Stuck inside yesterday, rain for the first time in months. The good kind of rain, the first rain of spring. The one needed to wash away the collective garbage and dust of winter, to wash away the brownness that has covered everything for the last 4 months. Peeking my head outside today, I awoke to an overcast day but one that was clear of the stink that has been in the air lately. An overcast day but one that is because of clouds because of droplets of water lingering in the air rather than from dust and pollution.
And with the rain comes green, the deep green that can only be found with the onset of spring. One day of rain and the grass has grown. Rice patties are no longer plain dirt fields but alive with the next years crop. Trees, no longer dead skeletons of their once mighty selves, they begin to show a green aura about them. Over night the city has changed from a dead concrete jungle to something alive once again. It is not only greens that cover the city but yellows too. Bright yellow flowers on the trees, the same yellow as the rape fields of Alberta. A yellow that cuts the dark hues of winter like a sword cutting though silk. It brightens not only the city but my heart. It is easy to find the upward curl of a smile on children’s faces here, knowing that spring is here and the cold weather is gone for yet another year.
Soon the cherry blossoms will be out here. I have never experienced the cherry blossoms but I have seen photos and heard stories about how beautiful they are. Pink white flowers by the thousands. For a few short weeks, not even that long, the trees will be covered, with a second snow, one that signals not the onset of the cold dark winter but the onset of spring. They have already started, the young trees are nearly in full bloom, the older ones hold the green buds that will soon be an explosion of colour. As the blossoms age, when the birds and the bees have done their work and the fruit of their labour will begin to bend the branches of the trees, the blossoms will fall from the trees, fall upon the ground like snow. For so many things, this weeks is a beginning. It is my signal to explore Korea more. I feel as if I have been hiding from it for the last four months and now that spring is here I have no excuse to hide any longer. Weekends will be full with climbing out doors, the weeks will go by at an accelerated rate from here on and before I know it, it will be Autumn again and the start of yet another adventure.
And despite the fact that so many things are beginning this week, there are also some things that will be ending. Boom has spent the last two weeks here and we have grow even closer together. It will be hard to see her go at the end of this week but due to circumstances beyond both of our control we must yet again part ways for what could be another six months. We both hope that it will not be that long but in reality, it very well could be. And as I think about her impending departure, I find myself wondering if the glass is half full, or half empty. In two short weeks, I will be six months through my contract, half way exactly. At times it seems as the last six months have gone by incredibly fast but at other times it feels as if they have gone by painfully slow. It has been hard to force myself to be away from the ones I love the country that I want to be in and the life I want to be living but I know in the long run, it will be worth the effort. But I do wonder after growing even closer to Boom in the last three weeks, if it will be even harder to be apart for another stretch. I can only hope that the spring, and then the summer will make time go even faster and that I will soon be ‘home’.
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