14 hours in the FUTURE!

Wow. I am writing this from Ehwa 하숙집 at 3 in the morning. Rent is a little higher than I expected but I had to pick somewhere because it was getting really late. Erol helped me, walking around these university neighborhoods calling every dang ajumma and ajoshi who would get out of bed and let us look at their open rooms. 

I was scolded for being such a crazy person, by Erol and by the sleepy ajummas. Who moves to a foreign country with 100 pounds worth of stuff and has no idea where they are going to stay? Who tries to compare prices for rent at multiple locations at 10 at night? 

I mean. It worked out, no problem, just as I expected. 

Funny how it feels exactly the same, as if the entire last semester never happened and I'd been here the whole time. The airport is routine by now (minus the moment of horror when I realized my money was missing this past summer. thanks to grandma's money belt worn discretely under my dress, that whole fiasco was avoided this time.) My block behind the 신촌 McDonald's felt like where I was supposed to be going home to today. The subway station waffle smell. Erol and Rita and Karina. The same toiletry bags, a similar set-up on a similar bookshelf set that seems to be standard fair for these kinds of rooms. feeling baffled and confused and still sort of illiterate. none of it's different. it's almost anticlimactic, like picking up from a book-marked page instead of writing a new story. tomorrow will be different, less matter of fact and more exploratory in this new neighborhood.

reading dostoyevsky. listening to other people's conversations. eating 라면 and 김밥type convenience store food. idk what else, it's time for me to get some rest.