Big in Korea: Normal-Sized Again

When I decided to move to South Korea and start teaching, I did it hoping to make a major change in my life. And that certainly ended up happening, though not quite in the way I was expecting. It is partly because of those changes that I’ve decided to leave Korea sooner than I was originally anticipating. I’m ready to start the next chapter of my life with the people I want to spend that chapter with. Sorry, middle schoolers, but I’m not talking about you. If this entire experience has taught me anything, it’s that teaching is not my calling. I’m not sorry I’ve had this experience, but it’s definitely time to move on.

So yes, this is the last edition of this column in its current form. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. I’ve enjoyed these personal/travel/whatever essays so much, in fact, that I’d like to keep doing them in some form. I’ll still be moving to a new place, even if it is back in the United States, and I hope to keep exploring in every sense of that word. I’d be interested to hear what people think would be some good titles for a new, less Korean version of this column. How about “Have Geek, Will Travel”? Or “A Geek in the Life”? I’ll bet you can do better than that.

My hope is to take away positive things from my time here, even if many of my experiences were negative. It was eye-opening looking very different from everyone else around me. I felt unsafe in Korea despite it being overall a very safe country, simply because of who I was. I had bottles thrown out me more than once while walking down the street at night. No amount of reading about how minorities feel in a book can replace that kind of experience. I don’t mean to compare myself to anything anyone else has to go through or has gone through. I just mean that maybe, in my own head, I feel like I get things a little better now.

I did a lot of reading to prepare for this trip, in fact, but there were many things books couldn’t prepare me for. I didn’t anticipate the fact that, despite every kid learning English in school, there would simply be no English available anywhere, or what that really meant. The yelp of joy I gave upon finding English books in a bookstore in Seoul made five people look up and turn in my direction. I also didn’t realize just how much of a problem I would have with the food. I have a long track record of liking exotic food more than anyone I know, but I’m sorry to say I just couldn’t deal with most Korean food. I have espoused a philosophy for many years of “try anything once, except for cocaine,” but that was sorely put to the test by the food in this country. Some weeks it felt like I went zero for thirty in the “try it, you might like it” sweepstakes.

But I’ve learned other lessons, too. People may live in very different cultures, but they’re still, at some essential level, people. If they could speak the same language, teenage girls here would find a lot in common with teenage girls in America. People walk their dogs, they hang out at the mall, they make bad decisions about what movies to see. Sometimes I hear my neighbors yelling at each other through the wall, and on some level that’s reassuring: the marital disputes here sound pretty much the same as the ones Americans have. This isn’t Alpha Centauri, this is planet Earth, and we’re all in this together.

As for the future, I’m moving to Las Vegas, and I’m not doing it alone. My long-distance relationship with our amazing and talented leader Tiarra is about to become a lot less long-distance, and the idea of that makes me so excited that I literally can’t think too hard about it or I won’t be able to sleep. I can’t wait to see her, and I can’t wait to eat American food, and I can’t wait for the waiter to speak English (I’ll settle for Spanish, which at least I can get by in). I have nightmares where something goes wrong with my ticket, or the plane starts re-enacting The Langoliers, which though they might not be enjoyable while their happening do help me to know without doubt I’ve made the right decision. Until next time, I wish you all safe journeys.

About Dan

Dan Joslyn grew up in Ohio but now lives in Las Vegas, NV with his lovely ginger girlfriend, Tiarra, where he works as an office monkey. He enjoys reviewing movies and television for the site, and over-analyzing such things. He may be the Chosen One… but he probably isn’t.

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