KOREA!

It's like I never left. I can't believe it's been a year -- more than a year, as my Great Aunt tells me (she remembers to the day when I left last year: Aug. 17) -- since I've been here.

I got home late on Monday night, spent Tuesday lounging around in pajamas with grandmother during the day and then around some relatives at night, and have been loving it all: the gorging on homemade Korean food, the cheerfulness -- both wordless and chatty -- of my relatives, the fierce hug from my great aunt when she finally got home from the patch of country her family owns and on which they plant potatoes and peppers and garlic and sesame every year, the shifting back into Korean language, the memories of all the things I found annoying and endearing about this country. The motherland.

As much as any place can be, this is home.

I spent most of today at the hospital, getting routine checkups at the eye doctor and getting my fix of Accutane from the dermatologist, who suggested I try something less drastic since my skin looked all right. I must have looked pretty desperate, because she gave me the Accutane prescription anyway, with the gentle suggestion again that I try something less on the order of nuclear blast and more on the order of controlled rounds of fire the next time. In the middle somewhere, I also had lunch with my grandmother, who goes to the hospital most days to escape the heat and to do her rehab exercises (she had back surgery last year).

My dad didn't go with me to these appointments, so I relied on my grandmother a bit and the nice folks at the International Clinic, who remembered me from last year. It's funny, but I wasn't as nervous as I would have been last year, going by myself to see the doctors and stuff. One might argue that I shouldn't have ever been nervous, since the doctors all know a fair bit of English, especially at this huge hospital, but I would be anxious last year, and I wasn't too much so today. I'm less afraid of saying I don't understand. And I'm less afraid in general, I think. Perhaps this nerve-wracking year at school? Perhaps this nerve-wracking summer with Destroyer Supe? Or perhaps the lessons of those two years in Korea needed some time to mellow and mature, and are just now coming to fore?

The nice ladies at the International Clinic gasped when they saw me, and said: "You were like a baby last year, and now you look so mature!" I guess I have aged a bit this last year, then. Hee.

I was pretty pooped during the middle of the afternoon, as jet lag hit me, but I did have a dinner date with someone from my old office, so I went to meet her and was very glad I did. She reminds me of Charm -- both are so resilient in the face of adversity, and I so admire them for it, even as I pray for them, in my nondenominational, non-Christian way.

Tomorrow, I meet one friend for lunch, and then KB for dinner. Yes, KB! For whom I had that bout of swoon-dom last year. It'll be interesting to see him again.

Oooo, and I impulse-bought a pair of shoes already: green sandal-y things. For $6.81. I love this country.

It's raining like the dickens outside. It was very nice all yesterday, and I spent almost all of it inside. And today, it pours, and I had to be outside. But it's better than the heart-stopping heat of Tokyo.