Six Months

Six months in Korea as of Wednesday. I can't believe it. Half a year has come and gone. I still think about that first night sleeping in my apartment, my first full day of teaching and the amazement I felt when Manz, Lou and I celebrated our first month here. And now we'll be celebrating our half way point.
There are many things that I've grown to love living in Korea. If you can't find things that you love about a place that you live and a job that you do everyday then you probably won't last six months in either situation. I am thankful that for as many things that I've discovered I don't like about Seoul and teaching, there are just as many things that I do like.
I love the anonymity of living in a city this big. Venturing out of my apartment on a Saturday afternoon will lead me to see hundreds of people that I will never see again. Nobody knows you and nobody knows where you come from (although there are always the obvious guesses being a visible minority here). I love feeling absorbed into another country's way of life. I like the smirks on Korean faces when I whip out my cell phone to text a friend, with my T-Money card (Subway pass) dangling off the handstrap. The smirk of realizing I'm not a tourist but a resident of Seoul just like they are. I enjoy the feeling of wandering out of a subway station having no real clue about where my destination is and just following strangers who I believe are headed to the same place; this happens quite often and usually this strategy works 9/10 times. I love the feeling of being something exotic and different to the homogenous culture that is apparent in Seoul.

Women here, for the most part, appear to be coming off the assembly line in carbon copy style. And it's not just the general similarities of Asian women; the hair, eyes, body type. Women of Seoul and Korea adapt to the same fashion sense and mannerisms almost every other woman. So what does a typical Korean women look like? Well they'll be sporting high heels (in boot or pump), accompanied by a short skirt (most likely jean), and an oversized striped sweater (big horizontal stripes, the colour may vary). If you look around in any given crowd you are guaranteed to see at least twenty or thirty of women dressed in this fashion. They are in the company of more women dressed like themselves giggling or addressing each other in a high pitched whiny voice. If they are in the company of men they are either bossing the man around or acting shy and demure but still speaking in the same high pitched whiny voice. The women I am describing are in the 20s something age range. The 30s and 40s something women can be found wearing stylish suits with high heels. The 50s and 60s something women are seen wearing slacks and long sleeved collar shirts and walking with a distinct hunchback and bow legs. Their physical stoop is most likely a result of their hard life during the time of Japanese occupation and the Korean War. Seeing these older women is always a reminder of how new Korea is to life without violence, hardships and war. Almost every elderly man I see fought in Korean war which began on June 25, 1950 and ended on July 27, 1953.
Korean history is something else that I've grown to love and I've found myself craving to learn more. Visiting the War Memorial Museum with my Korean friend was one of the most eye opening experiences in terms of my appreciation for this country and its struggles. Technically this country is still at war with its counterpart in the North. While they signed a non-aggression treaty in 1991, North Korea and South Korea have yet to sign a peace treaty to date. This is the world's longest cold war. Tensions flare every now again and were at a high upon my arrival to Seoul back in October when North Korea successfully completed a nuclear testing, detonating a nuclear missile in an underground facility somewhere in the northern region. This was to display to the world (more specifically the US) that they had possession of and were capable of using nuclear weapons. It was really strange though because any South Korean I talked to about the situation at the time was not worried in the least. It was almost as if the South Korean population were treating the North Koreans like an insolent child who was having a tantrum and they were just waiting until he got all the crying and fussing out of his system and they continued life as usual until it blew over. The foreign population here, on the otherhand, was pretty disturbed by the events.
Anyway this blog turned into a jumble of thoughts but here I am, six months later and still learning and still appreciating this experience for which I am grateful and consider myself lucky.