My Seoulful Life: Quarantine Chronicles

“Smart people may rule the world, but reckless and stubborn people like me protect it," pronounced Hong Yoo Chan, a civil activist lawyer on my new favorite Netflix drama Vincenzo. If you hadn't already fallen in love with Yoo Chan at this point, the way he expresses his pertinacity for protecting the week will make your heart want to wrap around him.

The series so far is 20 episodes. I have just finished episode 13. I pushed play on episode one three ... or was it four?, days ago. I've earned a real A+ in Binging 101 here in quarantine.

On the eve of my release from the 14-day quarantine in my new apartment in Seoul, I've got a few reflections, as I normally do. Most of tonight's musings center around how to survive 14 days of solitude in a new country.

And here we go:

Binge, Baby, Binge

It might seem like with so much time on your hands, you should try out all the new recipes, write your next novel, or book of poems, or organize every file on your computer. Man-woman-human, if this is you, I salute you. It is not me. I have found that during my two quarantines (the first being in China) that I have about five hours a day when my brain is working with the flag at full staff. I don't know what happens all of the other hours exactly, but my eyes seem to glass over and my brain gets fuzzy. I think this is what happens to a person when they don't have much stimulation from the outside world.

Enter Netflix. Or HBO Max, or AmazonPrime, or whatever. All of them, really. I have mindfully binged my way through the past two weeks. I know that this won't be a habit that sticks, and so I have allowed myself to watch episode after episode of Kim's Convenience (which has been featured in the news recently) and Vincenzo with zero guilt.

The male lead in Vincenzo is so dishy, and the female lead is beautiful and brilliant. Binging has become synonymous with wellness the past 14 days, but so have a few other things.

Sweat, quarantinee, sweat

I do find that my mental health is stronger when I have routine, and so during quarantine, I have created some semblance of one. Each day began with HIIT and/or yoga. At the end of my chapter in China, my friend Kim introduced me to Heather Robertson, a Canadian fitness trainer who puts free videos on YouTube for equitable access. Her Tabata and HIIT workouts have torn up my muscles, but in the best way. I do not currently have any weights in my apartment, but as Jeana Anderson Cohen says, "If you have a body, you have a gym," and Robertson's videos prove it.

In addition to Robertson, I have adored staying present with the help of Maggie Umberger, my fitness friend from Chicago. Her website has an assortment of both workouts and yoga classes. I love all of her stuff, but I am especially enamored with her yoga because when Maggie leads a practice, she does so with kind reminders about micro-movements, with such lovely transitions between poses, and with purposeful sequencing. The highlight of the week was perhaps getting to tune in for one of her live virtual classes. Bringing her energy into my new apartment in real time was a marvel of technology today.

Foodie, find your apps

Another aspect of technology that I quite love is the ability to order groceries and meals from local restaurants with ease. My new school, Seoul Foreign, was so warm and welcoming as they asked for a list of groceries that each individual or family wanted in their apartment upon arrival. They also provided the first number of meals.

After this point, I allowed myself to order off of the Shuttle app once a day. It was indulgent. I regret nothing. I delighted in sipping on Earl Grey lattes, chowing on pizza, and noshing on Korean fried chicken for the first time.

I am privileged to be able to afford the luxury of the daily order. I am oh-so-thankful for this privilege as it kept my spirits higher most days.

Get a little learn on, Teacher

As noted above, the flag in my brain comes down before the sun sets when I am holed up in a small space, but I think mental stimulation is important during this time of confinement. This year I will be teaching the novel Human Acts by Korean author Han Kang. It's a rather dark and heavy, but beautifully written, book about recent Korean history. Further, her themes are timeless and I can begin to imagine some of the reflections I will have with my students about the tragedy or hope that we can bring to one another.

While I have been working to complete a 1,000-piece puzzle, I have been listening to Isabel Wilkerson's Caste. Wilkerson has a keen ability to connect racism in the States to Nazi Germany and the caste system of India, drawing astounding parallels between the three whilst offering historical and present example after another of how a caste system is alive and well within the borders of the United States.

