But the song remains the same...

You know how sometimes you can be somewhere, doing something completely ordinary, when you hear a song on the radio/loudspeaker/TV/etc that you associate with a particular moment in time. No matter the song or where you are; in that instant, when you hear it again, you're transported back to the moment where that song became inscribed with that memory photograph. It happened a lot when I was back home, but I find it stands out even more here since hearing English songs are a rarity. If I hear a particular rap song, I can usually remember going to one of the OV or Cashin's parties and dancing to it with my friends. Or I can harken back to the summer of '05, quite a memorable one in a lot of ways. It was a summer where my life took a whole new direction from the path I had been on for the first 3 years of college.

At times, I will be in my apartment, temporarily escaping the Korea world outside and doing inane tasks...and I'll hear this Eve 6 song that reminds me of Governor's School 2001, a Colin Hay song that I swore for the longest time I wouldn't listen to again until I was really ready, or now, maybe even a funny country song about ticks and I start to dream about being back home in the country. Those little moments I relieve in my head make me homesick for the familiar; longing for family, friends, and personas especiales. And as hard as it is to get through a day, a week, a month with those feelings, I have to push through it and find something that makes me happy about being here. There are things that make me happy about being here in Korea, and I know that this is something that I needed to do for myself for a lot of reasons. Some of those are yet to be realized, but I am still learning as I go. It does help that people back home are supportive, even if they do miss me terribly. It is hard to leave your life on hold while everyone else's goes on, though--it seems as if lots of things are happening back home and I am sad to be missing them. But I know that when I return it will be like I never left; that's what going home means to me.