By Lucy

I’ve started moisturizing.

You may read that and think, as in some kind of new Korean moisturizer, and you would be wrong. Yes, and I promise you I’m not lying, for the first 30 years of my life my skincare routine consisted of washing my face with my bodywash in the shower.

To be fair, there are reasons that works. People in north America always pile on too many products; thick foundation and correctors, then stripping away the natural oil at night with harsh products. Part of the reason Korean skincare is known as being so lifechanging is because it’s actually more gentle than American products; for example, retinols had 2.4 percent strength in America, but only 0.7 percent in Korea, and you’re only really supposed to use it every other day or less, depending on your skin type.

Part of the reason why I never really got into skincare; remember, I was a hideous goblin as a kid. I even changed in the bathroom for gym class lest the other girls harass me. But overnight, with 0 changes, Josh made me beautiful. Once he wanted me, the boys were lining up to see what all the fuss was about, and that gravy train never really stopped rolling. Occasionally I debated trying a little bit, but I was worried that I would break the spell, and I’m also just f*cking lazy and cheap. You save a lot of time and money when you just wash and wear.

However, as I’m starting to step into more of a leadership role, I decided I should start trying to care about my appearance. I figured washing my face and moisturizing, and using a toner once or twice a week, is a nice easy place to start.

I threw out the purple shirt. Sacre bleu! It was one of the first things I bought when I got to Thailand and survived almost the entire trip, but it was getting a little threadbare and Danny suggested I pitch it to save space in my luggage.

Before I fell asleep, I got a panicked text.

Tragedy.

Kim’s plane was delayed for the wildfire smoke.

Allegedly, her flight was now arriving in Seoul a full 24 hours later, at 4PM, which means she’d miss the train we were taking. She told me to cancel her train ticket and after conferring with Cyndy, I agreed. But as I opened up the booking site, my finger hovered over the button. I only had a couple hours to decide, or we’d be within 2 calendar days of cancellation and I wouldn’t get a full refund, but part of me wondered if Kim was misreading her new plane ticket.

Well, we can always get her a new train ticket. Click.

I set the alarm for nice and early. Despite using my sleep mask and ear plugs, I had a hard time getting to sleep and the other people in my room were disruptive.

I ended up getting up before my alarm, which was good, because I forgot to check how often the airport express comes by and I missed the one I wanted.

Taipei main station is fascinating because, depending on the airline you are flying with, you can check in and check your luggage in the station itself, and get on the train with no worries. My flight was not one of those, however.

I ended up flying with Eastar, which is a Korean airline. I ordered my flight from 12Go, probably because it was the cheapest option, but it also meant I couldn’t check in or get an e-boarding pass, and I had no idea what my luggage allowance was. I had a hell of a time finding the Eastar booth and, with a lack of sleep and my legs still killing me, almost had a meltdown at the airport. I sorted it out, though.

My bag was still too heavy for the carry on allowance, but I had one free checked bag, so I allowed this. I’m allowed one checked bag for my flight home and I am considering it as well.

I made a woopsie. I’d meant to pick up some pineapple cakes from 7-Eleven for Kim and Cyndy, but I was in a rush, and the only pineapple cakes on offer at the airport were 500 NTD. No thanks! I found a place selling bubble teas for 90 and got one last one.

Time for social media nonsense.

So, the Soroptimist ladies want me posting every day for the conference. I’m sending content to Hillary and Laurie, and they each want different content, so that’s a lot of executive brainpower. I snapped some selfies at the airport and sent them. It’s a start.

I ended up in the middle seat, but it was a short flight; the trade winds are still favourable. A 3 hour flight became a 1.5 hour flight. I’d downloaded “I, Tonya” to watch on the flight, for some reason, and I didn’t get to finish it because the flight was so short.

There’s a reason I didn’t watch “I, Tonya” when it came out and the short answer is because it’s freakin’ depressing. The longer version is that LaVona reminds me uncannily of my mother, except that my mother never stabbed me with a knife or beat me… much (she usually ordered our dad to do it).

If you don’t know the story of Tonya Harding because you weren’t alive in the 90’s, she was a professional figure skater who went down in infamy when her ex-husband ordered a hit on her competitor, trying – and failing – to break her leg and cripple her. But Tonya herself is an interesting woman, because she was possibly the best figure skater who has ever lived. She was the second woman to ever perform a triple Axel, a pint-sized powerhouse at only 5 feet tall. She was also a hillbilly who refused to pretend to be a princess in a sport that will literally mark you down for not owning a professionally made dress (she also annoyed the judges by skating to classic rock instead of classic opera). And if you’re thinking, “hey that sounds a lot like Lucy”, yeah I may identify with her a bit.

