hot yellow fellows

So, it’s been a while.

I wasn’t really planning on updating again, but looking back on things from the distance of six countries and four months, I didn’t want the previous post to be my last. It’s too scattered, sad, and messy to be a fitting sendoff for my time in Korea. The past three years deserve better — as does this blog.

Today is November 21st. Exactly three years ago today, I met Bacon, and exactly two years ago to the day, by some eerie coincidence or internal clock, I asked him to be my boyfriend.

Back in Korea, we had dinner with one of Bacon’s friends and his new girlfriend. She was asking how we met, and when we told her, she asked if it was love at first sight. I don’t believe in that kind of thing, but we did both look at each other for a second, smiled, and said yes.

I don’t think it was love — but it was something different, for me. At that point in my life, I was single and happy to be that way. The only thing I was looking for was a hook up or a friend with benefits kind of situation. Yet I remember being horrified when a friend drunkenly suggested I invite Bacon back to my place. And I remember how sad I was when we shook hands that night and he went down the stairs to the subway and I went out to the street to look for a cab. I was also equally horrified when another friend suggested I seduce him on my last night in Korea that year.

When I left him at the airport that time, after we kissed for the first time, I was devastated again, and I said, on this blog, that that feeling is what keeps me from ever wanting relationships. I spent a lot of time at home between those two jobs, and the longer I spent at home, the more I shut down those feelings. If it was this hard after knowing the guy for three months, how hard would it be to get on the next plane after spending another 12 months in his company?

When I came back to Korea, I held him at arm’s length. I said things about him I’m not proud of. I tried my hardest to shut that whole thing down and talk myself out of it, out of him. But I couldn’t, and I didn’t, and after waffling about it for five months, we did finally end up together.

There was still a lot of hesitation on my end. Lots of things to think about and the big scary Future looming ahead of us. Sometimes it got the better of me and we would fight. I would accuse him of ridiculous things, I would suggest just breaking up now. But we never did. All that ever happened was that I learned the valuable lesson of never storming out of your apartment during monsoon season without an umbrella.

Those doubts and fears are now, for the most part, gone. When a former friend pressed me about our future and did I want to marry him, I panicked and stressed. But now, when people ask me, I just shrug and say maybe. Within the next year, depending upon our visa situations, we might HAVE to. I remember my mom asking if this was a serious relationship and the feeling of dread that question and those words inspired. But now, if people ask, I say yes, of course, we’ve been together for two years.

I’m not saying I’m beyond all of the fears and all of the issues I have with commitment. When I first started this trip, Bacon missed the hell out of me and told me that, often. But I was too busy getting my scuba certification, eating all of the Vietnamese food I could shove into my mouth, swimming in waterfalls, and climbing through ancient ruins to spend too much time thinking about how I felt. That caused me to worry, because I wasn’t missing him. But now that things have slowed down, now that it’s the very tail end of my trip, I do miss him. Greatly. I recognized that I wasn’t pushing him away again, I was just busy, and I’ve since relaxed about things again. For now.

We’ve had to spend his birthday, Pepero Day, and our anniversary apart. But in ten days, we’ll be together again, although only for a week. And then the really long stretch of being apart will kick in. This time, I’m confident we’ll make it through.

I don’t know if all of our plans of grad school and Europe will work out, and I don’t know if we’ll stay together forever and ever. But the idea of that is no longer as terrifying to me as it once was. It’s actually kind of nice to think about a future with him and us and a cat and a flat. (But never any kids. Don’t worry. I haven’t changed THAT much.)

This blog has chronicled my time in Korea, my relationship with Bacon, and my own changes into adulthood and dealing with an adult relationship. I’m glad that I’ve kept it, through the good and the bad, and I am sad to see it go. But my time in Korea is over, and this blog was created solely for my time in Korea and my relationships there. I’ll never delete it or privatize my entries, so in case anyone every wants to go back and read through it all, no worries; it’s there. But it’s going to effectively become inactive. I’ll stop checking my emails here as well within the next month.

I don’t know if I’ll start a new blog or if I’m just done with blogging, although anonymity prevents me from telling most of you the answer to that question. Unless we have an established relationship already, I won’t be sharing the link if it does happen.

But I do want to thank everyone for reading, commenting, emailing. I never thought this blog would get anywhere near as big as it did. I’m thankful for what it became and the changes it made to my time in Korea. So thanks, Tumblr, for sticking with me and giving me advice and just being here. It’s been a great ride overall.

안녕히계세요.

I haven’t been posting much over the past few months, as some of you might have noticed. I’ve been kind of a mess and a mass of mixed emotions. And I’m still not really any better.

I have less than a month left in Korea.

I have less than a month until I have to leave the place I’ve called home for the past three years. Less than a month to spend time with my boyfriend before we’re in separate countries, and then in separate continents. For a year, more or less. I have less than a month to finish up all of my goodbyes, even though I’ve taught all of my last classes, aside from my summer camp.

But it’s also less than a month until I can go on my first overseas trip with my boyfriend. Less than a month until I’m on a long-ass vacation that I’ve saved my ass off to enjoy. And at the end of that trip, I get to go home to spend Christmas with my family for the first time in three years. I get to spend more time in the US to visit my friends on both coasts. I get to take part in one of my best friends’ weddings. I’ll hopefully move onto grad school in a city I love, trying to pursue a career I might enjoy more than teaching.

