I thought I was done with Korea after setting foot in my apartment. I looked at my daunting schedule--5 schools, each one day a week, with one bus and only one bus to get me there. I looked at my hometown--a charming enough, yet total countryside anomaly in this urban jungle, with basically enough foreigners to count on one hand living in a 25 kilometer radius. I looked at my apartment, cynically thinking "this will never be a home. I signed on for a year, and damnit, I will dutifully finish my year."
I thought I was done with Korea after a year in the countryside. As it turns out, I fell in love with the countryside. I was enamored with the fresh (albeit dense with cow feces) air, a rarity in this heavily developed country. I was enamored with the locals, who in previous months were complete strangers (many of whom had never even seen a foreigner, much less spoken to one) and were now like old friends. I was enamored with the food, the freshness, the simplicity, the pride in one's gastronomical choices, and the fact that I had happily lost upwards of 10 kilograms. I was enamored with the children, who, for all their innocence and rural purity, had the ceaseless energy and uncompromising competitiveness and capacity for affection as my mother's black lab puppy back home, miles and miles away. I was enamored with the other expats I was so lucky to have met--truth be told, they are the backbone of my experience and ultimately explain how I've come to know this country in the ways that I have, and they feed my desire to continue knowing this place. I was also enamored with a beautiful, charming, and challenging girl as well.
I thought I was done with Korea after one year.
Alas, I was not.
I thought I was done with Korea after two years. Upon moving to a larger city, a city which granted a vast array of opportunities to meet new people, try more succulent food, travel to new places, try my damnedest to inspire a new group of children (this proved more difficult than I could have imagined, naturally), feed my desire to understand the language, figure out just exactly what the hell both bothers and excites me so much about this country (to no avail; I wholeheartedly believe it is part of the Korean experience to, despite all valiant efforts, never fully understand this country...counter-intuitively, this is perhaps what draws me back), and both physically live and emotionally grow closer to the aforementioned charming girl I had met.
I thought I was done with Korea after two years.
Alas, I am not.
A lot changed in that first year. Even more seemed to change in my second year. I shame myself for not keeping friends, family, fellow expats, or readers completely informed as to what my two years here have entailed, as to what tests of character have been met, as to what tests of patience have been met, as to what ends one may go to seek out, well, all that there is to seek out in this seemingly small yet unbelievably vast place. It occurred to me, and I can't specify when, that there's no perfect, all-inclusive way to clue you in on what it's like to be here. My mother and father, who made me feel as though I was the luckiest man alive upon their visits to Korea, testified that, although they had a hell of a time here, they were consciously "scratching the surface" of what Korea is.
I don't need to tell you everything because I can't tell you everything. And that's fine with me, and that's probably fine with you as well.
But there is something deeply grabbing about this place. I cannot emphasize enough just how simultaneously tumultuous and euphoric the last 2 years of my life have been. I have never been so lucky, I have never been so helpless. I have never been so stimulated, and I have never been so disinterested. I have never been so clear-minded, and I have never been so astray. And (thanks be to Third Eye Blind on this one, a nice break from my strange mood and a flashback to Sam's middle school days) "I've never been so alone, and I've never been so alive."
I thought I was done with Korea.
I'm not sure if I mean this to pertain to my employment status, my language acquisition, my diet, my circle of friends, my future aspirations involving family, travel, hobbies, or marriage. But I will say one thing with regards to my previous two years and future years to come.
I will never, realistically, be done with Korea.
And I'm ecstatic to see, exactly, in what ways that will play out.
