Going home
after a stint abroad is always interesting, but it seems to get easier with each
consecutive trip. It’s often a bit
bewildering, coming from a place where you’re never quite 100% sure what’s
going on and arriving in a place where suddenly everything is (for the most
part) oddly familiar.
In a lot of
ways that’s nice. As a tall white dude
with long hair and a mustache, I stick out in Korea. No matter where I go here, I’ll always be on
display for better or worse. I can’t
tell you how many times a student has come up to me at school and said something
along the lines of, “Teacher! I saw you at the store yesterday!” I’ve come to expect and kind of enjoy the
curious stares I get, but it’s still a little unsettling knowing that I’ll
always be scrutinized any time I leave my house.
I lose all
that when I come home. I’m once again
just another millennial hipster. I can
walk down the street and know that no one is watching me, wondering who I am
and what I’m doing there. It’s
refreshing, really.
In other ways,
coming home is indeed tough. I’ve had a
year’s worth of exciting and new experiences that I would like to share, but
the reality is that most of them will go untold. Everyday life in Korea simply isn’t relevant or
interesting for most people back home.
And I’ve
discovered that’s quite alright.
If there’s
one thing I took away from this two-week trip back home, it’s that friends and
family back home have been living their lives as well; they also have a year’s
worth of different and exciting experiences that they’d like to share with me.
When you
live abroad, oftentimes a sense of superiority can develop with regards to
people back home. Indeed, our current
culture glorifies the whole ‘ditch your corporate job and travel the world’
mindset. People back home are just sheep
following an established order, but not you, adventurous world traveler! I sometimes fall into this flawed line of thinking;
the fact is, it’s hard to not feel at least a little special doing what I do.
But if
there’s one thing living abroad has taught me, it’s that there is no right or
wrong way to live your life. People
taking that corporate job or not leaving the hometown are living life just the
same as me, only the experiences differ.
Thus, while the things I’ve seen and done in Korea are immensely
exciting to me, there are also countless other immensely exciting things going
on back home in other people’s lives.
Life
happens back home just it happens over here.
It took quite a while for me to fully grasp this simple truth, but those
past two weeks really carved it in stone for me.
And so, I’m
incredibly grateful for the amount of time I’ve been able to spend abroad over
my short 25 years thus far, and even more grateful for a supportive
family. It was indeed, a very good
vacation!