I think the judgment came down on her too hard. No one could ever prove she knew about or asked for the attack on Nancy, but she was permanently banned from competing in figure skating ever again. Since it was her ex-husband, who was known for beating her, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had done it because he was hoping it would make her come back to him, so now we’re punishing a woman for being abused. Yay.

Anyway, the movie is good, if depressing. The setlist is banging – I had Devil Woman stuck in my head for a week.

Incheon airport is massive. They built it on reclaimed land between two islands, which is nice but it means you’ve already spent a bit of money just getting off the island to the mainland. Even the basic commuter train to Seoul is 4 dollars and you couldn’t possibly walk there. It took me a hot minute to find an ATM for some cash. The main transit card is the Tmoney card, which you can buy and load at any convenience store, but only with cash. Also, the main corner store is called CU, and the signs say “Nice to CU” and the receipts say “CU later”, which is so cute!

Eventually I managed to wrestle my way down to the subway and collapse on a train.

So, it’s considered rude to call it “South Korea” and to be honest, I agree with that sentiment. They consider the war to be ongoing and to eventually reunify with the north, and unlike the PRC and Taiwan, I think they have a stronger case. I mean, “North Korea” isn’t a country. They don’t have elections, they don’t really have currency or an economy. They aren’t even nice to the PRC, despite it propping up their creaking economy. You can’t visit (outside of expensive, highly structured tours), and no citizens ever leave recreationally. If/when the Kim regime falls, it will almost certainly be absorbed into ‘south’ Korea. So I’m on board with this.

I won’t go into the Korean war too much, or as they call it here, the Six Two Five war (because it started on June 25th). Everyone’s heard of it. I will say, I find the story of the first Kim, Kim Il-Sung, interesting. Since he was born and raised before the PRK existed, there are still accurate records about his early life, which are worth a read. He had an interesting history as a rebel against the occupying Japanese.

Speaking of Cold War Era tyrants, I was teasing Vlad about Stalin the other day (another interesting man). This is when I discovered they don’t actually call him Joseph Stalin in Russia, because that’s not his legal name (his actual last name at birth was Dzhugashvili).

Anyway, outside of that, there is a rich history of about 2’000 years of various kingdoms, starting with the three kingdoms period, to the unified kingdom of Goryeo (which is where we get the name Korea) to their period as vassals to the Mongols and then the Japanese (who are ethnically Korean anyway). If I had more time and money I’d take a separate train trip down to the old capital of Kaesong, and also visit Jeju, which is popular.

I didn’t actually enjoy Korea.

Part of that is that I’m tired, burnt out, and broke, but I also think it looks worse coming from Taiwan. Korea managed to flip from a poor agricultural society to one of the top 20 economies within 30 years, with Samsung composing 20% of the GDP. But it’s not a worker’s paradise; the work day is officially 10 hours, but 12-14 hours are practically required to demonstrate your commitment to the chaebol. They are intensely competitive and soju, or rice wine, is 16% and cheaper than water (2$ for a 250ml bottle of soju versus 3$ for a bottle of water). Their transit system is pretty good, but I personally found Taiwan’s to be more intuitive.

You knew it was coming.

I actually unironically enjoy the song. Cat made me listen to it before it exploded in popularity, and there’s a lot of biting satire of the nouveau riche of Seoul’s Gangam district. I also have a soft spot for chubby men who can dance; my first boy-girl dance was a chubby Quebecois boy who determinedly asked me for a dance while all the “cool” boys were standing on the wall with their hands in their pockets.

Anyway, I transferred off the airport train and to the subway that would take me to my hotel. I’d booked a 3 bed room for me, Cyndy (from Brantford, who’d I’d never met before), and Kim. Cyndy was already in Korea, so she was waiting at the hotel when I got there.

The room was nice, if a shoebox. The tiny bathroom was also the shower, and the beds occupied the entire wallspace, but it was enough for us. Cyndy is nice, mid 70’s, but she either had undiagnosed bipolar or ADHD, because she is flighty and had a tendency to bite off more than she can chew. Cyndy had talked to the hotel staff and allegedly they were ok with us storing our bags here while we were in Busan, but that wasn’t actually true.

