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Stranger in a Strange Land Newsletter: October 2005

Stranger in a Strange Land Newsletter: October 2005

Dear Readers,
It's that time of year again, when a young man's fancy turns to travel. I've continued travelling to new and exotic places like Orthodox Jewish services and Ivy-League Universities and right now, believe it or not, I'm writing to you from San Francisco, California (my first time in California within my memory!). But this is not the same. I'm inspired to write this Stranger in a Strange Land Newsletter now because tomorrow morning I will be: travelling to a land where they don't speak English so well! Wunderbar. Sugoi. Tov me'od. I loves it!

I said I've been easing into it with such strange destinations as Orthodox Jewish services and a couple American universities. Let's just say there was a lot of drinking at ALL THREE establishments... No, what they all had in common was my curiosity and interest in them, but my reassurance after visiting that I'm not committing myself to anything quite yet. I went to the Jewish services mainly to work on my Hebrew, but what with constantly reading ancient Hebrew texts and all, I start to think about the actual religion. And me and college are like THIS... in theory. The truth is, I love education and Judaism both, along with the bodies of knowledge associated with them and many of the rituals and traditions that come with them (graduations and bar mitzvahs are cool, who can deny it?). But damned if I'm going to get up early every Saturday morning and wear uncomfortable clothing or dish out thousands of hours and dollars to a school when I could spend it all on travel!

Which is, of course, what this newsletter is all about: folks, I'm going to Korea for a couple months. You know, why not? I enjoyed Korea a lot when I visited last year and so I'll get a bigger taste now. The plan is I'm going to work on farms in Korea, preferably in small towns where no one speaks English and I'm surrounded by trees (trees, in case you haven't heard, are good teachers, not just for language but in other areas of life as well). I am going to have some help in finding these farms: WWOOF. Yes I'm serious, it's an organization that hooks up travellers with small organic farms to work for free room and board. Good deal by me: Koreans feed you well.

I'll arrive in Seoul on Tuesday night, hang there for a few days, and then head over to Cheju-do, an island that is supposedly "sub-tropical." As if that wasn't enough of an excuse I have an ex-girlfriend who lives there. We met in Germany at the Goethe Institut studying German in the same class. She was a striking, expressionless, smooth skinned beauty sitting across from me. I thought, "She's so beautiful but not somebody I would ever end-up with." I love being wrong. I really do. Her name is Hye-Eun and we've kept in touch, in fact she left her school in Germany, where she studied the church organ, to go back to Korea and decompress, which endears her to my heart of course.

Turns out she doesn't want to see me. Earlier this year she said she would love to see me, then I said I might be coming to Korea, then she said she'll have to think about it, and then the day I arrived in San Francisco I read an e-mail informing me she doesn't want to see me. Shit. I'm still going. I thought it might be nice to go around mainland Korea first because autumn is supposed to be a beautiful time of year there. But I'll still have time to see autumn when I move on to another WWOOF farm after the tropical island and: a plan is a plan. In my life, I don't have much outside structure so it's important that my word is bond, if nothing else. Occasionally, I can chew through those bonds if I really want/need to but mostly it's nice to stick to them.

That's all I got folks. I'll share more about my impression of New York City below because a couple people said they do want to hear more about it. And everyone feel free to make such requests: that article I linked to last newsletter someone just asked me to write an article for a homeschooling newsletter. I said, "What should I write about?" She
said, "Write about why you left school." So, I did. That easy. Fun stuff, so feel free. I know I want to write more about California (nice place) and seeing my friend Trey. But that's it for now!

Take care everyone and keep in touch.

Yours truly,
Eli



In regards to New York well, I was there in August so my impression is of a big hot cauldron of sky scrapers and concrete streets with iridescent, colorful, shiny advertisements greasing up the pot and little people of all colors and sizes scurrying around... makes me hungry. Anyway, one of the main qualities of New York was it's overwhelming quality. There is so much going on in so many different areas of life: so much dirtiness, so much shininess, so much poverty, so much wealth. It's a really exciting place that I want to see more of.

That's really all I got. It's time to go to bed. Good night!