A Fresh Take

          Yes, folks.  The blog is back, for better and worse.  I’m not entirely sure what has accounted for the lapse in posting, but I’m pretty sure just as much has happened in the last 5 months as had happened in the previous 5.  According to my last post, Christmas in Korea was a hit, winter camp was just around the corner, and I was fully prepped for my three weeks of vacation in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.  Making 2 separate trips, I did indeed do 9 days in Thailand followed by another 12 in Cambodia in Vietnam.  I was even afforded the chance to meet up with a friend from University, one of my best buddies in Madison, the one and only Joe Noteboom.  Vacation went off without a hitch, more or less, and you can certainly peep all you’d like about those travels on my Facebook Page.  

          That being said, it’s time to tell you more about my life in the last 5 months.  This time around, I can promise, there will not be so much empty praising and admiring of all things new and exciting, all foods delicious and disgusting, of all travels worthwhile and satisfying.  Life in Korea has been more up and down than I could have ever lead on in my first semester, an era that I can appropriately call my personal “Honeymoon Stage” with the Republic of Korea.  Each new travel was breathtakingly exciting, each food spicier, slimier, fresher and more exotic than the previous, and each day at school more and more exhilarating.

         10 months into Korea, it’s not to say any of these things have changed as much as it would be accurate to note that, on some days more or less than others, it can be a struggle to always keep things completely in perspective.  I have my routine, and have my sleepy little town of Hampyeong relatively figured out after 10 months.  I’ve tried every food I possibly can.  I’ve learned as much Korean as a busy teacher immersed in a new culture can learn; this I sincerely believe.  New traits and tendencies I notice as I go about my day lead me to believe I am only becoming more and more Korean by the day.  This is all good and well.

         Yet (and this is more about what I’d like to get into in this next round of blogging, as I wind down in my first contract year), I’m always hungry for more of the above.  Henceforth, this blog will be more dedicated to the details of Korean life—not so much the broad, sweeping statements and generalizations about food, travel, language, and culture, but rather the intimate things you might find yourself noticing after a long enough time in a small enough space in which you find patterns of lifestyle.  That’s what I’m here to share with you for the near future: the detailed ways in which Koreans eat, travel, speak, learn, interact, and generally live, and the according impact all of this has had on my experience and my outlook, both with regard to Korea and the rest of the world.  I know that my life has been forever changed in the last 10 months, in ways of which I am both conscious and unconscious.  This is my attempt to clarify what I mean by all of that.