Before you start reading this blog post, it might be wise to grab something to eat or drink or at least prepare yourself for a long read. This is probably going to be my longest blog post yet, and since I have a lot of thoughts, I'm not really sure how long or how cohesive it's actually gonna be. Now that you're situated and warned, let's get started.
It's been a full month since I first touched down in Korea and began this whirlwind of new experiences. I came with high expectations, expectations that proceeded to be met and exceeded very quickly. Korea has been everything I hoped it would be and more. I've truly fallen in love with the Korean culture and lifestyle and am looking forward to learning even more about it. However, my trip to Korea was never meant to be about travelling the world or learning about a new culture or about hearing lots of K-pop. From the beginning, I've meant for the journey to be something much more deep: a journey of self-discovery.
You see, in university it was easy to fall into a rut of routine and laziness. I hung out with the same people, did the same things, ate the same food, and played the same games. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my years at university and maybe I'm being a tad to harsh in judging myself and my habits, but there comes a point where routine just doesn't cut it anymore. It's really easy to tell yourself you're going to do new things or even make a resolution to try things out of your comfort zone, but it's also just as easy to ignore those resolutions and just keep doing the same old stuff. I'm slowing coming to realize that sticking to a routine isn't really that conducive to personal change.
So this trip to Korea was definitely the best possible decision I could make. A few weeks before I flew out, I made a list of things that I wanted to change about myself in Korea, things that would only really be easy to change with the fresh start that Korea brought. So far, I've been doing really well with keeping to that list here. I've met a ton of new people, been exposed to a completely different culture and language, and been forced into a huge number of new and challenging situations. I'm still the same Aaron deep down, but there's of changes that have occurred that have changed my outlook and myself for the better. I'm more self confident about myself, more willing to go outside of my comfort zone, and just in general feel more positive towards everything. So let me talk a little bit about my experiences as a whole that have brought about some of this change.
The first, most important experience has been teaching. Teaching children has made me more driven and more engaged than I've possibly ever been about a job. I don't know if it's just because I really like teaching or maybe because I'm focused on working hard, but I seem to mesh with teaching in Korea very well. I knew before coming to Korea about the Korean work ethic, a work ethic that is centered about working very hard. So coming to Korea, I intended to work very hard as well. However, when I arrived I found that this work ethic didn't apply to foreigners as much as I thought it might. If you think that stopped me from working hard though, you'd be wrong. I'm not often one to toot my own horn, but I think I definitely put in more hours than was expected of me. I try to come early every day to work and stay at least an hour or more after work ends to get everything done. And even though it was originally because I didn't want to seem like a slacker, I'm really enjoying staying later. I don't want to say it's easy to stay extra time (because it isn't), but I do it because I'm genuinely enjoying teaching. The reason I stay later is so that I can put some extra thought into lessons or finish grading some papers. I want to be the best possible teacher I can be to these kids, so the extra time flies by really easily.
Something else along the lines of teaching has also changed me: the kids. I'm not vain enough to think that all the kids like me, but hearing some of their reactions to things I've done is probably the greatest reward of teaching. For example, in one of my classes out of six students, there were only two that weren't being disruptive. As I've been instructed, after my class I talked to one of my fellow teachers about it, to get advice on how to deal with the trouble-making students as well as to get any insight they had about how to control the students. I had more classes after that class, so I returned to my classroom to teach and didn't think anything more about it until the end of the day. At the end of the day, I went to that class' homeroom teacher to see if she had any advice for me. What happened next was possibly one of the best feelings I've had as a teacher. The homeroom teacher said she had just got off the phone with the mother of one of the kids that was being a good student. Apparently, when the homeroom teacher had told his mother what a good student the kid had been (despite the disruptive student in the class), the kid had become incredibly excited because I had complimented his behavior. The fact that my simple approval could make the student that happy was so amazing and really made me feel like I was doing my job as a teacher. And that hasn't been the only case, there's actually been more than a few cases where I've heard that my students said I made them think deeper or had just made them really excited to be in my class. Being able to inspire young children to be excited to learn and take part in class is feeling that is pretty much incomparable.
On the topic of new feelings and experiences, there have been a number of other experiences besides teaching that have taken me out of my comfort zone. The fact that I have to speak an entirely different language is so foreign to me that it's definitely taking me some time to get used to. However, the confidence I get from being able to speak or understand the smallest amount of the language is huge. There's something about being able to easily use a phrase or understand portions of a conversation that's very uplifting. Even being able to understand the elementary Korean my students use is a huge confidence boost. That, combined with my continual increased comfort with the language, just makes all these new experiences and challenges that much better. I've always loved the feeling of mastering something and the continual improvement to my mastery of the language feels really good.
Finally, even my open-mindness to the different foods in Korea has a profound and positive effect on me as a person. There's a number of things I never would have tried if I hadn't come to Korea (octopus, slug, unnamed meats). Being open to trying all these new things has really changed me, and even though I haven't been a fan of everything I've tried, I'm still very glad I'm willing to open my mind to the possibilities. Heck, I've even kinda instituted a personal rule for eating, along the lines of "don't ask, don't tell". I don't ask my friends what I'm eating and they don't tell me.
I could still go on for pages about all the fantastic things being in Korea has done for me, but since I'm starting to feel a little sleepy, that'll have to wait for another day. There is one point I'd like to conclude with though. I said this journey to Korea was a journey of self-discovery above all else. I've discovered so much about myself in just one month, that I really can't describe it all. But I do have to say, I'm more excited about what is still left to discover.
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