I’m happy to leave Korea and go back to having friends. All of the friends I’ve made in Korea have either left or stopped talking to me. Of course, not having friends has forced me into stronger bonds with Bacon, my coworkers, and even my students.

I’m devastated to leave my current job. I’ve become very close with some of my coworkers (whoever said that I’d end up becoming BFFs with the creeper was right), who’ve been taking me on trips and out to farewell dinners and lunches. I’m incredibly sad to be leaving my students, whom I love (in a non-creepy, non-Tumblr-y way).

But I am excited to try on a new career that might resonate more with me.

But I’m also nervous that I won’t get accepted into a grad school program.

Everything’s up, everything’s down. I’m happy, I’m sad. I’m relieved, I’m scared. Leaving Korea has just messed up my brain.

I don’t know if this is going to be my last update. I don’t want to pigeonhole myself into never updating ever again. But this blog was specifically about my experiences in Korea, and if I’m leaving Korea, then it’s kind of like. Saying goodbye to Korea kind of means saying goodbye to Hot Yellow Fellows.

It’s a time of change. There’s a lot of change coming up for me within the next month, and maybe this is just one of the changes I’ve already made. Or maybe I’ll change back into updating.

But for now, it’s messy. I’m messy. And it’s too hard for me to put that into words.

datinginkorea:

Those are not Google analytics. They are things that someone searched for on my blog, knowing that it would turn up nothing. It was someone who has read my blog for a long time, given they referenced something I haven’t written about in a while.

They were trying to hurt me.

They wanted me to see that.

I wasn’t even going to post that. But, I wanted people to see.

I…look. I get it. Everyone needs someone to be mad at when shit goes down on Tumblr. I don’t really understand fully, I guess, but that’s fine. People on Tumblr say not to tell them what to write and that these posts are their personal experiences. I, too, have personal experiences. And if my personal experience has to do with you, then I’ve got a right to talk about it on my own blog, right? If you can do it, I can do it, too. Too often, what starts as a direct disagreement over what someone has directly written (personal or not, we are responsible for what we write, no? If we wrote it, then we wrote it, right?) turns into a mudslinging fest of calling people names, accusing them of things, and removing the main issue at hand.

Yes. I had an issue with what PitROK said. Given it was a personal experience, and my blog is for my personal experiences, I wrote about it. PitROK didn’t like what I said. And that’s fine.

In fact, calling me a hypocrite, a bitch, telling her to take me down and all rallying behind her? Ok. Fair game, I guess, because you read her blog, you support her, and not me. Regardless of what I was trying to say, it doesn’t matter.

Do I think that the anons and such were out of line? Sure. Do I like it when people talk down to me because they don’t want to address the points I made? No. But, those are all ways to respond, and I didn’t see a point in reblogging again because that is how people chose to handle it.

It was mean, sure. It felt like it was undeserved. But, I’m a big girl. It didn’t really bother me.

But this? It’s what, 2012? And mongrel. That’s appropriate? How angry must I have made you for you to write that?

There is a line that we, as people, should never cross. No matter how angry, there are things we shouldn’t do or say.

And yet, you did. How sad for you.

I know what you were trying to do. And it wasn’t some crude attempt at a joke. It wasn’t even an attempt at humor. Anyone who has ever had a racial slur directed at them before knows why you did it.

And you’re sick.

Good luck tracking down the IP address. Whoever the hell said this needs to be outed. This is so far over the line of decency, and all because you disagreed with someone on Tumblr. Absolutely disgusting.

lifeandloveincanada:

hotyellowfellows:

imnopicasso:

[…]

[…]

Y’all did a pretty good job of reading between the lines to find something to be angry about in what was posted, unless there’s magical super offensive posts that I missed or something in my tumblr dashboard perusing.

The only thing I’m honestly offended by was this “joke” that Party In The ROK made.

I don’t see anything particularly funny about it, nor do I see any indication of this actually being a joke. The Korean boyfriend post from ages ago was obviously a joke, because it was over the top, but this just doesn’t even seem like one to me. There’s an account of what happened to her friend, which I’m guessing is true, followed up by a line that that’s what all professional Korean men are like. I don’t get how that’s supposed to be funny or sarcastic…? Especially since there are a lot of people who actually believe these things about all citizen/non-citizen of [your country of choice here] relationships. Maybe my sense of humor is the worst, I dunno.

But even if it was a joke, does that make it okay to say? I’m not equating her joke to the level of awfulness of the one I’m about to link to, but this (trigger warning) was a joke, too, by a professional comedian. “It was just a joke” isn’t really an excuse to get away with saying whatever you’d like. It doesn’t magically cover your ass for saying something people take offense to.

Comedy isn’t usually nice, and sometimes offensive shit can be funny. But more often than not, it’s just offensive. Personally, I don’t think making comments suggesting that the only reason a professional Korean man would want to date a non-Korean woman is to get the hell out of Korea. I honestly think that’s an offensive thing to say, joke or not, and that’s my main issue in all of this. If it was a joke, it was one made in poor taste. That’s the only real blanket statement from Party In The ROK, and that’s the thing that bothered me enough to speak up.

imnopicasso:

If you don’t like and/or trust Korean men, it seems to me the easy solution would be not to date them. Maybe, instead of going the opposite route of touting them as the only attractive options. I dunno.

Dave’s ESL: The Reverse Edition continues. Sigh.

This. I started to make a post a few times but I’m honestly too angry to even address the posts I’ve been seeing about how Korean men are rotten lying liars and successful ones are only dating foreign women for visas.

So, just this.