Part IV.

He was in a funk. That much he knew. He couldn't say he was homesick because he wasn't. He had only experienced homesickness one time and that was his first year as an undergraduate in Colorado. It lasted for exactly one month during football season. He didn't want to play any more. The game had lost it's flavor for him. He didn't want to study, he didn't want to talk to anyone he just wanted to go home and sleep in his bed. He ended up flying back to Michigan for a week soon after. His grandfather had recently died although he missed the funeral he decided to go home for a visit. While back at home he saw familiar faces in the crowd and had familiar conversations with them. In a few days he found that he missed looking outside his dorm window and seeing Pikes Peak. He missed walking around the campus and sitting on the bleachers reading a book or watching the sun go down. He never got homesick again. No, he wasn't homesick now. He was bored. He got bored easily and he always had. This presented its share of problems in his life. "The things we do when we get bored", he thought.

Korea was interesting but it had lost its uniqueness a while ago. He had been to the temples, he had seen the mountains (going to school in Colorado had ruined all mountains for him), he had seen the things that people go to Korea to see and now it was time for something different. "What now?" He had plans in the works to start travelling through the rest of Asia but what would he do with the rest of his time in Korea? Then he remembered. People are natural resources that never run out. He enjoyed stories and every body has a story to tell. You just have to know how to ask the right questions to get them to share. You have to be available to listen, so that's what he did. He listened to the stories that were all around him. The boredom evaporated like a puddle in July.