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Published: September 10th 2006
Bill, Brianne, and Andrew
The meet and greet (and goodbye) dinnerNew people are exciting. The past few weeks have been a blur. People moving in and out of chairs, of rooms, of apartments...of my life (and everyone elses I suppose). It is one of the little things that keeps you going around here, one of the things that is guarunteed to change. The dynamic of the office and of the compound gets thrown completely out of whack when a new bunch of people arrive, and for the transition period that exists between pre-arrival of the new teachers and post-departure of the 'old' life feels completely and utterly unstable.
But underneath the surrealism of the experience lies the deep, aching reality that people I have developed serious emotions for are walking out of my life. And yes, I do know that we are all adults, and it is all part of the experience, and if we REALLY care about eachother this is really not an ending at all but just a manipulation of the context of our relationship......BUT, Korea up until now has been defined by their presense. THEY are Korea, or at least a substantial part of it, and though I know that I will keep in contact with these
people I hold so dear, I know that my experience of Korea will drastically change. I also know that this will mean another evaluation period of myself.
Being in a foreign country (though I use the term "foreign" lightly these days as this is most certainly 'home' these days) means, as I have stated before, as is seemingly obvious, a context in which you are under your own microscope. Everything about yourself you took for granted in a familiar environment is suddenly thrust into the forefront of your conscious and everything becomes about analyzing yourself....your tendencies, your faults, your weaknesses, how you can't seem to stop being unimaginably aggravated at every little thing koreans do that is different from people at home. These are things about yourself that you tend to find undesireable. These are things that are convenient to sweep under the rug. And when the people that you let the good parts of yourself once again get stable with depart, all those ugly little secrets come crawling back out of the woodwork.
Despite all the rationalizing, the truth is I am just going to miss them. I am going to miss them a lot.
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