold enough to actually wear my lovely little dark green riding hood coat a few times... but I am already ready for this Florida "winter" to be over and done with.

It really is a rich dark green and I am really not a funky shade of orange; the lighting in my bathroom is terrible. Also, I need to clean my mirror.
I'll be graduating with my MA in a few months, and as such have started looking for jobs. Given that I am looking for teaching positions, this isn't really the best time of year for job postings as most fall-starts aren't going to be listed for a few more months yet. Or at least that's what I tell myself. Last fall I submitted my application for a really good 1-2 year position overseas. There are a large number of positions available, so even though it's competitive, chances are good. Still, as I selected the former Soviet Union as the region to which I would like to be sent, I just keep thinking how cold it will be. So I've started applying for jobs in the southeastern US. (I figure I'll go with whichever good job offer contacts me first and let fate deal with the should-I-stay-or-should-I-go problem). There aren't many full-time positions in the ESL field if you're looking to stay out of the public school system, and I really am hoping that there will be more openings posted in a couple of months. Still, in the past couple of weeks I've applied for four jobs (three in Florida, one in Georgia), all of which would be good jobs (although two would be most excellent). I've found myself browsing real estate in the areas where these jobs are located. Real estate! Looking for jobs stateside? Browsing real estate ads? Longing for warmth? I seem to have gotten old overnight. Not that a job in the US would stop me from vacationing in places like, say, North Korea...

Six surprising things I learned/realized while living abroad.

After reading these really interesting things that non-Americans couldn’t believe about the US until they actually came here and experienced life in the US for themselves, I felt inspired to write about some of the surprising things that I learned/realized while living overseas.

The US does not have the best healthcare in the world. Nor does it have the worst. With the debate about healthcare that’s been in the news over the past several years, I’ve heard tons of people say things like ‘the US has the best healthcare in the world’ (often followed by ‘and we don’t want Obamacare to ruin it’). I’ve heard tons of people going on about how countries with nationalized healthcare plans have awful healthcare, while what we have is The Best in the World. It’s not.

I haven’t been to every country in the world, and a lot of the places I’ve been to do have worse healthcare systems than the US – often far worse. But not all of them.

South Korea’s national healthcare plan is wonderful. Everyone is on it. If you’re living in South Korea and working legally, you will have access to health insurance. If you don’t have health insurance, the costs are actually still quite affordable. Access to same-day healthcare (for things both minor and major) is easily available without having to go to an ER, and the technology and medical treatments available are state of the art. Koreans simply do not understand why healthcare costs so much in the US, even with health insurance. The cost of healthcare here for uninsured folks in the US is simply inexplicable to them.

On the other hand, if you’ve ever spent time in a developing country, you’ll know that we here in the US are very lucky that at the very least we can go to a clean and competent ER if we fall ill, and the hospital will be obligated to stabilize you at the very least (if you lack insurance). In many countries, this option is unavailable, as the money for modern facilities and trained medical professionals is lacking. We don’t have the best in the world, but we are far from the bottom.

Reliable, fast, frequent, and cheap public transportation is a wonderful thing. We have a terrible public transportation infrastructure in the US. Unless you live in one of a handful of big cities in the US, you are not going to have access to decent public transport. Many large cities (such as Orlando, where I currently reside) do have a semi-decent bus system, but buses come roughly once an hour, are incredibly slow, and you may very well have to walk a long way to reach the nearest stop. This makes life really difficult for people without cars. If you don’t live in a large city, you must have a car, because your only other option is a taxi or bumming a ride off a friend. I never really considered this a problem until I went overseas – specifically to South Korea. I have traveled all over the Korean peninsula by means of bus and train. It’s cheap, it’s fast, it’s easy, and you can do it even if you speak very little Korean. I wish I could hop a train for the cost of a tank of gas and get to my mom’s in a fraction of the time it would take me to drive there, but that’s not an option here. Once, when I was in college, I looked into taking Greyhound home (from TN to FL) for Christmas. It would have taken 25 hours, and it would have cost more than a plane ticket. That’s absurd! Meanwhile, I can get from one end of South Korea to the other in just a few hours (by train) for under $50, and I can do it for far less if I go by bus (although then travel time can be affected by traffic).

American toilets are wonderful. Our toilets enable us to sit down. They have bowls filled with water. I’d never really thought about this before my first trip to Russia, but when you poop into that water, the water covers the smell. In Russia (and in many parts of the former Soviet Union), many of the sit-down toilets in people’s homes, in dorms, and in businesses have a ledge inside the bowl. You poop, and your shit sits on this ledge until you flush, at which point a stream of water washes your poop off the ledge and down the drain. There is no nice covering of water over your poop, which makes the whole experience much stinkier.

