It’s Alive!!

I never meant to stop writing this blog. I’ve always loved writing – and I do mean always, even back in second grade when I’d write a short story a dozen pages long when Mrs. Stenner only asked for three – and when I started it nearly four years ago, The Globetrotting Geek was one of the best ways I found to catalogue and share my experiences living in Aomori.

But life, as it often seems to do, got in the way. I started my Master degree in TESOL at the University College London’s Institute of Education, and that pretty much killed any enthusiasm or energy I had for writing that didn’t have to do with prescribed grammar rules, the phonetic alphabet, or the sociolinguistic implications of narratives in ESL/EFL textbooks. In short, I got tired, and writing for this blog turned into an “oh, I’ll write a post tomorrow…or maybe next week” affair that dwindled and shriveled until it died an unceremonious, neglected death. Insert Pac-man womp womp death noise here.

But even the most dehydrated plants can be revived with enough water and care if you catch them in time, so that’s the plan for The Globetrotting Geek. (That name…oh, that name, as apt as it may be; why did I think alliteration was the way to go?!) With my IOE dissertation turned in and awaiting a grade, I suddenly find myself with oodles and oodles of spare time, and a girl can only look at so many pictures of food online before she starts to go a little crazy. As I said, writing is something that I’ve always loved and taken pride in, and the things we love often have a habit of settling themselves in our blood and bones and brains to wait; even if we don’t use them, they’re still always there, ready and willing.

In the two (!) years since I’ve written, some things have stayed startlingly the same. I still run. I still do yoga. I still love photography. I still love to cook (and eat and eat and eat and eat). I still teach English abroad. I’m still bitter about the times that Buzzfeed said my Parks & Rec soulmate was Jean Ralphio and that my potato counterpart was potato salad. I still like pineapple on my pizza and pretzels in my ice cream.

And then there’s what has changed, for sure the larger part of this pie chart. I no longer live in Aomori – or even Japan –  for starters. Nope, I finished my five-year tenure on the JET Programme at the end of July and then hopped over to South Korea to teach English at the end of September. Now I live in Gangneung, a small coastal city in the northeastern part of Korea that pretty much no one has heard of and likely won’t, until the 2018 Winter Olympics roll into town, that is. Every time I tell someone where I live, they reply, “Ohhh, Gangnam?! I know where that is!”, and I have to explain that actually, no, I don’t live in one of Seoul’s most famous and popular districts.

In the two years since I’ve put digital pen to paper, it’s not just my surroundings that have changed, either. I’m better-traveled, with a trip to Thailand, two to Taiwan, and a repeat visit to New Zealand under my belt. I’ve got a bevy of new, almost useful skills in my arsenal now. The last few years I lived in Aomori, I joined a curling team. Yes, as in with the brooms and the sweeping and the walking on ice with Teflon-covered shoes. For a year, I served as the food co-editor on JET’s online magazine. And most significantly, two years ago, I picked up snowboarding and absolutely fell head over heels (sometimes literally) in love with it, a fact that an unofficial poll of my friends and family, who very sarcastically called me “Grace” throughout the first quarter-century of my life, would for sure declare the top “Wait…what?” moment of my past few years. Now it’s one of the most important parts of my life; I honestly don’t know what else makes me happier.

I’m a different person than when I last wrote here, better in most ways, perhaps worse in some. The past few years have been filled with travels, love, heartbreak, new experiences, surprises, victories, and pitfalls; I expect I’ll write about a lot of them in the next few months. George Santayana had it right when he said that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” but my own personal version reads “those who do not record the past are condemned to forget it.” And there are so many parts of my own history that I never want to forget.