Homeward Bound
In a little over a month, I will be going back to New Zealand. I've been counting down the days since about April last year. One might infer from this that I have not been enjoying myself here in Korea and can't wait to get home. The first is a lie, the second a truth. This is the longest I have ever been away from home, far surpassing the two months spent in Europe eight years ago.
I feel like I've experienced every aspect of Korean life. I've been here a full circle of seasons and have survived every sort of extreme weather this country can throw at me. I sweated through the hot and humid summer, and I shivered through the cold and snowy winter. I have seen rice planted, grown, harvested and dried. I have swum in the warm ocean (at a beach which only a few months previously had ice on it), been slathered in mud, visited exquisite limestone caves. I have been to the third-largest city in the world, visited the final frontier between extreme communism and democracy, and seen the excavated tombs of long-dead kings.
I have lived through nine months of school lunches, many of them seemingly inedible (one should never have to ask "Is this a brain?" at lunchtime) and almost all of them so spicy I'm amazed I still have tastebuds. I've eaten more fish and rice in the past year than the in rest of my 23 years put together. I have suffered illnesses--serious, minor, chronic--and come out still alive and well.
Homesickness has hit hard sometimes, occasionally bad enough for me to decide to quit, sometimes simply making me want to cry for a few hours. I've had two fillings in my teeth and am about to get my first ever wisdom tooth extracted. I've gone from having short red hair to long blonde hair and back again. I learned that the worst time to decide to grow your hair out is during a Korean summer.
When I came here, I was a former office clerk with a one-year part-time teaching certificate. I will leave with a year of experience in teaching and lesson planning, and a love of teaching I never thought I would ever have. I have learned an incredible amount about a culture so completely different from my own. I learned just enough Korean to usually understand the answer to "How much is it?" and can read Korean script. I have made do for almost an entire year without many of the foods I consider staples, and am so skilled with the thin metal chopsticks that I can pick up slippery grape pips, even when said chopsticks are greasy.
I came here with my fiancé, and was worried that something might happen between us to cause a breakup and disaster, but our relationship has never been stronger. Some of the friends I made here will probably remain my friends for many years to come. We've all had the same problems, and have always been able to complain to each other whenever we ran into walls with the Korean bureaucracy. My co-teachers are a wonderful group of people, so incredibly helpful and friendly, and I will miss them when I go home.
While I was away, life back home went on without me. My friends had another baby. My father turned sixty and retired. My sister got a new job as a theatre nurse. Some of my friends moved away, to become doctors, singers, or simply to find a new life. There are so many things I have missed out on. I've missed my friends and family so much it hurt sometimes. I've struggled with teaching, with health, with life in general.
But in the end, I wouldn't have missed this experience for the world!