Jean in South Korea

Right now I’m on my couch reading. This morning I spent a small fortune on my glasses and contacts and after being relatively busy the past few days, and I don’t have any more plans for today. It’s weird, but it’s a good weird. My visa should get to me by today or tomorrow, I have my glasses and my contacts. Tomorrow I’m going shopping for the last few things I’ll be needing and then off I go.

I’m reading the last story in When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. Sedaris is famous for writing short, autobiographical, comical stories and I would highly recommend that anyone read his books. This is his most recent book and the final story in it is about him quitting smoking. He’d heard that it helps to shake up ones routine when attempting to quit, so he and his boyfriend rented an apartment in Tokyo for a few months. This story is essentially a series of diary entries from almost every day he was in Tokyo. Everyday involved learning something new about the culture, the language, the city, the food or the people.

Every day in Korea will be something new. Yes, like David Sedaris and like myself when I was in Brazil, I will embarrass myself either through my complete lack of proficiency with the language or through making cultural mistakes. But every day will be something new; a new food, a new site, a new word in Korean, a new cultural experience, etc. Everyday will be interesting.

When I was in Brazil there was this boy who also studied abroad with me, John. Among my close friends and family, he’s relatively infamous at this point. He complained everyday about Brazil and about things being novel to him. While the other exchange student, Kelly, and I looked for the positive in everything new and grew to see new things as an exciting challenge, he saw it as a stumbling block in his life. Frequently, he would compared American culture and society to Brazilian culture and society in a way that painted Brazil in a less than flattering light simply because he couldn’t deal with the difference. He couldn’t deal with anything that was new.

Now, I’m feeling anxious to be in South Korea and to see a completely new culture and society. I have the opportunity to see another part of the world and get paid for it. My job is allowing me to not only experience something new, but to live in it for probably a year. The novel will become common and the new will become old.

Part of me wants to fast forward through what will be the initial stages of uncertainty and embarrassment in South Korea that will likely last the first couple of weeks I’m there, however I can’t. I can’t, and maybe there’s a reason why everyone in a new culture goes through those stages and maybe they’re to be embraced, enjoyed and learned from rather than agonized over? I’m excited for the moment when Incheon becomes my home and I am used to it, but I’m also excited for the moments when everything is so new and foreign to me.

Novelty is what keeps things interesting.