Some years ago, Dear Reader, I went to teach English as a second language in Korea, my first job upon graduating college. It was a very stimulating plunge into the unknown (I had studied Japan some, but was absolutely ignorant of Korea), and I wrote letters prolifically and kept somewhat of a journal.
There were some mild adventures over and above the constant challenging immersion in novelty -- the new language, job, relationships and culture -- which produced a fairly extensive paper record.
At some point between my somewhat hasty departure from that country and the present, I transcribed that journal, and, separately, fearful of losing either the shreds of paper or any of their individual contextual significance, I permanently affixed them across several pages of a sketchbook as a sort of hyper-collage. (I do not, at this time, have any images of said collage at hand, but may get around to making some).
But for the final chapter or so, which has seen some use, that journal has just sat inert in the archives. I recently found that transcript, and have posted each minimally-edited journal entry in its appropriate time.
This presented -- or, rather, expanded -- some issues I've had with the blog format. First there is the question of serial works: When you post them in order, the beginning constantly gets pushed down the page; if you post them in reverse-order (with an eye toward the final layout), then you risk undermining the development of your own narrative by exposing later passages before earlier ones. Second is the question of anonymity.
Anyway, in posting them, I was surprised and disappointed not to find some things I was sure that I had cleverly written, and suppose, if I really did write such as I remember, that it must have been in the letters. I was also pleasantly surprised to find accounts of things that I had either forgotten or suspected myself of embellishing over the years.
So, they're all filed under the label "arirang," which is the name of a traditional Korean song, back in 1995 and 1996. The journal begins with 8/11/95 entry "arriv'd" and ends with 2/27/96 entry "uninform'd" (though two related items follow that one).
You might be interested in such highlights as: kim'd, no-rae bang'd, grief'd, songpyeon'd, confront'd, punctur'd, wedding shop'd, bull-tiger-monkey-rat'd, negotiat'd, and, of course, bust'd.