oh intentions...

Hey everyone! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, all that jazz. My School year has finished. My damn 6th graders are gone, thank god, and I have a few weeks off to rest and recharge for another big semester of getting slapped around by a bunch of snot nosed korean kids.

So i have been told that i do not update this thing enough, that it is sporatic at best and that people would rather hear about my experiences than "esoteric hippie karma bullshit."
Look, I understand that you all want to hear about what is going on, but really there is not too much to tell, life over here is pretty similar to life back home. I get up go to work, sit around in my office and dick around on the internet for 8 hours, go home and hit the gym for a bit, attempt to have a few normal social interactions a week, and patiently wait for the weekend. Its pretty much the exact same thing everyone else that has a desk job does, except that none of my coworkers speak english. But the way that our jobs back home are going...it wont be long till you all are in my situation too...ha.

Christmas here takes on a bit of a different vibe than it did back in the states. Its currently christmas eve and im at work, and will be all day, there are not really any boring christmas parties to go to, nobody wearing awful christmas sweaters or ties with santa on them. None of the drunken arguments with family members, and even drunker apoligies. No last minute rush for shopping, (thank god), none of the awful run in's with people from highschool at the bar you would rather have left in highschool....Its its nice to get away from the crappy part of the holidays but on the other hand, they lack alot of the great stuff that the holidays bring, like the drunken arguments with the family, and even drunker apoligies, the holiday parties that you like going to, getting to see the few friends that only come around during this time of the year, the excuse to open a bottle of whiskey at 11am because "its the holidays," the snow...god i miss the snow, its colder than i have ever experienced here, but there is no snow to speak of. One of the biggest things i miss is the food. What i would for a huge steaming hot bowl of chili with some cheese and sour cream on it...or a bowl of chicken soup and a glass of ginger ale (yeah simple i know but for some damn reason i miss ginger ale...or whiskey and ginger's...im not sure). A few nights at the top of the toe, and all the perks that go along with being there. The sound of silence...no matter where i go, or where i am, there is always some type of human noise.

Overall though, i miss being at home for the holidays. they really dont seem the same when you are not around a bunch of friends and family, even if you friends are unstable drunks, and your family is totaly dysfunctional. I still miss and love the hell out of all of you.

Take care, Merry New Year, Happy Christmas.

Love ya!

the dharma body of the buddha, is the hedge below the garden.

"we live together, we act on, and react to, one another: but always are and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."