Looking towards home

I will be leaving in a little over a month and have been making plans on what to do with my stuff. My ticket has been bought and I know pretty much what I will be doing with my furniture. I will be giving it away to my landlord. They rented the place as furnished and now it really is.

I am giving my Korean/English books away to a English teacher and to a American boy who is being home schooled. He is very smart and already knows how to speak, write and read Korean. He and his family have been here the same time as I have.

I have lost over 50 lbs although I have no idea how much. What is more important is that I can walk, climb steps with ease. I can move without pain and without difficulty. I need to keep this up so that I can continue the progress that I started here in Korea. Much of it depends on eating less and exercising as much as possible. I have been giving that a lot of thought and planning on what I am going to do once I am home.

I have been told there is a desk in my room and I will be getting another computer in addition to this laptop. I like a regular computer so I can have a lowered keyboard as not to put too much strain on my arms. I need to get a office chair. Too bad I can't take the one I use here for it is the best I have ever had and it cost new, $65.00. The desk here has been at a height that is too high and it hurts my arms after a while. It is small, though, and fits in this small room very well and again cost very little brand new. It cost the same as the chair and has book shelves above it.

It is a mindset that I am trying to establish right now. I have found out that I have a new car waiting for me in Los Angeles. It is a Honda Accord with power windows and air conditioning. I will be driving it home once I get there. I will also be getting car insurance, the same as I had before at AAA. I will also get a cell phone as well. I am looking forward to that.

I plan on walking to Barnes and Noble from my house instead of driving. It isn't all that far. The weather in my home is sunny and warm most of the year and there is no reason to drive as I did before. I will drive to the store but I walk as much as possible. One time I tried to walk to the Starbucks on the other side of my house and it was very dangerous. There is more sidewalks on the way to Barnes and Noble than the Starbucks that I did walk that time.
I don't have the dog I did have anymore as she is at a ranch with other dogs. So, I can easily walk to places and go in.

When I was working for the Veterans Administration as a Federal Police Dispatcher and switchboard operator, I got carpel tunnel syndrome. I am always afraid of getting it again. I had to use the old style card system switchboard with the pulling and pushing of cords. When the doctors and administrators were busy making their calls, it got very busy there. I was still there when they put the new system in which saved all of us our arms and sanity for some doctors can be very testy about getting their calls through ahead of others even though they are not emergencies. Still, having my arms on this desk, I can feel the strain in my arms.

It seems to me, that I need to have a schedule in place so that I don't return to the earlier way I did things such as staying in bed too many hours, driving when I could be walking, and not writing when I could. I watched too much television and watched the calendar slip away. I am determined not to do that anymore. The eight months and will be nine that I have spent here and seem like years and they have been good for me. I don't want to lose the work that I have done here.

I had a neighbor who retired, like I did from government service. I watched her because she lived across the street and had a large picture window. She got up seven days a week around noon, watched television until she went to bed at 2 am. She ate all of her meals in front of the television. I went to visit her from time to time. She had ordered a book to read from a television commercial and it remained on her side table next to her chair unread until the day she died. The only time she went out was to go to the doctor's and she had all of her food delivered to her house. That, alone, should have been a wake-up call to me. We were the same age.

I was so glad I got the chance to come here to Korea and fought it all of the way. Once I got here, I had some bad experiences with some people. Yet, there were far more good things that happened to me than bad. I want to make sure it continues when I return. I am using my journal and my writing as a way of doing this. I have also made friends here too. I have been seeing Korea and traveling. I think Korea has saved my life.