However, sit-down toilets are not a world-wide thing. They’re not even a Russia-wide thing. I encountered my first squatter in Moscow at VDNKh. I walked into the only open stall and saw a hole in the floor. Not a ceramic squatter of the kind common in many countries, but a hole in the floor in the center of the stall. I thought that the toilet in that stall was missing (and this may well have been the case), so I retreated and waited for another stall to open. Imagine my surprise when the next woman to enter the bathroom went into that stall and used the hole! Then the next stall opened, and it, too, had only a hole. I have since used squatters ranging from holes in the floor to fancy, gleaming porcelain basins, to holes in a concrete slab over a large sewage pit, to wooden squatters over hand-dug pits. I’m really good at squatting now, but trust me, I much prefer to be able to sit.

Voice mail is not a universal phenomenon. Here in the US, when someone calls your phone it will ring 4-6 times, and then the caller will be shunted off to your voice mail where they can leave a message. In Kyrgyzstan, and South Korea (and, from what I’ve heard, in many other places as well), voice mail does not exist. If someone calls you on your cell, it will ring and ring and ring until they give up and hang up. Not only is there no way to leave a voice message, but there is no limit to the number of rings – there is only a limit to the caller’s patience. And to yours, if you’re trying to avoid answering a call from a certain persistent individual. In both of these countries, it also seems perfectly acceptable to let the phone ring and ring and ring until the person answers it. When I worked for the computer company in Seoul, this was so unbelievably annoying. Someone would be away from their desk, but would have left their phone behind. Someone else would call and it would ring for five minutes. Or more. It’s not like the phones didn’t have caller ID (they did), or like they didn’t accept texts (they did). The caller could have texted a message or simply assumed that the person they were calling would see the missed call and call them back…. But no. Letting the phone ring incessantly seemed to be the thing to do. It drove me nuts.

All Asian kids are not super-studious and well-behaved. The myth that all Asian students are studious and well behaved has been around all of my life, and it’s just not true – at least not in Korea at any rate. Now, granted, Korean children and teens spend far more time in school (both in public school and in private ‘extracurricular’ schools) than their American counterparts; however, for the most part this is due to their parents’ desires, not to theirs. If it were up to them, they’d be at home playing computer games, not shuffling from private school to private school. And well-behaved? Hah. Kids will be kids, and if you put a group of them together, they are going to act like kids. I’ve certainly taught well-behaved Korean children and teens. I’ve also taught some who were total hell-raisers, and many that just wanted to gossip with their friends.

A lot of people in other countries think that there is no poverty in the US. I don’t mean that they think there is less poverty here than in their home country; I’ve met many people who truly believe that there is NO poverty in the US at all. Some people believe me when I explain to them that yes, poverty exists in the US, but some don’t. Below are two examples of conversations I’ve had about this – although I’ve certainly had more than two.

Back in 2000 when I was studying abroad in Russia, I met a young man whose father was, shall we say, connected to the Russian mafia. This kid (and he was 20 or so) wore designer clothes, had a cell phone (back when no one but Russia’s elite had cells), lived in a huge and recently remodeled apartment in the center of St. Petersburg, and drove a Mercedes. He told me one night that his goal in life was to become an American citizen because all Americans were wealthy. I pointed out that he was already wealthy, and that most Americans – myself included – were unable to afford his kind of lifestyle. He continued to state his belief that all Americans were rich, so I explained about how I was only able to go to college (and to Russia) because I had received a full scholarship, and that I lived with my mom, who was working part-time and making very little money. He became furious and began shouting at me that I was lying. He claimed that I was just saying that because I didn’t want foreigners coming to the US and becoming rich.

One day this summer, while I was in Kyrgyzstan, my host mother offhandedly said, “Well, there aren’t any poor people in America.” She was really, genuinely surprised when I said that actually yes, there are. She said, “But I never see poor people in any American TV shows or movies!” She was really amazed when I explained to her that we do have a poverty problem, that there are many people who are homeless or struggling to make ends meet. While she was far more accepting of this than the Russian guy I met back in 2000, I did hear her tell several of her friends in an incredulous voice, “Did you know that [Annie] says there are actually poor people in America?”

