one year

One year has elapsed since our arrival in Seoul. How strange it is that time can move so fast and still seem to move so slowly. Perception, what a powerful element of reality! In retrospect it seems like the year has just whizzed by, but on further consideration I realize that it has been a long year- full of learning, travel, and many new experiences. We moved here with a blind faith that things would figure themselves out. We had no lead on a job- no real plan at all- and yet we were void of worry over these things, for our anxious excitement was much heavier an emotion than it’s negative counterpart. Things fell into place in perfect timing with little effort and we were thrown into our new occupation as teachers! Us? Teachers? It was real! And real nerve racking at times, but how simple and easy it became over the course of the year.

I don’t know if I’ll teach again, although it’s certainly an option. I think that I became a good teacher, having fun and in some ways making a difference in these adolescents’ lives. I would hope that if I teach again it would be under different circumstances, but I guess we all have to start somewhere! It has been a valuable learning experience, specifically occupationally speaking, but even more so in a plethora of other ways.

Learning a new culture is not easy. This culture is very complex, and a white American woman, such as myself, does not fit in. So there was much adapting to be done, while at the same time I had to keep my identity and learn how to handle the reception of my differentness. A balancing act at times, but again, with time these things became easier.

A vacation to Seoul could never have afforded me the time and experience to truly learn and understand the layers of culture that exist in this part of the world. I could never have explored the many neighborhoods of this giant metropolis, and tried all the regional foods. I never could have traveled to the rural towns, mountain villages, and coastal cities around the peninsula. I could not have known so many Koreans and waygooks (that’s foreigners), or established my favorite restaurants and parks and bookstores. Travel is wonderful, it’s kind of a crash course on a place, it’s people, food, places, etc. But to live in a place is a different kind of reward. And it makes me love where I am from!

Ah going home. It will still be many months now before returning to the good ol’ US of A, but I look greatly forward to that time, to reunite with friends and family, to taste old favorite restaurants, to ride my bike and walk around my city, and to know that I understand that place fully. Perhaps we take that for granted…

But the journey is not yet over; in fact it’s only just begun. We have been carefully organizing our plans for this coming leg of our round the world adventure, starting in Seoul  (well technically it started in Japan in December, for that is the furthest East we will have been), where we will leave in just a few short weeks and continue to travel west through Asia, Europe, and America before reaching the place we left, a place we love: Portland.