the beginning of a circle - where am i?

Put simply, I'm in Korea. (South, if you're asking. Although, really?)

I'm here for multiple reasons, but the biggest one is my sister's wedding. Big family event, I know, although I haven't been a huge part of the festivities aside from participating the multiple dinners we've been having with various relatives.

Being in my native country feels...foreign. It's a familiar paradox felt by all immigrant children used to the American lifestyle. It's a question of how everything feels like something I should be used to, and yet I just feel isolated and lonely. I can read all the signs and understand the language around me, but the basic of culture is...lost.

It's not surprising that I feel like this, and it's a feeling I'll be chasing for the rest of my life. I suppose I'm more fortunate, since my parents had a developed interested in educating me about my heritage. There are those who are more disconnected with their homeland than I am. But the difference is still felt, keenly.

Yet I find it suitable that I'm back where I started in the summer before my graduation. I'm tracing the beginning of my circle before I can start a new one.

The second paradox found on this trip is the unfamiliar family. It's not just the uncles and aunts I've never heard of, or the in-laws I'm meeting for the very first time. It's the new aspects of my father, my mother, that are revealed when they step foot in their native home, and in an extended way, their past. It's the grandparents whom I've begun to realize as people, in the unspoken way everyone realizes their family members are as they get older. My sister will also become a new person when she gets married, and this development, this transition...

I's oddly suitable for me, right now. It's a question of the curious connection we find in the past with the future.

In being here, a country immersed in tradition but also in transition, a country that places its historic palaces next to skyscrapers, I've fallen victim to that endless philosophizing that comes with the realization of the neverending stream of time. How much can you hold onto the past while also moving forward? How much can you move forward without losing the past?

I dislike change. I've realized that. It scares me, the way time moves. Never any room for mistakes, never any room for redos. My favorite part of the pencil is the eraser, and yet only those who put the point to paper are able to create anything. So it's a question of what's better - creation, or a pristine sheet of white paper?

Yet move on, we must. I can't stop myself from growing up, same as Korea can't stop developing as a country. I can't stop my sister from getting married, I can't stop myself from not understanding the basics of my native culture...but I can remember. As Korea leaves its palaces next to its skyscrapers, I can remember myself and the things I hold dear. I will move on, I will develop, my sister will get married and Korea will become one of the most advanced countries on this planet, but we will still leave behind the paradoxes and the old palaces and the old rooms of our past homes in reminder of the times that passed. They can stand monument.

The interlinking of the future and the past, the connection between our memories and our dreams - isn't that what we're all searching for in the end? How to achieve that balance, so that we don't lost touch with our beginnings, but we also don't miss out on what's to come?

This time next year, I'll be a high school graduate. Perhaps by that time, this blog will stand testament to the fact that I have grown while also leaving traces of myself, my past self.

In creation, hopefully, I will be able to find the balance in that connection of the time stream.

time waster, time spender.

Hi.

My name is Joyce. This is my first post in my new blog.

I suppose in a sense, I'm a veteran at beginnings and a beginner at endings. Or at least, at continuing things.

Yes, that's right. I'm the obnoxious sort of person who always makes new blogs, thinking she has something worthwhile to share with the world, and ends up having them peeter out pathetically because she's either too lazy or too discouraged to keep up with a public diary. Because of this, I've made many (many) introductory first posts. And so I mistakenly give myself the name of veteran at beginnings.

(Beginnings of what? Just blogs? No, also novels and projects and relationships and whatever else is worthwhile if you don't procrastinate. Alas, I fail miserably.)

Once you get into the habit of repeating the same thing multiple times, you find variety in the repetition. How can I make myself sound more interesting? More cynical? More world-wise and weary, more like someone with a (sexy) husky voice who'd randomly chat you up with epiphany-like advise at a dimly lit bar while you, the hero, are down on your luck and nursing a glass of whiskey?

Yet the variety is ultimately lost, and each first post becomes a painful exaggeration of the last. Look, I'm doing it even now. Can you hear my husky voice?

I hoped to shake it up a bit with this new first post by giving a simple, direct, near juvenile introduction to myself. And thus, this brings me to my point, after a long elliptical path of short paragraphs:

My name is Joyce. I'm a sixteen (soon to be seventeen) year old high school student living in southern California. Currently, it's summer, and so I remain stuck in the limbo that is the bane of every student's existence when they are asked the hated question, "What grade are you in?"

I was previously a junior. And yes, I will be a senior. You, sir or madam, are most insightful.

I suppose that you understand the significance of being (or going to become) a senior. You have experienced it yourself or found the numerous pop culture references that litter the works of post-20th century literature.

O the precipice of adulthood, of what epic proportions it shall determine the nostalgia of my old age!

But here comes college applications, physics, and most importantly, prom. Here comes the snobby superiority and veteran nature of all seniors, and the impending panic at the folly of independence.

In my long days as a student (pampered and privileged), I've gotten into the habit of recording things. With what limited foresight I have, I can vaguely predict that in the future, I might want to remember what it was like to be young and seventeen (In no way is this a reference to a certain dancing queen. Shut up.)

So yeah. This blog will be a record of my senior year. I might branch off and do other posts, but ultimately, it's a personal blog. I'm not quite sure what to expect from it. Ah, but so it goes.

To the future graduate in 2015, what can I expect from you?