Of sunsets, kittens, euthanasia, and head colds

I went up to GA for the Thanksgiving holiday break. In some ways it was not what you’d call a happy holiday, although I’ve certainly had worse. Two of our elderly cats – Tuffy and Grey – had to be euthanized. Both of them had chronic illnesses that had plagued them for years (and for which they had been treated for years), but they had finally reached that point. Tuffy was 13, and we’d had her since she was a kitten. Grey showed up, fully grown, on my doorstep in the fall of 2009 and had been part of our lives ever since. We have a lot of animals, my mom and I, and as a result, we experience animal deaths more frequently than people who only have one or two pets. I’d like to say that it gets better with experience, but it never does. It’s been five days since we buried Grey and Tuffy, and I’m crying typing about it. They will be missed.

Grey and Tuffy

But there’s never a shortage of homeless pets.

This is Sunshine. My aunt (who lives in an assisted living facility not far from my mom) found her in the woods by her home, and brought her to my mom. Our home is not the best place for her, as we do have several cats with feline leukemia, but when the only other option is tossing her out on the street (don’t even get me started on the local animal control situation…) I guess it’s the best chance she’s got. She’s been vaccinated against feline leukemia already, although she’s also developed a head cold, which we’re keeping an eye on.

For Thanksgiving proper we drove down to F’s house at Dekle Beach. The weather was beautiful: chilly (for Florida), but with bright sunshine and crystal clear skies. The sunset was pretty spectacular. I promptly developed a rather nasty head cold and spent the time feeling rather wretched.

I’m back in Orlando now for the tail-end of the semester. I have one presentation left to give and I’ll be done. I don’t even have any finals. (I know; it confuses me, too. Don’t get me wrong, I like not having to take finals, but not having finals just seems wrong somehow.) And speaking of finals, I can’t leave Orlando for a few more weeks because my students most definitely do have finals. I don’t control their official exam schedule, and the school has decreed that one of my sections will take their final on the very last day of finals… and I can’t leave until they’re done. I’m hoping that the extra free time I’ll have before going back up to GA will enable me to get a head start on my Christmas vacation project: designing the ESL curriculum for a major league baseball team’s training program in a Caribbean country. I should probably point out that I know sweet fuck all about baseball, but hey – I did order both Baseball for Dummies and the Idiot’s Guide to Baseball. I have to have this done by the beginning of January, so it’s definitely going to be my project for the break – unless I can get a good chunk of it knocked out beforehand.

I only have one semester left before I AM YOUR MASTER. Er, before I have my MA in TESOL. I’m still feeling fairly ambivalent about whether I stay in the US or go back overseas. I’ve applied for a pretty prestigious and rather competitive position which would definitely involve going back overseas (most likely to somewhere in the former Soviet Union), and if I am offered said position, I will most definitely accept. (There’s more than one ‘position,’ BTW, and chances are good – especially as they have a hard time filling their positions in the ‘stans.) Unfortunately, even though I submitted my application last month, I won’t hear from them until sometime ‘between early April and late June.’ Great. Meaning that if I don’t get it, I’ll be in a bit of a bind. June is a bit late in the year to be applying for teaching positions. However, I really do not want to be in a position where I am telling others that I cannot accept their job offer as I am waiting to hear from someone better, so I’ve simply decided to hold off on the job search until I find out one way or the other. However, I do think I will be confining said job search to the southeastern US – maybe even to FL – if ‘the position’ falls through. I guess we shall see.

Mixed Feelings

Here’s some appropriate music to listen to while reading:

I love traveling. It’s what I do, and I will never stop doing it. That being said, I’ll be turning 35 in a few days, and I’m starting to think in terms of actually… not settling down, but more like establishing a permanent base here in the US. While I’m not a huge fan of the Orlando area, I do like Florida in general and there are a lot of TESOL opportunities here due to our high native Spanish speaking population. I also do not relish another couple of plane flights with animals. Flying with pets, while often a necessity in my life, is never a pleasant experience for me, and I suspect it’s far worse for them. I’d love to have my own place with a fenced in yard where Mochi could run, and maybe even play with a dog his size, and a house big enough that I wouldn’t have to have the litter box in my bedroom. Obviously, when I do this (and I will eventually), I will continue to take fun and ridiculous vacations to destinations that hardly anyone else would choose… but am I ready to stop living and working overseas long term? I don’t know. On the one hand, I’ve been browsing real estate listings in central and north Florida while hunting for potential future employers in those areas. (Of course, I don’t graduate until May 2014, and all of the job ads online now are for either immediate or January start dates, so it’s not like I’m applying for anything.) On the other hand, I’m still working on my application to the State Department’s English Language Fellow program and browsing overseas job listings. Some days I’m certain I want to move overseas again, other days I’m certain I want to stay here. I’m thinking it could go either way. Obviously it’s way too early for me to be worrying about this, as I won’t be submitting any job applications until next semester… and yet it seems that nowadays this is all I think about.

sometimes you just need to run away

I spent a year and a half in the US during 2009-2010. Prior to that, I’d been living overseas since mid-2005. At the end of 2008, when I returned to the US, I had actually thought that I might have reached the point in my life where I’d be content to remain in the US forever – well, except for vacations, of course! However, it didn’t work out anything like I’d planned.

