Adam and I are in one of those spots. One of those transitional phases. We’re very near the end of our first year in Korea. Our year at English Village. We’re preparing to move to Seoul in just a few weeks, and we’re feeling a potent mix of nostalgia, melancholia, anticipation and home-sickness. I’ll speak for myself, but I know Adam also feels a lot of the same things…
It has been a great and difficult year. We have made some good friends, seen some new things, and we have learned a LOT. The thing about learning is that it sucks. Only later do you look back and say, “well, at least I learned a lot…” Korea is an intense place. Intensely good and intensely infuriating. The building blocks of this culture are so different from ours, so we think in very different ways, work in different ways. It’s good to get shaken up a little– to say, I don’t really know what I believe– I don’t know exactly who I am and why I value what I value. It’s also good to sometimes be able to tactfully say, that’s weird and I don’t agree. Then there are the great things, the great people, the great traditions, the great food.
The thought of beginning again and getting even deeper into this place makes me alternately thrilled and terrified. I sort of want to run away home, but what baby reaches the pain of birth and says, “no, I think I’ll just go back to the womb.”
Tonight I watched the video I made in December, walking through Seoul. I remembered the city with similar nostalgia as when I remember Nashville and Chicago. You see a place, a person, a time through the lens of your choosing. This second year in Seoul is going to be incredible. I think this year has been a gestation. We need to stay for the birth (…this metaphor is not to be taken literally… we are not, read NOT, expecting a baby this year…).
This blog has been pretty lame recently, and there are two main reasons.
1. Adam and I are a commuting couple for June and July, and a lot of my time that had been spent blogging is now spent in the city or hanging out in Paju with Adam when he’s home.
2. It’s not as easy to write when you don’t know what you feel exactly. Maybe it makes for good reading, but it’s not easy writing. I’ll try to be more candid if you’ll forgive my clumsiness.
And I think that’s it for now. Here is the video, re-posted from December. It’s funny that the whole first sequence up through the Galbi restaurant is filmed in immediate proximity to where we’ll be living very soon. Enjoy.
-Jessica
