Note to Self

For months now in Korea (and a very brief week at home in the states) I have struggled with feelings of lost identity. Today I started to think of things a little bit differently. Perhaps what has actually happened is that I have just changed. I have carved away at my previous self.

Sometimes this was forced; I have had to alter my mannerisms and reactions to things for the sake of the culture I am living in. Asia and specifically Korea's concept of saving face has determined that I cannot behave as I would have previously. Anger and frustration are not seen as 'acceptable' responses to things. When I have reacted in this manner it was not received well. I have also had to deal repeatedly with a language barrier. Some of this is due to my own lack of Hangeul knowledge, and some has to do with the reception of a Westerner attempting to communicate with Koreans. (In the case of the latter, I have sworn I will make every possible attempt to try and understand someone speaking my native tongue with an accent!)

I have also chosen to make changes to myself. I am physically in better condition than I was when I came here. Between eating healthier - somewhat because I don't have the easiest access to my favorite, nonhealthy Western foods, but also just to help myself along in a quest for a better self-image - and exercising, I have met a challenge I gave myself. If you had told me when I came to Korea that I would spend so much time at the gym, and that the majority of that time would be spent running long distances at fast paces I would have laughed long and hard at the thought. In this respect I am proud of myself.

What I am not proud of was how long it took me to begin to appreciate my situation. No, my job has not turned out to be what I expected. But I made the choice to move to the other side of the world and experience a different culture with someone I love deeply. And I spent many months wanting to give up. I also spent months complaining. As I listened to people from home tell me over and over 'But look at what you've done! You've left everything you knew and started over!' I wanted to curl up in a ball and hide. Because I wasn't going out and experiencing things like I knew I should have. I wasn't making the attempts to embrace the culture even when I didn't always like it. Perhaps if I had made more of an effort to understand it long ago, I might have found myself writing this at an earlier point.

Hindsight has a way of making us think these things through. And there isn't anything I can do about the time that has already passed, except to move forward positively. To let myself off the hook now and then and realize that I will continue to have bad days at school now and then (hopefully less of them though!), but to do everything I can to make the most of my time left here when not at school.

Either way I am left with the conclusion that although I've helped 'shape up' my physical self, my mental self is a little worse for the wear after the psychological undertakings of dealing with an incredibly vicious & nasty co-worker. I like to think that a good three months or so of traveling around Southeast Asia will help me to mentally regroup and I will leave Asia a better, more equipped person.