I quite unfortunately got caught up in a perfect storm of terrible people, bad situations, a horrific work environment, and bad decisions, turning that time into the worst period of my life. (I alluded to this a bit in my very first post, and I chronicled a lot of what was happening beginning in September '09 on what was, up until now, my super-secret blog.)

From July-December 2009, I carried my passport with me EVERYWHERE at all times, just in case things got too terrible to take. I actually set off for the airport a few times. I’ve never told anyone that before. I always turned back because I had too many obligations that I couldn’t just abandon at a moment’s notice, obligations which kept me trapped in that hell for far too long.

By early 2010, things had gotten much better. A temporary restraining order (or the small, southern town equivalent thereof – sadly, not kidding) had gotten the terrible people to (mostly) leave me alone, and I had left the horrific work environment. However, there were no other job opportunities in said small, southern town. I had one job interview, but didn’t get the job – the position was later eliminated due to lack of funding, so it didn’t really matter. My house was no longer my home; instead it was a den of nightmares, continually reminding me of the bad decisions I had made, and the horrible things that had happened as a result. I didn’t feel safe there at all. I couldn’t go anywhere – home, school (I took some college courses; what else do you do when you’re unemployed?), my mom’s house, shopping – without constantly looking over my shoulder, for fear of the aforementioned terrible people.

In spring 2010, G emailed me to ask if I would be interested in returning to her school (where I’d taught during 2006-2007), and I jumped on it. I totally fucking ran for the metaphorical hills. However, unlike my abortive trips to the airport during 2009, I had several months to get my affairs in order first: house cleaned and up for sale, power of attorney transferred to my mom for sale of said house, numerous ‘obligations’ taken care of (sorry, don’t want to be too specific) to lessen the load on my mom in my absence.

This was the only time I had ever left the US on the run, as it were. I’d always left the US seeking adventure. Home was always behind me as somewhere comfortable to which I could return if my adventures didn’t pan out as planned or when I simply wanted to return home. By the time I left, I was so stressed out (due mainly to the impending expiration of the temporary restraining order) that I truly did not expect to ever return. You know how, at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings (the books, not the films), Frodo wanders about the Shire, essentially saying goodbye to different streams and valleys and whatnot, because he thinks he's leaving for good? That was me.

Arriving in Korea as a method of escape (as opposed to seeking an adventure) was a different experience all around. I’ve always been fairly anti-social, and have never been into seeking large groups of friends, but I usually attempt to make some friends whenever I move somewhere. I didn’t have too many friends in Korea the last time I was here, although I have a pretty decent – if small – group of friends by the time I left. This time, other than pre-existing friends on the peninsula (G and her family, my friend S in the US military, and my cousin) and my co-workers (John and J), I have pretty much kept to myself. I haven’t even spent much time with them, much less anyone else. For the most part, I’ve wanted it that way.

It literally took the first few months I was here to get out of the habit of constantly looking over my shoulder. It took about six or seven months before I stopped crying myself to sleep at least once a week. Just this month I started feeling like I was finally ‘getting over’ the events of 2009. I’m not sure what the turning point was… but some time recently, I realized that the thought of running into certain terrible people no longer makes me envision hiding or running for the nearest cop. Instead, I just think: Oh, fuck off.

A couple of weeks ago I learned that if I do get the job in Seoul, I’ll have to return to the US in order to apply for my E-7 visa, and I actually feel excited by the idea of returning home for a short while. Time might not have healed all wounds, but it has certainly helped – as does being in an environment where I haven’t had to feel any stress about that whole situation.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve started wishing I’d gotten out more, explored more of the country (well, okay – I’ve explored a good lot of it on previous trips, so I don’t completely feel like I missed out) and at least attempted to meet some new people. I barely even blogged, and I certainly didn’t reach out into the ex-pat in Korea blogosphere like I did back in ’06-’07.

It’s a little late for all that now – I’m leaving in five weeks. It’s still up in the air as to whether I’ll be living in Seoul or Ukraine come September. But I’m back to being me, and whichever location I land, I’m going to get back to living life. No more hiding. (Well, okay, so I'll still have this semi-anonymous blog. I might want to tell certain folks to go fuck off, but that doesn't mean I want them knowing where I am and what I'm doing.)