Chubby Chick Running

It was my birthday on Wednesday. I love birthdays! To me it is a celebration of a year that has passed, adventures that have been lived, new things learned, old things forgotten. I am getting to an age where people are expecting you to have reached certain milestones: Get married? Have a stable job in a good company and climb the corporate ladder? Have a house? Have a car? I have none of those. But here is a list of things I did in the past year. Some of them are average. Some of them are huge. All of them make me thankful that I have lived another year.

Meet Molly. She is an orphan, a street cat, a nocturnal party animal, a kisser, a scratcher and a princess. She has separation anxiety, daddy issues, an obsession with toilet paper and a very irritating obsession with objects standing on my desk / dresser/ bedside table. Molly has been my roommate for the past 7 months and since Sundays are about being thankful for (sm)ALL things, today's post is dedicated to her.

Exactly 2 years and 8 months ago, I sold my car, put all of my stuff (read: fridge, bed and desk) into storage (read: Mom & Dad's garage), packed 25kg into a suitcase, hopped on a plane and came to South Korea. Back then I had a whole list of reasons that I used to justify my decision: Study debt, heartbreak, boredom, wanderlust.

5 kilometres. 5000 metres. 500 000 centimetres. 5 000 000 millimetres. It's not that far, right? I've walked that distance lots of times on the island to get from one area to another. But I've never had the urge to run it and THAT is exactly what I plan to do on May 8th, 2011 in Daegu. Call it my first triumph. Call it my last hurrah, before I leave Korea permanently.

Death whispered in my ear last week, as it sometimes does. Instead of stopping and asking  who it was going to take away from me THIS time and instead of taking a minute to call all my loved ones to tell them I love them... I did what I always do when Death talks to me. I did what I do best: I ran. I ran as far and as fast as I could. When I couldn't run anymore, I partied as hard as I could. Then I dropped to the floor and slept as long as I could...and when I finally woke up Death had taken from me one of the most important influential people in my life. One of the bravest women I've ever known.

Today was one of THOSE days.  I'm in a super time of my life and a very blessed season. I've been eating right, exercising and doing things that I like. I went back to my old church in Okpo and I've been taking more responsibility there. I've met some pretty awesome people and made special new friends. But TODAY.....man oh man.

We go to a bar every weekend. We don't go to the bar because we want to get drunk or pick up guys. We go to this specific bar because the owner and his whole staff are really good friends of ours. So most Friday (and / or Saturday) nights we head out to Jazz Bar to hang out with some of the most authentic people I know. Since they do a really good cocktail show, they have become quite well-known on the island and among the foreigners who live and work here. (Oh, by the way, I live on an island. It's the 2nd largest island in South Korea) In the week the bar has mostly Korean customers, but over weekends there are way more foreigners there than Koreans. Mostly men. Mostly workers at the  2 big shipyards: Samsung and DSME. Some of them are alone, some of them are with friends.