To: Ju Ly

Ju Ly—it’s finally the weekend! I was really looking forward to this weekend, and it’s here at last. To feel my best, I usually need at least two days each week to stay home without stepping foot outside, but I haven’t been able to do that for the past few weeks. I have three days off starting this weekend through Buddha’s Birthday, and my calendar is completely free of plans that require me to venture outside. Well, I do have to visit the library at some point, but that hardly counts. What kind of weekend do you have planned, Ju Ly? I saw that you just returned from an academic conference. Will you have a weekend of rest or a busy weekend of catching up on work? I hope you get to chill.

You wrote about the spring weather there in your last letter, and now that it’s time for me to respond, summer is already around the corner. I don’t mind the heat—like a lot of people, my heart flutters on summer nights, so I welcome the start of summer. But this year, I keep thinking there’s so much I need to prepare for, and sometimes I sit here thinking I can’t believe half of the year is almost over while bouncing my leg impatiently. ^.T

I want to try answering the two questions you asked me in your last letter—what am I writing these days and what do I want to write, and whether I have experience living as a foreigner or an outsider (that is, settling down or starting from scratch in an unfamiliar place). For starters, I can’t remember the last time I wrote something I wanted to write. There wasn’t anything in particular that I wanted to write either. Probably because I was busy filling out loads of job applications. Maybe I’m even keeping some of my feelings at bay on purpose. I’m not thinking about a lot outside of how do I start this new role and get settled in? I can’t tell if this is good or bad. And I’ve only been reading books related to my immediate work. I really want to try to do something different this weekend, but will I succeed?

And while I’ve never lived as a foreigner somewhere, I’ve experienced getting acclimated to an unfamiliar place several times. Since I turned twenty, I spent a lot of time wandering around many different cities in South Korea, and even in Seoul, I’ve lived in several different neighborhoods. I think I kept moving around because I tend to thrive on new work that I’ve never done before. Of course, I’ve become quite attached to my current neighborhood, so I want to stay here, but who knows. Hmmm. The most notable experience is probably my time living in Ulsan. I had moved there with some friends to start a labor union. I can’t remember if we lived there for more or less than a year, but we were in Ulsan for around that long. I knew nothing about Ulsan then, but I just went for it. It wasn’t easy to get used to that city. And perhaps I never tried that hard to get acclimated in the first place.

It was so much fun to live in Ulsan with my friends. Of the four of us, one friend was someone who I think is the funniest person in the world. We’d wake up to laughter and laugh until we fell asleep. We nearly laughed ourselves out of our apartment. Speaking of funny memories, the apartment we lived in was ancient, and we found a rat in the bathroom! And the rat was eating our bathroom soap! That’s when I first learned that rats have a taste for soap… and that you’ll see a ton of search results when you google “rat ate my soap”...

These days, I’ve been thinking a lot about “trauma” or “confessional” writing. I ended up watching a TED talk that someone shared on Twitter. The video critiqued the college admissions trend to give more positive evaluations to essays about personal trauma. Starting a few days ago, I saw some tweets dunking on the memoir Crying in H Mart, and while I haven’t had a chance to take a closer look, I found myself wanting to think about this more. I still haven’t read the book, but I want to think about what class means in South Korea, how we read stories about class, how people think about class, and what role class plays in our lives. If, by chance, you’ve already read the book, Ju Ly, I’d love it if you’d tell me more about these topics in your response.

It’s raining here—so delightful!

I hope you enjoy a long weekend that will be as long as you wish it to be, Ju Ly.

Yours,

Boyoung