Reflections

T-minus 20 days until my Korean adventure is over, and only 2 weeks of teaching left. I’m starting to clean out my work desk and getting ready to pull out my suitcases and start packing. It’s really the end. I’m already contemplating in my head my response to the question I will inevitably encounter: “How was Korea?” It’s a really funny question because Korea became my home, my life. After a while, Korea just became the place I was living. Of course, it presented more challenges than a city in my home country, but those challenges just became a part of everyday life. I expect my answer to the question to be, “it was an experience.” Did I enjoy every minute of it? No. Was it challenging? You bet. Were there things I enjoyed? Of course. It will say this: It was a challenging year during which I faced a lot of questions, hardships, and tough situations. But when you think about it, so does everyone and that is what makes you the person you are. Good or bad, Korea has definitely helped shape the person I am. To quote my wise boyfriend, “life is full of things that make one strong even if they don’t want to.”

Valery and I recently reflected on the past year. It began with me asking him if he thought he had changed since he came to Korea back in December ’09. He said he definitely had, and he knows I have too. I totally agree. The most noticeable change I’ve seen in myself is that I’m surer of myself now. After having lived in a place where you stick out like a sore thumb (in appearance and behavior) and are thus judged and stared at regularly, you simply cannot spend your energy worrying about what other people think of you. As a waygookin, no matter how much you try to fit in and please the people around you, they will still stare and judge. To be happy here, you really have to be OK with who you are and accept the differences. Val & I discussed this weekend how being the minority (in any sense) is an experience that everyone should have at least once in their life, even if it’s for a few days, because that is where true self assuredness comes from. If you can still be OK with who you are when you are judged, watched, excused from norm expectations because “that’s just how you are”, refused service, etc, that is an achievement. I’m not saying that I don’t care at all what other people think, because unless you’re a complete psychopath, you are aware of and tend to the emotions of other people. However, being OK with who you are even when the people around you judge you for it is not an easy feat. The only way you can have that experience, I think, is an in-your-face reality check.

Also, I believe I am more tolerant now. Not to say that I was intolerant before, but I have such a deeper understanding of people who are different than me. I mean, WOW. If I had to choose which place was the most unlike America, I would choose Korea (or perhaps another Asian country…hard to say since I’ve only been here). I was never a fan of East and West categorizations (“in the Western world, people do/say/think _____”), but it is so clear to me know how different an Eastern (aka Asian) viewpoint is. I understand life and the world in such a different way now, and I appreciate my new perspective, because it is an important one.

I’m not an expert at this. While my Anthropology degree gives me a slight academic lens to this whole thing, to me it’s the climate of the social interactions that determines how “different” I consider that country to be. You can use anthropological, economic, psychological, or sociological jargon to describe to someone why/how things are different, but any human being, educated or not, can sense the dynamic of a social situation. That is what I try to convey to my readers and my friends. I hope I have succeeded in doing that.

My life here has exposed me to two different cultural perspectives: Korean and Cameroonian. I recently said to a friend how 75% of the time I feel like I’m in Korea, and the other 25% I feel like I’m in Cameroon. I feel like I understand the social dynamics of Cameroonian situations due to the significant time I’ve spent with many different Cameroonians in small groups, large gatherings, and one-on-one. Just like when Americans get together in Korea, we act like Americans and do things the American way and expect American social norms to be followed. So when Cameroonians get together, we might as well be in Cameroon. We are eating Cameroonian food, listening to Cameroonian music, discussing Cameroonian issues in a Cameroonian matter. There are expectations for how people are supposed to act in these settings, and I’ve learned them in an almost classroom-like manner. I come home from these events and have a discussion about it with my “teacher”, Val. I express my confusions and questions, and he gives me an explanation which I apply the next time around. I truly believe that when eventually make it to Cameroon, there won’t be much that will surprise me in terms of social interaction. In fact, one of Val’s friends said to him this weekend at a Cameroonian party (which I helped host with some of the Cameroonian girls) that he really likes and appreciates how comfortable I am around Cameroonians and how it truly feels like I am one of them. That comment means so, so much to me, especially since I am still “myself” when I’m around them. It’s proof that I’ve found a way to make changes in order to make our interactions natural for them, but still comfortable for me.

I feel very enriched by everything I’ve encountered this year. I'll be interested to hear your observations about the changes you see in me when I get home.


On a COMPLETELY unrelated note, I have some reflections about divorce and children’s movies. A recent “victim” of a parental divorce, I am newly sensitive to this issue. Yesterday Val & I went to the movies to see “Mr. Popper’s Penguins”. (It was, by the way, our first movie-in-the-theater date ever!) If you don’t know about this movie, it features Jim Carrey as a divorced workaholic who ends up receiving penguins as a gift from his deceased father. His young children who live with their Mom don’t like him because he is boring and works too much, yada yada yada. Long story short, the penguins teach him about love and family (go figure?) and SPOILER ALERT he and his wife get back together at the end of the movie. The moment the divorced parents and young children situation was presented in the film, I knew that the parents would end up together again at the end. Then it occurred to me that all the children’s movies I could think of that have divorced parents (The Parent Trap and Mrs. Doubtfire, to name a few) all end with every child’s secret wish: their separated parents falling in love with each other again. I wonder… is this a positive message for kids? Not that divorce is a good thing, but you can’t ignore the fact that it’s becoming more and more prevalent in American society. Many kids are growing up with divorced parents. Can you think of a movie for children that present divorce in a less negative light? I can’t. These movies give false hope to kids about their parents falling for each other once again, and teach them that that the only way they can have a happy ending themselves is if their parents are together. Now, false hope is a theme for many adult movie-goers (because yeah, in real life that the smokin’ hot, sweet, flirtatious musician barista (baristo?) at your local Starbucks is going to be single/straight/not a huge player…NOT), but children can’t separate fact from fiction as easily as adults. The way we envy (but understand the fantasy of) the Hollywood romantic chance encounters with impossibly perfect people, children envy the kids in these movies. I really wonder if this is the right way to present divorce to kids. Then again, Hollywood sends lots of bad messages. This one was particularly interesting to me because it’s a children’s movie that deals with an issue that many children are dealing with currently. Kids don’t go to movies for the same reason we do. Adults often see movies to escape our messed up, problem-laden lives and enter into someone else’s perfect one where there is a guaranteed happy ending. Kids go to see movies to learn about life. It’s one thing to let a kid fantasize about their dog being able to talk or discovering they have superpowers, but another to let them believe that they can’t have a happy ending if their parents remain divorced.

I’ll leave you with those unrelated reflections. I’m curious about your thoughts on these, readers.

Keep your eyes out for a final entry or two in the next few weeks!

Cheers!
-Melissa