7.28

from riverside to davis to incheon airport to seoul to jejudo and back to seoul and finally my dad's house in daejon, i think i travelled for over 48 hours. i am finally home. wait did i say home? hah. i guess i'll just call it that for the time being. today might very well be my only day off considering i'm going to be whisked away to grandma's country home for the weekend and then back to seoul next week. jejudo was surprisingly fun. after i found out it was going to be a trip via tour bus, i clenched my teeth and begrudgingly awaited my three days of doom.
but you know what. it actually turned out to be one of the better three days in a row throughout my whole stay.

day 0/1

it's currently 5:53 am and i am awake. i haven't woken up this early since a year ago and even then i had to be poked and prodded to open my eyes. oh the wonders of jet lag. it hasn't nearly yet been a day since i've been in the motherland. is it strange that korea seems like, dare i say, my second home? riding the shuttle bus back to grandma's place from the airport, i was looking out the window and still in that daze of "i can't believe i'm here" but it was a different sort of i can't believe i'm here. more of a familiar one. i stepped off the bus and was met with the all too distinctive korea street stench of trash, sweat, and smog through which i maneuvered my way with my luggage in tow on the cobble stoned streets.

it looks like i'll be spending most of my time here with family but i mean, that's alright with me. all i just wanted was to get away and it looks like, for now, i've been welcomed into a pair of sticky and reassuring arms.

it's been one whirlwind of a week

summer is already well underway, school's in session, and it's 90 something degrees (and counting) in riverside. its been exactly a week now since i went home for my sister, mimi's, graduation and it already seems so long ago. i had to rush back to riverside the following week to move out of my apartment, cabin 8, and it was only then that i understood why my mom fell ill every time we made a move to another house or city or country. yeah unpacking may be worse hell than packing but shoving everything into garbage bags isn't all the easy either. so three days, four showers, and a box full of consumed popsicles later, we were finally all moved out. it was the "end of an era" as quoted by my roommate. indeed. what an era.

after that i spent the whole week pretty much bumming it at my friends' house and mooching off of their everything. oh and i almost forgot. three friends and i, on our way to a celebratory moving out dinner to boiling crab, ended up stranded on the freeway for a good forty minutes. i was racing on the 60 when the tire light suddenly started blinking. i thought nothing of it until my steering wheel started shaking furiously and the car that was tailgating me sped off for safety. i pulled over and it turns out the whole rubber part of my tire flew off and i was pretty much driving on metal. i guess the accident made for good memories but honestly its made me paranoid about feeling the slightest bit of turbulence when driving.

speaking of paranoid, the house of the room i'm subleasing got robbed the other day. i was watching x-men for the second time (yes it's pretty good) and got ten missed calls. apparently someone slit the laundry room screen and climbed in the through the window. my heart literally almost stopped when i found out but luckily nothing was gone and no one was hurt. if i were an airport, my security alert color as of now would be red but i'm sure everything will be fine. i was always the kid that would never dare touch her eyes after using bug repellent for fear of becoming blind so if anything, red is me being overdramatic. i'm probably more like at orange right now.