I read mostly by day as both of these books were a lot to digest, but very important reads.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T your new host country

I knew before arriving that I would need to do a 14-day quarantine in Seoul. I understand the country's decision to mandate the quarantine for foreigners arriving. There has been a notable uptick in cases as Korea struggles to get the vaccine out as fast as they had hoped, and the Delta variant is coursing through Asia.

Quite different than the US, much of Asia monitors us to make sure we abide by the rules of quarantine. This does not bother me. A result of living in China for five years is that I have come to understand and appreciate a respect for the collective over the individual, at least in cases such as a global pandemic.

Unlike China, which had a bit more pomp and circumstance to the end of my quarantine, at noon tomorrow, I can simply delete the app and re-enter the outside world.

Those of us quarantining together apart were allowed to walk to our Covid testing site yesterday for our final PCR test. I appreciated getting a peak at my new neighborhood.

I can't wait to throw on my tennies and hit the trail along the river.

A tree with an IV. I'd like to learn more.

It is so definitely definitely definitely part of my plan to buy a Vespa. This is even my color. It'll really put the icing on the cake of #myseoulfullife.

Alright, friends and family, my eyes have blurred a few hundred words ago, and so I am going to close the computer for the night and push play on episode 14 of Vincenzo. I miss you, Minnesota. I miss you, China. I can't wait to properly meet you tomorrow, Seoul.

Love and light,

Jame

A Delivery and a Hospital Visit, and the Weekend I Want to Move Beyond

It could have turned out differently. The knock could have been for a different reason. I talked to a friend this weekend who got a knock, too, but her knock, it was less pleasant. She had to write an apology for speaking in the elevator. Talking in elevators is no longer allowed in the time of Covid-19. Her apology is now taped up in that elevator. At least the first part of my weekend story is not one of shaming or blaming or the shadow side of my host country.

On Friday afternoon, I was in the middle of a Zoom call with my seniors when I heard the rapping on my door. Confused, I muted the microphone on my computer and turned my door handle. When the man on the other side offered a smile while holding two large boxes, I shook my head in response. "Oh, no. No, that's not for me," I offered in haste, trying to return to my students. He put his hand out to stop me from shutting the door. "Yes, it's for you. To thank you," he kindly returned. "We want to thank you for your cooperation during this time," he continued in English.

A bit flustered and a bit embarrassed for what might have been a bit rude, I reached out to take the boxes and a large envelope. I smiled back and thanked the man profusely, setting the boxes on the floor and briskly returned to my students.

When I had time to further examine the delivery, I found a box of oranges and a box of apples.

Patacon does have to inspect everything that arrives in a box.

And this letter:

This letter is a keeper. My favorite line is about the "small home" and "big family." I do, I like the spirit of the letter, the sense of solidarity it inspires.

Friday, unfortunately, gave way to an experience which has led my warm feelings to dissipate, or really, to dissolve and give rise to feelings much darker in hue.

I have had a nagging health-related issue for the past week. My symptoms -- swollen glands, a sore body, and some notable tenderness -- have slowly gotten worse over the course of the last few days. Yesterday, I called a woman in HR at school to let her know I would need to see a doctor as soon as possible. I also knew that while I know my issue is unrelated to Covid-19, my context was going to make doctoring difficult. Difficult feels like an understatement now.

My only option was to go to Shekou People's Hospital as I am within my 14-day quarantine. I found this news unfavorable because I was aware enough that this community hospital was unlikely to have doctors who speak English. I pushed for someone to accompany me, to act as a translator and someone who could navigate a system that I knew from others' experiences was complex to a foreigner. At first, I was told to see if I could just call a friend to translate for me. And then I was told to quickly go outside as the ambulance was coming to pick me up.

Well, I can check ambulance ride in China off my bucket list now.

When I got to the hospital, there were a number of hoops to jump through. In the midst of my confusion and frustration and physical discomfort, I did eventually get a call saying that a nurse from my normal clinic would come to meet me. Catherine, a nurse somewhere around my age who spent many years working in Singapore, arrived about 30 minutes later. Without her, I would not have been able to even have made it to step 3 of 17.

After over an hour of waiting, we stepped into the "doctor's office."

These temporary rooms have been set up in the time of Covid-19.

I was not allowed in the regular interior of the hospital, again, because I have not completed the 14-day quarantine yet. The doctor informed us that I would have to take a swab test, blood test and have a CT scan to prove that I was clear of the virus.

