My Inception top.

I pull out of Barnes and Noble in my old student car, park on campus (I'm no longer suspended indefinitely from BYU parking; they put me on a year's probation but I didn't tell them I was going on a mission and wouldn't be driving for the next year and a half anyway), sift through preliminary literature for my honors thesis in the library, meet with professors, talk my way into and out of course requirements and schedule logistics, and sometimes it feels like the last year and half never even happened.Sometimes I feel like I've always been here, like there isn't a twenty-month void in my knowledge of recent events, like I never lived in that first floor apartment in 신갈, never got up and ready at 6:30 every morning, never confirmed appointments for painstakingly planned lessons I taught according to strangers' needs, never cut up rich red stripes of fermented spicy cabbage to make 김치볶음밥, never spent all day walking around talking to strangers in the snow, never tried with all my heart to get people to do things they didn't want to do because it would bring them benefits they could feel but couldn't see. I might accept this creepingly believable self-talk (in fact, it's easier to believe than the alternative) if it weren't for just one thing. There's something that remains despite myself, something I have that unquestionably grounds me in reality. All I have to do is remember it's there and give it a spin and it lets me know what's real and what's a dream. My Inception top. Korean.Whenever I start doubting the reality of what I did on the other side of the world for so long I make myself switch into Korean. I put on a song, a television drama, a podcast in my beloved mission language and I can't deny the fact that I understand, that it's all real.한국어를 하는 능력이 없어지는 날은 선교사업이 저한테 꿈이 되는 날입니다.The day my Korean disappears is the day my mission will become to me no more than a memory, a picture, a story--a dream.