Seoul

I remember the voices of the girls who sat behind me and always chatted about how everyone else looked. They lowered their voice and chuckled over the thick legs of another girl, over the dirty collar of a boy in their Math class and over the weird lip color that our English teacher wore on that day. The volume of their voices varied according to situation, for instance, got larger when they were backbiting the English teacher who did not understand Korean, and got smaller when they talked about a girl sitting right at the next row. Their small voices often diverted my attention from the class to their chatting – overhearing the thoughts that they had toward other people was pretty interesting, but it sometimes offended me when they talked about the ones I sincerely liked.

I remember how the hot ‘짬뽕’ made me sweat like a pig in the middle of July. 짬뽕’s red soup always aroused some kind of will to challenge myself – to see how well I could tolerate the spiciness that striked my tongue. Eating 짬뽕 in winter wasn’t so difficult since its spiciness on my tongue seemed to soothe the coldness that every other part of my body was going through, but 짬뽕 in summer was solely for a game. (I just remembered that I had had 짬뽕 in summer once for a different reason – to chase a hangover)

I remember the same flying dreams that I had numerous times. Living in Seoul for most of my life, I wanted to travel outside the city and go to somewhere else that I had only seen through the LCD monitors. In the dreams that always began with me running outside the window of the 14th floor of my apartment, I flew above the sky slowly like an eagle, and looked down at the landscape below me that changed to wherever that I would wanted to go – I saw every part of Seoul that was home to me, and even other countries and places that I haven’t been to.

 

New York

I remember the unfamiliar songs with extremely loud beats that came from MAC at the Union Square. Not only the melodies but also the lyrics were so absurd to me since I was so accustomed to K-pops and classic pop songs. I remember how the voices of the MAC’s staffs also sounded absurd as they mixed with the loud beats and music.

I remember the first meal I had at the University Center. It was breakfast that I had, and I did not add any additional spices to what I brought because I did not want to be disappointed toward the food that was even priced based on the weight of the dish, which meant that I paid for each and every menu on my plate – so I wanted them to be plain and easy so that I wouldn’t leave any food behind. However I eventually couldn’t eat about a half because everything was so salty, even the scrambled egg. I did’t know that I would miss the Korean rice from the first day that I started living in New York.

I remember the neat arrangement of buildings that greeted me right after when I arrived at New York. I felt as if I was looking at the Google map itself when I stared at the crosswalks and streets that were placed perfectly perpendicular. That arranged, narrow streets made the buildings look higher as their shadows overlapped with each other’s – the average 10 stories buildings that stood side by side, and the narrow roads in between them made me feel more surrounded by the building forest than when I was in Seoul, although Gangnam had much higher buildings.