Boy was it tough finding a title for this entry; there just aren't enough songs out there which mention the word "Christmas." In the end I decided to go with the one which blends the complicated and mixed range of emotions I find myself feeling today. It's a song that simultaneously makes me want to sink into a deep, dark depression, but also get up and dance around the room. It finds fun in its own sad resignation, which is a pretty great thing, and captures a lot of what today is for me.
I've been thinking about how I would feel waking up on Christmas day, knowing that my family is over 10,000km away from here. I knew before I moved here what my holidays were likely to be like, and I knew I wasn't going to be home, but it's not the sort of thing you really prepare for until the day finally arrives. This is, after all, the first Christmas of my life I've spent away from home.
So how did I feel waking up today? Well, hungover for one. Also a little hungry. And I kinda needed to use the bathroom.
In a lot of ways this is just another day here. I'm still in the middle of my work week and I don't have any holidays coming up. Although we have been playing some games and having parties with our students all week, which has been a lot of fun. Someone decided that one of the games would be arm wrestling, with the students pitted against - you guessed it - me. I mean...I'm definitely stronger than them, but...god damn my arm hurts a lot today. My point here is that this feels a lot like an ordinary week; I'll be off Friday night, returning to work on Monday, same old same old. Right?
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| My students have really locked on to the whole "I have a really red face" motif. |
To be honest I'm trying to underplay the emotions involved. I've been on edge all week and have found myself getting annoyed at things my students have said that otherwise wouldn't phase me. My students complain frequently about having to attend our academy after school, which is normally the sort of comment that just rolls off me. But this week it was a little more grating than it should have been. Comments like, "I hate that we have to come in during the week of Christmas!" usually prompted me to say, "Yeah well I have to come in on Christmas Day, and I have to teach a class on dystopian fiction, so shut up you little shits!"
I of course said none of that, but it's been rough. It certainly didn't help that the section of Pictures of Hollis Woods that I'm teaching this week is prominently about a teacher who is sad she can't be home with her family on Christmas Day. I found out who was responsible for the organization of the winter term and they have since been rolled up in a carpet and thrown off a bridge that Pyeongtaek doesn't even have. This town makes casual murder extremely difficult.
I'm not sad to be here. Melancholy, yes. It's unavoidable. It's the price you pay for living in a foreign country and working somewhere with limited holidays. It's the emotional rent for a year filled with amazing new experiences, new friends, and a life more full of meaning than any job I have ever had. And I'll pay it gladly, because when I go in to work today I'm going to sit in a room with a bunch of incredibly bright, creative and hilarious kids and I'm going to try to make them give a damn about a Ray Bradbury novel that I haven't even read yet. And it's going to be awesome.
If you're lucky enough to be with your family - or just your good friends or people you love - this holiday season, tell them they're awesome and buy them a drink or two. Or three. Or ten. Make it count, because you miss it when it doesn't come around. And if you, like me, find yourself far away from home this holiday season, just reach out a bit: the love is still there, diminished in no way by the distance between you.
Merry Christmas, friends and family! I love you all.
Today's title (come on, you knew this one)
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