Hour 4 at the hospital. Results: I have good lungs.

After spending all afternoon at the hospital, I was then told that while my blood test had already come back negative for the virus, I would still not be able to see an actual doctor until Sunday when all of the results were in.

I went home exhausted and defeated. I did not know that Saturday was simply a warm-up for the Battle of Sunday During the Time of Covid-19.

Catherine messaged me when I was home Saturday night to let me know that she would meet me back at the hospital on Sunday morning. I was so relieved that it would be her rather than someone new.

When I woke up this morning, I was at first told that I would not be able to leave my house yet because the results had not yet been reported. After a bit more time passed, I was then told I could get a taxi and meet Catherine at the entrance to the hospital. She had the results -- negative, of course -- when I arrived.

Catherine and I then got to wait for another hour for a doctor to dress in a hazmat suit and come down from inside the hospital to see me in the temporary space set up outside the hospital. While all of my results were negative for the virus, again, I am still within the 14-day quarantine period, and so I still was not allowed inside the actual hospital.

When the doctor finally arrived, she did not know where she could even see me as there were no beds set up in the rudimentary rooms. She did not have the equipment she needed to examine me. She did not even want to come within a meter of me.

After a make-shift bed was placed inside one of these rooms, I realized that the doctor expected me to disrobe with a large window open to the corridor right outside.

The windows of the room I was placed in opened right up to this space.

I insisted some kind of covering be put on the window. This took real negotiation. Eventually, a thin blue medical paper was put up on the window. By this point, I was shaky and feeling vulnerable and just so tired.

Catherine trying to negotiate with Dr. Hazmat.

The doctor would not touch me with her gloved hands. She used an ultrasound machine to tell me that I had swollen glands, and when I said that I knew that, but that was not my main concern, she simply said she didn't have the right medical tools to investigate further. I tried to show her where I was feeling pain and discomfort. She said she couldn't help further.

I erupted into sobs on that damn bed. Seven exhausting hours had led to a simple, "go home and return after your 14-days are done."

Catherine gently put her hand on me and said that we would get me to see a doctor at my normal clinic as soon as my quarantine period was over. This means I will wait until Thursday to see the doctor that I need.

After another hour of waiting, antibiotics were placed in my hand, and I left the hospital exponentially more upset than the day before.

Defeat, rage, disempowerment.

I am currently sitting in my living room in silence. When I arrived home, I lit incense and just watched the smoke rise while I focused on breathing.

I am reflecting on my anger and frustration. I am thinking about the shadows behind the rugged individualism which is part of the DNA of the American psyche, and I am thinking about the shadows behind the rule of absolutes which is part of Chinese governance. The passport I hold comes from a country where the rights of the individual arguably often trump those of the collective. My host country is the opposite: the collective bars individuals from getting their personal needs met at times. What does this all mean right now? I'm not even entirely sure, but it seems something needs to give in both contexts.

After a lot of deep breaths and some lunch, I have been sitting here looking back at photos I took two weeks ago. I was one happy woman.

Thailand, how I miss you.

I am remembering the words from my favorite poem, the one whose lines adorn my arm: "No feeling is final. Just keep going."

At the end of writing this post, my dear friend Katie and her daughter Lana stopped by to drop off cookies. I went to my balcony to find her below as she was not allowed into the building. She blew kisses. She danced. And I am feeling a little bit better.

I love you, friend.

Community is everything. I just cannot wait for actual physical embraces when these 14 days are done.

Now excuse me while I eat some homemade cookies.

Writing from Day 8 of Quarantine: A Toast to Paradox

After over a week of isolation, I now know something about what an animal in a zoo feels like. Sort of. In the sense that I’ve been taken out of my natural habitat. This is interesting, though, because as an introvert I would have argued my home is certainly my natural habitat. But 8 days into this solitude ... I’m over this shit.

Or at least the nearly absolute solitude of it. Other parts of this experience, like the ways that my community is continuing to reach me, just tickles my heart and soul. Since arriving back home on Friday night, I have been the recipient of a number of beautiful deliveries: a supply of dark chocolate, a bouquet of cat-safe flowers, two lunches of rooftop garden veggies, and ice and limes for my gin and tonics. I am ready to just be able to really give back now, and I know that the coming weeks will offer plenty of opportunities to pay it forward.

