a fried rice thanksgiving

in my former life, my 747 packard college-house life, there were days when i would look around the stinking cesspool fruit-fly haven that some considered our kitchen and i would want to scream in frustration. i have never been a neat or clean person by normal standards, but there are limits to what any health-loving person should be expected to endure. a never-ending stack of dirty dishes that were not my own and a floor sticky with beer from an evening two weeks prior jumped to the top of my list of pet peeves. but we were eight busy and motivated college women. housework was not necessarily high on our set of priorities. i understood, but there would be those moments, those i-cant-take-this-anymore moments, when i would feel like kevin in home alone. you know the scene, the one where he finds out that he has to sleep with a bed-wetter and he is also getting shoved around physically and emotionally by every member of his extended family. "when i grow up, im living alone. do you hear me? im living alone, im living alone."

i live alone now. my apartment is not perfect, but it is mine. the mess is mine. the clean is mine. the one piece of furniture is mine. no one fights me for the bathroom or tells me to take out the trash. no one borrows my clothes or eats my peanut butter. and for the most part i like it.

but everything is a little bit different here. it is korea after all. a trip to the store is so much more, as is a drive in a cab. i expected difficulty although i suppose i never really spent time thinking about what that would be like. maybe was better that way.

korea is definitely different. regardless, living alone anywhere means really being alone, and being so often. there is no one else making coffee in the morning, no one else brushing their teeth next to me at night. but the differences extend further than the day to day. my first holiday alone went fine, but everything was skewed. where was the cranberry sauce? the pumpkin pie? the biscuts?

where was my family?

im not kevin. i love living alone and the independence it provides me, but i would really love it if my thanksgiving had less fried rice and more olsen/rebos.