At this point I’d gotten a text from Kim confirming the plane was actually arriving at 4AM. This is when I started realizing, not to infantilize them, that I’d basically agreed to babysit two old ladies who would be like herding cats, for two days.

Once we’d gotten our bags all sorted, we went down to Myeong-dong market, which was literally outside our door. The Myeong-dong district of Seoul is popular with tourists because it’s walking distance to the city hall and train station, the old city wall and palace, and its right at the end of the airport train line. It’s also pricey, probably twice the price of a regular market. But it was alright. We had fun wandering around trying things.

At 7PM, it was still daylight since I was finally far enough north for the tilt of the Earth to be noticeable (I’d also lost an hour going east). After so many months traipsing around the tropics, I’d forgotten what it felt like. And I still have further north to go – Korea ends at the 38th parallel, but Thunder Bay is on the 49th.

Since we still had daylight and Cyndy was still jetlagged, once we’d seen the market we walked down to the gondola to Namsan Tower (which shows up on Maps as N Seoul Tower, but the N means Namsan, not north).

So, in a continuing commentary that means this post should be subtitled “Ways Taiwan is better than Korea”, Korea is stairs. It’s a hilly country, but even besides that, it almost impossible to find an escalator or an elevator. Almost every single subway entrance in Taiwan had escalators or an obvious elevator, but they were few and far between in Korea. Obviously I am a “healthy young person”, but trying to haul Kim and Cyndy (Kim is 79) up stairs constantly was very cruel and contributed to the trip going sideways quickly.

So the entrance to the gondola is up a steep hill. Instead a practical way of reaching the building, they installed this automated elevator that travels diagonally up the hill and was slow as balls. We were waiting half an hour because it could only fit 11 people at a time, depending on weight. While we were waiting, Cyndy took a picture of my hairclip since I hadn’t been able to see it on yet.

We bought one way tickets because we agreed to walk down – Cyndy bought them because one of the advantages of having elderly companions is discounts. We then had to wait in another line for over an hour.

The gondola was nice. There’s a whole market constructed around the tower, and the “love locks”. Tickets to get into Namsan tower were 30 dollars each, which we decided the view from the top of the mountain was adequate.

In case you’re wondering, the exchange rate for Korean won to Canadian dollars was 930 to 1, so you could usually just chop off the zeroes to convert it quickly.

When we got bored of walking around and wanted to head back, we discovered the walking trail down the mountain is hilariously steep. Cyndy walked for maybe a kilometer and couldn’t keep going (this is also when I discovered she had asthma and regularly forgets her inhaler). We hopped on the bus back towards Myeong-dong, but we still had to walk for a bit. We got back around 10 PM and had some difficulty sleeping. Cyndy took the lower bunk in case Kim wanted to nap when she arrived.

Kim arrived around 6AM. Despite me sleeping with my mask and earplugs, I heard her knocking and jumped out of bed to answer the door. We spent an hour talking and then decided sleep wasn’t coming back, so we went out for the free breakfast. Changed and argued with the staff about stashing our bags – Kim wasn’t leaving hers behind anyway – and got ready to head out.

This next part just underlines why I usually travel by myself. It would have taken me fifteen minutes and only 1.50 to take the subway to the train station, but Cyndy and Kim were unwilling to do the walk and the stairs and requested I summon a cab. I wasn’t sure how they envisioned me doing this, so I downloaded Uber instead. It still took a long time to get there, because downtown Seoul is almost always gridlocked. We arrived with ten minutes to spare and I foolishly hadn’t bought supplies ahead of time, so we ended up trapped on the train for 5 hours with no food.

A curious quirk of Korea’s trains is that you can buy standing tickets, which was all that was left for poor Kim, but no one actually checks tickets. There’s no turnstile or conductor on the platform – you just hop on. What they do is have an attendant wander down the train, and if their system shows a seat isn’t paid for, they’ll stop and ask for your ticket. For about half the ride, there were empty seats near me and Cyndy, and the attendant didn’t care about her sitting in the empty seats once she’d confirmed Kim had a standing ticket, so Kim bounced around between the empty seats. For the latter half of the ride, it was standing room only, but the seats are bench seats with armrests that can be moved, so we squeezed all three of us onto the bench seat and no one said boo.

The rivers were all swollen as we passed over them. Korea has been alternating between floods and heatwaves over the past month, although the floods never affected us.

Thunder Bay made the R/Collapse newsletter I get as a weekly email. That’s fun.

