I'm terribly sad about leaving this place I've called home for 6 years.
Here's a link to an article that came out about me in the Korea Times a few days ago:
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/special/200609/kt2006092620130567650.htm

Funnily enough I was browsing through some old e-mails and I found a poem a wrote to this boytoy I was backpacking with in Vietnam. I was was 28, he was 19 and only spoke French, but never mind...

Every morning we would eat baguettes from a street cart for breakfast. (These baguette carts were a leftover from when France colonized Vietnam) We'd top it off with this processed cheese called "The Laughing Cow". This cheese needed no refrigeration and probably could survive a nuclear war. One day we were smoking something other than cigarettes and we were wondering why the damn cow was always laughing anyway?

After we parted, I made my first attempt to wax poetic in French. The poem was about why the cow was laughing. Of course my boytoy was cracking up when he read it becuase it did not make any sense in French. (Give me a break! It was a first try!)
Anyway I thought it appropriate to share the poem here in English because it's about how life is fleeting and this is kind of how I feel now that I'm leaving Seoul. Sorry about the simplicity of the vocabulary. It was originally written in rundimentary French.

The Laughing Cow 

The laughing cow
She laughs for me
She laughs because she knows:
that the world is big
that the future's but a question
that love is just illusion
and that youth doesn't last forever

She only knows that the full moon
will rise over foreign lands
and that there will be a night bus
where two souls will meet
and sometimes bodies will connect
and a good time will be had
but later on they will be sad
because they'll miss each other...

the cow laughs because she knows
that planes are going to fly
that Life, it continues
and one day will cease to be

but the cow is always laughing
and with a bit of bread,
I will be laughing too.

 
I walked around yesterday alone looking at the sky, the buildings bearing down on me. I ate Korean food, went to the sauna and thought about all the things I've done and accomplished here. I was reminded of the last line in the book "Out of Africa" when Karen Blixen was leaving her farm in Kenya after so many years and so many adventures. It was towards the end when she had a famous soliloquy about leaving Africa- "I know a song of Africa.. Will Africa know a song of me?"

So I wrote my own funny version of that soliloquy about Seoul (This will be funnier to people who have seen or read Out Of Africa)- Here it is- ready for another poem?

If I know a song of Seoul, of  permed ajumas yelling in Namdaemun standing over piles of chintzy wares, of traffic on the bridges of the Han and the clamor of a norebang song after a night of cheap eats at the pojangmacha, Does Seoul know a song of me? Will the smog over the streets quiver with a color that I have had on, or the entertainers write a song about seoulstyle.com, or will the night neon buzzing in soju smitten alleys throw a shadow on the street that was like me? Will the Chindo dogs of Namsan park look out for me? I had a website in Seoul……

Anyway, bye bye my beloved Seoul and all my lovely friends here. I will not forget the memories we've created together and I will try to visit from time to time. Just because I will be geographically in another place, it doesn't mean I'm not thinking about you and wishing you all the best!

Love and kisses from Liza, creator of seoulstyle.com

Now that we're finally leaving Seoul, there are alot of preparations to take care of. First was purging my closet. Some people who have been to my house or who have seen photos of my closet marvel at how how much stuff I have (My closet is actually a room. It shares space with my huge bookshelf.) A girlfriend once said to me "Oh my God your closet looks like a clothing store" I love shopping  but many things in my closet were just plain worn-out, so it was time to let go of a bunch of old clothes from yesteryear.

I donated a bunch of stuff to charity, lugged all my unwanted books to 'What the Book' in Itaewon and sold a bunch of furniture in a garage sale. Now I have the task of organizing all our electronic equipment, and categorizing my bookshelf so I can just unpack it on the other end and be done with the organization part. I've had people coming in and out of my house for two days for various things.

The biggest task now is finding people to keep my site going. Actually I've had loads of writers and photographers offer their services as of late and I've been meeting some of them and trying to gauge whether or not they are reliable and right for the job. I might be partnering up with another site and selling my stake to investors at the end of the year. It's too soon to abandon my baby just yet. I'm starting a sister site in Hong Kong called hiphongkong.com so that should keep me occupied for a few months.

I'm registering for a computer academy to further my skills when I get to Hong Kong. If I don't do that, I might just get a dog, learn how to play guitar and study Japanese. Who knows? People keep telling me it's time to have a kid, but I'm just not feeling that yet.

I'm pretty sad about leaving Seoul, so I've been consoling my existental angst by watching RockStar Supernova on the internet. (I was a Motley Crue and Guns and Roses fan back in the day) I'm obsessed with it. I watched the videos over and over and clap at the end of them. I even put my two cents in on the chatboard. The only thing I haven't done in this life was being a rock star, so I'm living vicariously through the contestants.At first I felt guilty about being a 35 year old woman obsessed with a rock star reality show, but then I checked out the message boards and realized most people leaving messages were my age or older!