Today the weather felt like Ho Chi Minh City

I just came from putting things in a box to mail home--came to the computer because I've been meaning to do an entry all week and finally I just felt like going and doing it now, even though I'm writing just to write, not to record the numerous things from last weekend that I've been meaning to record. I was putting things away in this box that will take six weeks to reach the States, things that I don't think I'll have a use for for the next seven weeks---books I've already read, my bulky headphones that I don't need anymore now that I have an iPod (thanks again, readers who made that possible, namely those related to me), the complimentary clay bowl from the coffee shop I went to with that nameless boy several weeks ago when he had a rental car and we went driving at night.

I wanted to write about last Saturday, when Rachel and I went to the army base in Itaewon to eat with other ETAs and Embassy staff, and how the meal was mediocre but the vibe was striking. It was like an entire small town in America, with the streets narrowed and the spaces between the buildings condensed, ringed with the walls of a fortress. There was Seoul American Middle School two steps away from Seoul American High School. As we left the fancy hotel that housed the restaurant (and other services--I saw a sign that said, "Brenda's Birthday," like a public service announcement of a base-wide celebration) another ETA pointed and said, "Look, a U.S. post office box!" and I, unabashedly, asked, "Where?" and glanced around. For the first time ever, Americans outnumbered Koreans and I felt both oddly inconspicuous and oddly conspicious, because I wasn't millitary, I didn't fit in, I was just here for an overpriced American buffet. For some reason it felt ironic that the gates we entered and left through were manned and guarded exclusively by numerous Korean military and police. One said some English greeting to us as we left and laughed, in the typical way that I encounter every day, and I thought, "This is your job. Do you do this with every American that walks through?"

And then Sunday. (I got interrupted just now. Seo Jin likes to ask me to write things in cursive for her, though I can't remember how to do capital letters for the life of me. I had to fetch a birthday card from my grandparents for reference--for longer than I've been alive my grandmother has been signing everything in beautiful calligraphy. The phrase Seo Jin wanted was 'Green Tea' in green marker on a small strip of paper.) What can I write about Sunday? Back over winter break Rachel volunteered at the House of Sharing, a home for Korean women who were enslaved by the Japanese military for prostitution during the colonial period, a place for people to visit and see the museum and hear the testimonies of the grandmothers (halmonis). Rachel was going to spend Sunday night there, at the house a short distance from Seoul, since Monday was a holiday. Some small part of me was afraid of going to the House of Sharing, I think, but when Rachel encouraged me one last time on Sunday night, as the two of us and Billie and Tae Jun sat in a teashop in Insadong, I realized something. It occured to me that I needed to go, not just for the common-sense reasons that took me to the House of Sharing back in November (hearing the stories of the halmonis, recognizing the crimes done against these women) but because I've been feeling selfish lately, preoccupied with myself maybe is a better phrase, too inside my own head, thinking about my own comforts and everything I'm looking forward to in the States. And I'm glad that I went, though I wasn't expecting to find myself sitting around with Koreans in my own age group, talking about U.S. and Japanese and Korean history, and later even talking about movies and music. I met a guy who could speak Vietnamese but little English, though his English listening skills were about on par with my Korean listening skills--thus we understood each other when he warned me to stop calling the city I visited in January 'Saigon,' or some Vietnamese would get angry. I met a 19 year-old university student who bought 'In Utero' at a music store in Rome when he was 15 because he liked the cover, and now cites it as some of his favorite music; who wants to serve his upcoming mandatory 2 years of military service being a firefighter in part because it seems potentially hypocritical to be enraged by what the Japanese military did to these women, and at the same time buy into ardent Korean nationalism and militarism, and as a firefighter 'you might see dead bodies but it's better than learning how to kill people.'

I want to write more, but it would take awhile, and I just want to try to capture the essence of it. I met the halmonis (the grandmothers, women who have been going to Seoul every Wednesday for years and years to protest in front of the Japanese Embassy, asking for an apology) but mostly I just sat quietly near them while they watched TV. When I came into the house on Sunday at dinnertime and sat down, one halmoni reached over and pulled her hand along my ponytail, and I wished I could have communicated my appreciation somehow.

We left Monday after lunch. Mario, a Japanese man who has been at the House as a volunteer for a long time and intends to stay until either the Japanese government makes amends or all the halmonis die, drove us and the Korean students to the bus stop, and made Billie, Rachel and I promise to come back and visit again in the next couple months. I hope to. It was comfortable there, so peaceful, I want to experience that again.

It really feels like summer these days. I have this strange sense of deja vu, seeing the seasons in Korea come back around. Today the weather was oppressive, oddly hazy but at the same time the sun was hot, and coupled with the growing humidity it felt stuffy. I left the teacher's room to stand outside at one point but I still felt like the air was thin (or too thick). I went to the hospital with my host mother this afternoon. She has a sort of condition, it's like chronic fatique syndrome and involves the thyroid I think, I can never understand her when she tells me the name of it. Recently her mouth has been swollen and her white blood cell count was low, so she went back to the doctor yesterday for some tests. Today he told her she had to come in to talk to him about the results, he couldn't discuss them over the phone. We dropped by the hospital on the way back from work, and just as I was wondering if she was relieved to have me as company, she admitted to me that she was feeling upset. Though she said so very calmly, I figured she must really have been nervous to actually put it into words. While we were waiting outside the office for her to be called in, she suddenly got up and hurried to the bathroom (not for any urgent reason I think) and I knew she must be nervous. It seems like anxiety makes us more aware of our bodies, of the potential for mundane things that we don't often think about, like the processes of our bladder.

By the time she went in I was thoroughly nervous myself. She was in there for awhile, and I wondered how I would react if she was diagnosed with some chronic illness. I tried to comfort myself with the thought that if there was some chance of an abnormality, they would run more tests first before any diagnosis. My host mother finally came out, gave me a wry smile that feigned annoyance but read more like relief, and said that she had to have blood drawn again. We went to the blood drawing center, which was a small, office-like room with one technician sitting at a desk. When my host mother went in and sat down I followed. It's odd watching someone else get blood drawn. I watched the needle, not her face, though most of the time I watched what appeared to be a urine sample, with no cover, sitting on a tray along with a syringe of blood, atop the desk across from me.

On the way to the car Mrs. Lee told me that earlier results had indicated that "all the components" of her blood were lower than average, and I puzzled over what that meant. I guess we'll see next week.