We arrived in Busan around 3PM, tired and hungry. We got some lunch at the train station. I tried the must-try drink of Korea, banana milk. It’s exactly what it sounds like; bananas blended up into milk. I was wary of it, but it’s actually not that high in sugar and by the end of my trip I was struggling to restrict myself to a 4 pack a day because I was addicted and they’re only a dollar for a bottle. Then we stashed our bags in the lockers and grabbed a bus to Gamcheon Cultural Village.

This is when it occurred to me both that I had forgotten to get Kim a Tmoney card and that there was too many hills in Korea. It took us a long time to get up the hill from where the bus dropped us off to the village, but we couldn’t get a transfer without her Tmoney card. And once we had climbed the hill, I realized the whole neighbourhood is hilly and impossible for them to sightsee in. Cyndy had an asthma attack and had forgotten her inhaler in her luggage in Seoul, so we waited for the shuttle and headed back down. Fortunately the shuttle dropped us off where we were heading for dinner anyway, BIFF/Jagalchi square.

Outside of that, Gamcheon Cultural Village is a “reclaimed” neigbourhood, full of art and multicoloured buildings. It’s also, as I discovered when we got there, a graveyard; gamcheon means tombstone and there are numerous original tombstones woven into the architechture. Some people make a game of finding them all.

Jagalchi square is a good place to get food. It’s fresh seafood and local street food. You can point to the live seafood of your choice in the tank at any booth and watch the cook kill it and cook it up fresh in front of you. Every booth had a least one man nursing some dinner and the ubiquitous green bottle of soju.

After we walked for a bit, the ladies picked a booth where you fill up a dish with the battered seafood of your choice for 5$, they fry it up in some hot oil for you and serve it in an air conditioned room across the way. Apparently the cook decided my old ladies looked too skinny and she tossed some extras in the basket between when we dropped off the order and when it arrived at our table, which I ended up eating because they were too full. It was also served with what looked like a small cup of green tea but was actually some sort of salty broth that offered no relief from the salty seafood.

At this point, I got Kim a Tmoney card, but they refused to take the bus with their bags and insisted we get a taxi from the station to our hotel. At least there is a taxi stand at the train station.

Another problem unique to Korea… Google maps doesn’t work there. Like, you can tap in an address and it can show you on the static map, but if you hit “directions”, it will tell you to get lost. That being said, I almost never follow the directions because a sense of direction is a use it or lose it skill, but I do usually hit the button just to get an idea of how many kilometers it is. Part of this is because Google and Korea have a beef with each other, but the other reason is that Korea writes their addresses differently than we do. Every place we stayed gave us a card with the address in Korean for handing to taxi drivers. There are Korean map apps, but I’ve seen mixed reviews for them and I wasn’t downloading another app when I’m still struggling with the storage space on my phone.

Eventually we found our way to our hotel. The owner there is a great guy, very proud, even if the building itself is a bit run down. He has many maps and images to help people navigate the area, including the location of the fruit market! We were not there enough for most of his information to be useful, but I’ll probably stay there if/when I come back to Korea, because I want to take the ferry to Tsushima.

Me and Kim were sharing a room – we’d booked before Cyndy has asked to come along – and got settled, showered, unwinded. Kim made me uncomfortable by disrobing in the room, and I wasn’t sure what to say about it so I just dove under the blankets and pretended to be asleep.

We got heat alerts basically every single day we were in Korea. They’re in the grip of a record-shattering heatwave… like everywhere.

Predictably, we all slept in. We then had to find breakfast, so I wandered down the road and grabbed some from the 7-Eleven. Kim doesn’t eat breakfast, which probably explains why she booked a place without complementary breakfast, but me and Cyndy need food before we do anything.

By 11, we were on the subway to Songdo beach. Songdo beach is right by Jagalchi square, a little affluent. There’s a gondola up to “Sky Park”, over the bay, and its a nice day trip. We found an American family lost on the way to the gondola and invited them to tag along. They also hadn’t heard of the Tmoney card, so I took them to a CU and showed them how to get one.

When we got to the top of the gondola, Kim decided she was hungry and didn’t like any of the market options.

Joy.

Once we’d fed Kim, I wanted to go on a bit of a walk around, but turns out, Sky Park is also hilly. Cyndy took one look at the hills and decided she didn’t want to do it, because she couldn’t recover from her asthma attack without the inhaler, so we headed back down.