It seems that the new regulation now is that anyone returning from a country deemed a danger for importing the virus will have to do the full quarantine in a hotel room. The exception may be those with children. Hearing this news today made me ever-grateful that I returned from Thailand when I did.

I, like you, continue to work to establish a new normal and a new routine. I have let go of the notion that this time of quarantine and working from home is going to be my most productive time ever. I have learned that the mathematical equation that sums up my days is not time+energy=output; rather my days equate to time+space (minus) a-great-deal-of energy=grace to just be.

My days have still started with movement, but not long, high-intensity workouts. I hit my mat for 30-45 minutes of yoga, or a short weight workout. I thank myself for showing up.

My balcony has really become something of a haven. I move here, but I also eat here, sit and watch the world here, write here. Why haven't I been doing this all along?

During the afternoon, I connect with my students via Zoom.

Seniors who have just found out that their IB exams will be canceled.

I also use Zoom for my mid-day breaks; I meet my friends there for good laughs. I do wonder ... I wonder if Zoom and Tik Tok are in cahoots here ... just a conspiracy theory. The Tik Tok videos that come into my chats throughout my day give me so much life. In the midst of chaos, we are finding our creative outlets.

My nights are spent listening to 90s hip hop, laying on my yoga mat on the balcony, trying to get my cats to engage in photo shoots. Now, this is the real stuff of cat lady memoirs. Save me soon, please.

Being quite confined these past days has allowed me to sit in a place of awareness and this awareness has been a sensory experience. As I sit on my balcony in the morning, afternoon, and evening, I feel my senses awaken in deep ways. The sounds of the city, colors of the trees below, and textures of the yoga mat I am seated on all become palpable to me.

Indeed, there are parts of my day that I love. Watching the sun rise higher in the sky as I lay leisurely in bed in the morning and watching the sun set while I eat dinner each evening are new parts of my routine that offer a certain excitement to each day; I love enjoying the simplicity and beauty of these moments.

As in any temporal context, there are other parts of the day that are so tedious, predominantly the way I just feel so dang tired right now, the past weeks of uncertainty and ambiguity seemingly having compounded in my body. So it is that I, paradoxically, feel both exhausted and entirely alive simultaneously.

This evening I was reading from Adreanna Limbach's Tea and Cake with Demons: A Buddhist's Guide to Feeling Worthy. Chapter four begins with Tolstoy's words from Anna Karenina: "All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow." As Limbach recounts the story of the Buddha, she writes, "His origins are also a demon story, as most stories of transformation and triumph are, highlighting how we are made in the perpetual alchemy of falling apart and coming together." These words struck deep into me, for my own experience in the past year and a half; it also feels these words just ring so true for the Collective right now.

As individuals, as families, as communities, we are both falling apart and coming together on the path of novel and scary terrain. I talk to my best friend Jenn to hear about how her clinic does not have enough masks for doctors and patients, feeling like our healthcare system is ripping at the seams, to then hear and see the dozens of people I know who are making masks from fabrics and original patterns. I talk to my family and hear a certain anxiety in their messages when they consider the prospect of weeks of social distancing, to hear about them also opening up to new technology for virtual happy hours. I have felt separated from students who hit a hard place in the face of distance learning, to feel them return after so many of us have reached out with words and video conversations to embrace them in their confusion.

Sitting in an uncertain space with so many of my friends and family really beginning to process a new reality, I consider the power of how we frame that reality. As I was (again) scrolling Instagram today, I came across a post from Dr. Alexandra H Solomon. Rather than call keeping ourselves away from others "social-distancing" she coined it "cocooning." If we all enter our cocoons, we come out more beautiful than before. As with the Buddha, our transformation will happen after living in some dark spaces. After the dusk of each day is the dawn of a new morning.

To darkness, and to light.

