Now it's Boxing Day and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do, since I'm not British and I don't have any servants to box things for. Instead, I'm staying in all day, gorgeously unshowered, and recovering from my hundreds of exhausting trips into the city over the last week by chaining through episodes of Misfits, an E4 show about superheroic delinquents that is my current obsession. (There's no more Boardwalk Empire or Dexter or Downton Abbey this year, and too much Adventure Time with Finn & Jake makes my brain feel spongy.) I'm into the third season and still loving it, which means it must be good TV, since obviously my taste is impeccable.
Christmas this year was my smallest haul of living memory; my parents have money and spend it foolishly on the holidays, but my "uncle" -- read: mother's best gay friend from high school -- John and his boyfriend Sam don't, so this year I got a plant, a picture frame, a traditional handle-less Korean tea set, a jar of olives, and, most beautifully, two huge chunks of real cheese. Since many Koreans are lactose intolerant -- it could only occur to the unwashed denizens of Western Europe to try drinking out of other species -- cheese and milk aren't as popular here as they are in the West; they're not impossible to find, but the versions you do get are watered down, sometimes weirdly, which I've been told explains the popularity of "banana milk" and Laughing Cow spreadable cheese. It's next to impossible to find a decent sharp cheddar, but Uncle John somehow tracked down a block of extremely palatable Edam which has been my main source of sustenance since I ate the entire Christmas cake given me by my employer, Principal Song. My resistance to going shopping is, yes, mostly shower-based, but as long as I have milk for tea I'm pretty much set and I don't care who knows it.
It's amazing to live on my own for the first time in my life. I've literally always had roommates, from my parents to my freshman year dorm-mate Ari to various friends I've lived with through college. Even before I came to Korea and after I moved out of the collegiate duplex, I was renting a room from a small business-y type who came home at odd hours but still lived in the same house, which meant I could never really get comfortable unless he was out of the country, which, granted, was pretty often. I love living by myself; I can be as messy or as clean as I want, set the heat to whatever I want, eat whatever I want, and generally get my early-20s disgusting habits out of my system before I have to inflict them on anyone else again. I'm a little worried that all the luxury of my 100-and-that's-generous-square-foot studio apartment will forever ruin me for cohabitation, but I suppose most people live on their own and then make the transition back to caring what other people think of them in the dark of night, so I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
It's equally amazing to be able to go out and see people, like for Christmas, to have fun and get a little drunk and generally revel, and then be able to come back to the quiet of one's own tiny apartment and hang around and drink some tea and eat some cheese and go to sleep. I thought it might be lonely, but it's not, really. It's liberating. I'm not terrible company for myself, which, according to most of the daytime TV talk therapy I've seen, is one of the best things to be.
Merry Christmas, all you mooks still in Western time zones! Happy Boxing Day, Empire-inclined expats! Cool it on the soju and don't get mugged on the subway!
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