Now, I don’t want to be petty, but… So Cyndy wanted to go to this small museum, out of the way on the island. There is a bus there, but it requires a few transfers, so they decided to grab a taxi (they paid for it, so whatever). But we were already behind the schedule that I had created at their request and sent to them for confirmation. They suggested I could go on ahead and they’d catch up, but 1 I’m not doing that, and 2 they don’t seem to understand how long that will take. Haeundae beach is an hour trip on the subway because it’s at the end of the line. I warned them it would be a long day and they said that was fine, so whatever.

The museum was nice, I guess. Obviously I can’t throw stones in the “it was a small museum” department, but the single room was entirely in Korean. To my understanding, a few of the famous pearl divers from Jeju moved to Busan and continue to operate here; all the food in the attached restaurant is harvested by them, by hand. After we finished in the museum, some of the ladies were shucking sea urchins on the patio, so we stopped for lunch. They had sea urchin with gimbap (sushi) on sale, so Cyndy ordered that and told me not to tell her what it was. Kim ordered the ramen. I ordered nothing and ate their leftovers because I was starting to get a feeling the portions would always be too much for them.

The food was pretty good, actually. Sea urchins are salty as seawater, but it make a nice accoutrement to some vegetarian gimbap. We split everything and the two ladies enjoyed themselves. Cyndy asked the ladies shucking if she could take a photo of them, and they agreed, so she was happy.

The katabatic clouds were pretty cool too.

Somehow we got back to the subway system and we got on the subway to Haeundae beach. This is when we noticed that the Koreans prefer to stand rather than sit next to us. What, do we smell?

It was 5PM when we got there and went on a wander along the strip. It was still hot as hell and there’s less shade here than Taiwan. When we got to the beach train, all the tickets for the capsule trains were sold out, but the regular beach train was still available, so we got tickets to the end and back.

The train was nice, actually. They have it arranged in bench seats facing the water, for a picture perfect view. It takes about half an hour to get to the end of the line.

At the final stop, we found a vending machine selling the little love locks. Cyndy bought one, put her and her husband’s name on it, and locked it to the fence. Kim bought one to take home as a souvenir.

Now I had another moral quandary. I wanted to go to this Buddhist temple nearby. I couldn’t find out how far it was to walk until later. There was a bus, but it was infrequent since we were outside of usual tourist hours. There being no taxi stands around, the other option was Uber, but the real problem is that the temple itself is uphill both ways. Kim and Cyndy wouldn’t make it.

I walked them down to the beach as the sun was setting. As I started to suggest they might want to relax on the beach, Cyndy volunteered to stay behind. Kim agreed to come and promised to keep up.

We walked a kilometer along the beach before we saw a sign saying it was 5 kilometers to the temple.

Bollocks.

I summoned an Uber.

The temple was nice. The problem with temples in Korea is that they’re not Buddhist anymore, as a country – they’re Christian. This temple is covered in vendors – now closed – and signs begging for alms that aren’t necessary, because there only appears to be one monk in residence. Just a cash grab, this.

Still, the temple itself was lovely. Me and Kim watched the evening sky shift colours over the ocean. We walked around a bit and I explained the meaning of the temple to her.

Funnily enough, people kept mistaking her for my mother, which would be impossible, by the way. We were stopped by a Korean man who apparently wanted to get some war trauma off his chest and rambled in Engrish to Kim, thinking she was the Buddhist and not me. At one point, he was fighting back tears.

As we went back up the stairs to go home, a man in monk’s robes was descending them, and all the Koreans stopped to offer him a wai. He stopped for a moment when I offered a wai as well, looking slightly disapproving at my bare shoulders, before offering one in return.

To be fair, sir, if this is your temple you’ve allowed it to turn into a carnival sideshow.

We got an Uber back to near where we left Cyndy. Back on the train.

Now we encountered another problem. By the time we reached the train station, it was pushing 9 and most of the food vendors were closed for the night. As we walked back to the subway, I couldn’t find anything open, and finally we ducked into a 7-Eleven before Kim fainted from low blood sugar. Of course, after we’d eaten, around the next corner we found a 24 hour noodle place.

We slept good that night, lemme tell ya.

At 8, I got up and went down to 7-Eleven to grab breakfast for me and Cyndy, and lunch for the train ride.

The train back was much more comfortable. I’d managed to get us a booth seat with a table, and for much of the ride we had the booth to ourselves. This was also the bullet train, travelling at about 300 kilometers an hour.