Sending all my love,

Jame

Quarantine is moved to the Baci Abode

Last night, at 11 pm, I was curled up in bed in my hotel quarantine, devouring another episode of Outlander on my iPad, eating square after square of a dark chocolate bar. The title of the episode (season 2, episode 6, for other fans out there) that I was viewing is “The Best Laid Schemes.” I feel like this is the theme of 2020 in many ways right now. It reminds me of a line from a Robert Burns’ poem entitled To a Mouse. As Burns plows a field, and runs over the mouse’s nest, he writes, “The best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry.”

Reflecting on this line, I am thinking most of my friends and family that I have been connecting with back in the States the past couple of days. Grandma and my Aunt Abby canceled their plans for Vegas, another friend and his family canceled the spring break he and his wife had promised the daughter they had recently uprooted, and dozens of you are getting ready to support distance learning while also keeping your careers afloat. It sure does feel that Covid-19 is akin to that plow from the poem.

I continue to occupy new and interesting spaces back in China. At the end of the episode, the phone rang in my room, and I was told that I would be going home, for certain this time. I ran around, throwing my belongings into my suitcase in mish-mash fashion. I flew out the door and down the elevator, delighted at this news. I had planned to be in the hotel another night as I had gotten no news of my test results just yet — and this time, I was happy to have these plans interrupted.

Two official workers whisked me home in this golf cart. It was pretty nice to feel the wind in my hair after a 48-hour stay indoors.

There was a point where a 14-day quarantine inside my own home almost seemed unbearable; now it seems a welcome space compared with the hotel, where I did not have access to a kitchen, my wardrobe or the queens of my castle: the cats.

When I walked back into my home last night, it hardly felt real. I am ridiculously grateful to be in my own apartment now, even if I am forced to stay in isolation for another 12 days.

This morning I allowed myself the space to be slow in rising, slow in my yoga asanas, slow in my kitchen. I read somewhere recently something that went like this: when you go twice as slow, you notice twice as much.

After my easy yoga practice, I sat on my meditation cushion, soaking in the sound bath of a Shenzhen morning. A car horn honked emphatically as traffic whirred 17 floors below me. Birds twittered while a mate cawed loudly in their direction. The sound of materials stacking, or dropping, set a sort of drum beat to my surroundings. A puppy yipped as I opened my eyes to catch a glimpse of a white-winged bird soar into a green tree in front of me. It was lovely to sit in such awareness. Rather than focusing on being confined, right now, I am continuing to find delight in what I have access to: slow living.

I also got back on my whole bowls kick. I am making my way through Alison Day’s cookbook, but today I was short on ingredients, so it was millet, Chinese greens, and hemp seeds for brekky.

Silvie is a big fan of the life of leisure. From time to time, she does go after one of the balls that her Auntie Megan gifted her, but otherwise, she does a lot of this.

After talking with two friends from home this afternoon, I just keep thinking about all of you just beginning to process how you will protect your families from contracting the virus, but perhaps even more, how you will sustain the emotional well-being of yourself and your loved ones. Words that my dear friend Ceci says to me feel appropriate here: “You can do hard things.” And you will.

In the midst of the rapid changes that we are facing each day in regards to the hard and unexpected space that we find ourselves in, I wonder what a slower pace of life will surface in us? I wonder what we will allow ourselves to hold space for in terms of emotions and reactions to a novel experience? I wonder what we will find in ourselves that we did not remember or know existed?

While I am trying to monitor my social media use — mostly unsuccessfully at the moment — I am so enjoying seeing how everyone is working to create new routines, to help their children understand the power of positivity, to reach out to one another. It’s a real shit time in many ways. One of my administrators passed along a clip of a BBC Radio recording. The broadcaster says, “Yes, there is fear. Yes, there is isolation. Yes, there is panic buying. Yes, there is sickness. Yes, there is even death. But they say in Wuhan after so many years of noise, you can hear the birds again ... the sky is no longer thick with fumes but blue and grey and clear ... Today, a young woman I know is busy spreading flyers with her number through the neighborhood so that the elders may have someone to call on ... All over the world people are waking up to a new reality ... to what really matters ...

To love ... there can always be a rebirth of love.”

Tonight, I am imagining that mouse in the field, looking at her plowed over home. I hope that after she acknowledged the devastation that she had not planned for that she gathered up her spouse, and her children, and industriously set off to rebuild her living space — unlikely to look just as it had before, but to be a shelter for her family all the same. And, to be a space for love.