We Must Cultivate Our Garden/Il faut cultiver son jardin

Joel has a new hobby. We have two narrow balconies on either side of our 14th-floor apartment: one has the refrigerator and the washing machine, but the other is pretty much empty except for the A/C unit (and it has a shelf for planters outside of one of the windows). A few months ago, when one of his friends moved from here to Seoul, Joel bought several planters and a large bag of potting soil from him and decided to start a balcony garden. He ordered a few packets of seeds from the internet. When they arrived in mid-March, he planted spearmint, basil, fish peppers, cayenne peppers, eggplants, chives, and a packet of "mixed Oriental greens" that came as a freebie from the vendor that he ordered from.

It stayed cold throughout most of March and the beginning of April, so after nearly three weeks we began to get discouraged. Then one morning, we saw that a handful of the chives had sprouted. The eggplant and the cayenne peppers soon followed, and after that the basil, spearmint, and one lone fish pepper. Soon the greens came up as well.

Since then, the garden has...well, grown, for lack of a better word. After the first planters started sprouting, Joel bought more seeds from E-mart and Daiso (the local dollar store) and has now gone through five large bags of potting soil to plant peppermint, lavender, lemon basil, green beans, marigolds, and cosmos. He has packets of thyme, asters, and more basil still waiting. He has plans to buy an extra laundry drying rack for the beans to climb. Every time we go shopping, he looks at the seeds and picks up a few more packets. I fear we will soon run out of room on the balcony.

Though I often tease him that this is becoming a minor obsession, it is a welcome distraction these days. For nearly two weeks, we were inundated with frantic coverage of North Korea's bellicose rhetoric and constantly speculation that they could launch a missile "at any moment." Both of my parents, several members of my family in Brazil, and a handful of friends back home sent concerned messages. While there was definitely nothing to worry about (NK does this crap all the time to pressure governments into giving them aid, and our longtime expat friends say pull similar stunts every year), and we certainly appreciate the concern (it's nice to know you guys are thinking of us), I would be lying if I said things weren't a little tense.

And now all of this chaos in Boston. Seriously, who the hell bombs a marathon? I woke up on Tuesday morning (remember, we are 14 hours ahead of Texas) to find my Twitter stream dominated by posts about what happened in Boston - people maimed, limbs lost, deaths and hospitalizations, and internet resources to find missing loved ones. The JFK Library was on fire. A fertilizer plant explosion destroys half of a central Texas town and registers as a small earthquake. And then a manhunt for the marathon bombing suspects puts the entire city of Boston on lockdown. Guys, wtf happened to America while we've been gone?

There is a blog post that has been circulating through the expat community over the last few months about what happens to people when they live abroad. I hadn't really given it too much thought, since I knew that we would miss things and be changed by the experience - but now that we have extended our contract and it is sinking in that we will be gone for a while, some things have been weighing on me more. The "honeymoon phase" of culture shock has definitely worn off, and now some of the things about Korea that I used to find fascinating or amusing are getting annoying. I miss Western food, especially Tex-Mex; I just about died when Joel actually found Corona and limes at E-mart a few weeks ago. I am still trying to figure out what friendship means in a place where nearly every relationship has an expiration date. We have missed two weddings already and will miss at least two more (one of which is our best man's, which is really sad for me), and we are barely making it back home to see my maid of honor get hitched (congratulations, Babushka!). Our friends are starting careers, having children, and making lives.

Meanwhile, we are floating in some kind of strange limbo, watching the cherry blossoms flower and shed thousands of petals to the wind.

I guess life just boils down to cultivating your own garden. While friendships here are so short-lived, Joel and I have been spending a lot of one-on-one time together, which has been really nice. We have also been putting a lot of effort into planning trips during our school vacations. We got really lucky and found dirt-cheap airfare to Japan for our July vacation: 90.5 hours in Tokyo for only $188 round trip. We also booked our flight to Italy and reserved an apartment in Venice for our post-contract "grand vacation." Definitely something to look forward to.

In the meantime, at least Joel has the balcony garden to tend...which, admittedly, is a more productive hobby than my ongoing obsession with Skyrim.