Nine Months!

Nine months. Nine months I’ve been living in South Korea. If you told me five years ago that I’d be living in Korea teaching children English now, I would probably have laughed in your face. I had a life of graduate school (for something science related, of course) and a secure job planned for myself after undergrad. We all know that things don’t always work out that way.

I am writing this post more for myself than anyone else right now. I am feeling a bit introspective after a visit from a very dear friend from home, a goodbye to one of my first close friends I met in Korea, and a sudden announcement of an early retirement from a Korean co-teacher. 

Last weekend I was on a camping trip with some of my close friends and my visiting friend. A Korean girl by the name of Adele came with one of my friends. Her English level was above average and we started talking about traveling and we had a long conversation about moving abroad. She expressed her desire to, but also how scary the thought of moving away from Korea was. It was one of the first times I’d really stopped to think about and articulate what I went through emotionally and mentally moving here. While it was happening, it was exciting and there were so many things to get done that I really didn’t stop to think twice about what was going on; I just kind of went with it. Now that nine months have passed, I can look back and really start to see legitimate changes in the way I view life and where I’d like to see myself in the future.

Teaching has undoubtedly been one of the most positive and constructive experiences of my life. It has forced me to step outside myself and push my boundaries of comfort more than any one thing I have ever partaken in. It continues to teach me infinite lessons in patience. The language barrier also plays a huge role in developing my patience and interpersonal communication skills in general. The kids can be completely frustrating a lot of the time, and I feel like a circus ringleader at times. Then there are those days when I have a good lesson and what I’m teaching the kids jives and they get excited, things flow, and it feels natural. It’s one of the best feelings in the entire world. The tricky thing is that the things that click for each group of students is totally different, so I have to stay on my toes. Lately, it seems the days where everything clicks are happening more often.

Yoga. I cannot say enough about how positive regularly doing yoga has been for me. I go to a Korean yoga teacher who has been such a positive influence in my psyche since I have moved here. I have seen noticeable mental and physical changes since starting my practice with my teacher. The classes are entirely in Korean, and I absolutely love it. Another lesson in language interpretation and patience!

The next hugely positive thing in Korea for me has been rock climbing itself, and even more importantly, the climbing family that I have accumulated throughout the whole of Korea. Amazing, talented, and loving people that I get to hangout with every weekend. They push me to climb harder and test my limits, more that I ever thought possible. Climbing takes me to places of incredible natural beauty, and strikes just enough fear in me to challenge myself mentally to overcome the thoughts holding me back. I feel lucky to be involved in a sport with such positive mental and physical benefits and an awesome community on top of everything else.

Now that I shared the positives of my life here, I will move on to the original motive for writing this article: the goodbyes.

I shed a lot of tears for the departure of my friend from home and my friend from Korea; soul crushing, mind numbing tears. Then I had a really constructive yoga session, and I started to make peace with the goodbyes. The next day my co-teacher called me down to her classroom and announced that it would in fact be her last day and she was retiring. She embraced me and started to cry. (Side note: this is NOT a common occurrence in Korea; Koreans tend to avoid being emotional.) I was on the verge of going back to my depression from my other goodbyes, and I started to put up a wall and shut down. Then, I was awestruck that this woman who I had taught with two days a week, for three months was genuinely upset that she would no longer be teaching with me. Something clicked in my brain; I realized I had to be the one that was strong and positive for her.

This is not a lifestyle where you can expect to avoid saying goodbyes. You form meaningful, loving relationships with people within short amounts of time, and then those people leave Korea or you leave Korea (or wherever else you may live and travel for that matter). They move back to their home country, they travel indefinitely, etc.; sometimes they come back, but more often than not there is no guarantee of when or if you will see them again. There is this constant flux of coming and going of lovely souls. It’s hard. It really sucks sometimes. It’s par for the course though.

I am not a pessimist, so I will try my best to put a positive spin on this constant shift of loved ones. We all have goals that we want to fulfill for ourselves; these goals take us along paths and places that we may never have thought we would be on, or exactly the paths that we thought we’d be on. We meet people that for some time have the same goals and lifestyles as we do. We form loving bonds with those people. Then maybe we decide that it’s time for a new place or new experience.

Our gut reaction is to push those people away, or to keep from forming a strong bond in the first place. Why? It makes it easier for one of us to leave. It's a defense mechanism. Who wants to live their life on the defense though? In reality, the best thing we can do is continue to love. Love freely. Love without expectations and prejudices. This lifestyle makes this more pertinent because of the constant arrival and departure of wonderful people, but I do not think that this attitude is mutually exclusive to those of use who are world travelers and expats of different countries. I just think it’s a philosophy that is easier for us to understand and apply because of our transient lifestyle.  

Goodbyes to those we love will always be bittersweet. When you form a bond with someone and get used to that person in your presence, thinking about him or her not being there makes you sad. It’s natural. If I didn’t get sad, then I would probably consider taking a step back to reevaluate how much of myself I was investing in the personal relationships that I do have (relationships aren’t one sided). Goodbyes remind us of who we really do care about and they serve to balance out the highs of life. They lead to new beginnings, and new experiences. And if we are lucky enough, those that we say goodbye to we resurface in our lives at another time. 

Some of the climbing family, and some other friends mixed in.