We also got shushed, or I guess because shushing old people is rude, I got shushed by the attendant and told to pass it along.

Both Kim and Cyndy dug into their bags and handed me cash for putting up with them, which was nice. I didn’t realize I’d be making a profit from this!

Now, we arrived at the station at 1PM, and we had to be at the gala dinner for 5, so you think we could get to our hotels and be organized within 4 hours, right? No!

Firstly, Cyndy and Kim again refused to take the subway. It took us over half an hour to get a taxi at the station, partially because of the line-up, and partially because no one wanted to drive us out to the airport. I guess Korean taxi drivers are allergic to money.

Eventually we found one who agreed to take us back to the hotel to grab our bags, then out to the hotels in Incheon.

This took well over an hour, as traffic was gridlocked from the pouring rain, and we finally arrived at my accommodations at 3:30.

I was staying in an AirBnb type situation in the suburbs around the airport. Presumably the town exists to service the airport, but there’s a cottage industry of people renting out rooms to people with layovers. I’d planned to take the bus from my accommodations to the resort, but I realized this wasn’t practical with the schedule we had, and ended up taking a 15$ Uber each way. This was still cheaper than staying at the resort, where rooms were 300 a night with the conference discount (and they wonder why young people won’t join).

They’d emailed me the code the day before because the property is unmanned, but I still couldn’t figure out how to open the door (I was later informed I had to slide the cover up).

With half an hour to spare, I went into my bag for my change of clothes and discovered someone had broken into my luggage while it was unattended at the hotel. Fortunately nothing was missing because there was nothing in it worth stealing – even the Switch is functionally worthless if you’re looking for quick cash – but now I couldn’t lock it because the zipper pulls had been broken off.

Can I go home yet?

I changed in the hallway, arranged my bags in front of my door in a way that made it look locked, and called an Uber.

The Inspire resort is massive. Huge. Possibly the largest building I’ve ever been inside of. There are two hotels, a mall so large I got tired of walking around it after two hours and still hadn’t seen anything, and three casinos. Which are for the tourists, because casino gambling is illegal for Korean citizens. I had to ask for directions to the gala, which took several minutes of fast walking.

Fortunately, I arrived early enough to check in for the conference. I took a look around to see if I recognized anyone, then asked the group chat. I was disappointed to hear that no one saved seats for us despite knowing we would be arriving close to the starting time, so I grabbed an empty table by myself out of pride. A few latecomers eventually joined me, including Kim and Cyndy.

During the usual march of the flags, the group that cheered the loudest was the Taiwanese.

They introduced our president, who is American, with a southern drawl.

I flipped through the schedule as she talked and looked through the goodie bag they gave us. Oh, B12 gummies for energy. Let’s pop a couple of those now!

Dinner was buffet style, which is not a good idea when you’re feeding 900 people. Since our previously-empty table was close to the doors, I did my usual for conference buffets; grab a couple of dishes I really want, then run back to my table before I get swarmed. Once I’ve finished my first plate, the crowd has usually thinned and I can go back and be a little more thorough. They had a mix of Asian and North American dishes, although nothing particularly surprising for my palate.

In a case of serendipity, as I perusing the desserts and alone in the hallway, president Renata opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

I froze for a moment, unsure if I should approach her. But she smiled when she saw me. “I remember you, you were at the Southeast Asia conference. With the tattoo.”

I smiled.

We chatted for a bit – she had to make a phone call – and then I went back inside. “Well, I’ve already touched base with president Renata.” I said smugly, sipping my glass of water.

“What?!” The table exclaimed. Kim insisted on buying me a glass of wine.

After everyone had supped, the floor was opened up for dancing. I was so tired, and my ankles are starting to kill, but I dutifully went to the floor. I worked my way to the front and got shoved into a dance circle, but I was determined to own it… especially as the song changed to “Golden”. Halfway through, president Renata appeared from the crowd, so I offered her my hand and we danced in the middle of the circle for a bit as everyone cheered and clapped.

This is where I belong. What I’ve been capable of, what I’ve been ready for, waiting…

Waited so long to break these walls down…
To wake up and feel like me.
Put these patterns all in the past now,
And finally live like the girl they all see

No more hiding, I’ll be shining like I’m born to be!

As the crowd started to call it a night and my ankles’ protests could no longer be ignored, I said my goodbyes and fled to the nearest door to summon an Uber.

Don’t stop me now.