Just Breathe

So I realized I haven't blogged in awhile. Well, the main reason is that after Choseok I kinda got stuck in a rut. Some people might think that might be a bit tough, especially since I just started living in Korea, but I think it's not really something you realize. I love so much of Korea, but I think it's always kinda easy to get used to a routine. After the break, I just threw myself into my job, not really stopping to think, just working and getting better at teaching and managing students. Don't get me wrong, it's a really good way to spend my time, but it just lacks a little something. I wasn't blogging not because I wasn't remembering, it was more because I didn't have anything new and exciting to blog about. I had gotten used to Korea, used to a routine that I was comfortable with.

It's kind of weird to think that even in a completely foreign country, you can simply get used to living there. Maybe I got used to the everything in Korea quicker than most people would, but I did. However, getting used to something is usually a good thing, but for me, it can sometimes be a little dangerous. Getting used to Korea meant that I felt I needed to get used to everything about Korea, particularly the language. I've been getting frustrated with myself for not learning and working on Korean fast enough. It was getting frustrating and honestly a little depressing for me that I could be used to food and table manner, but seemed to be making little progress with Korean.

So what point am I trying to make? Well, it's kind of a simple one, but often overlooked. In Korean and quite often in life, I worked hard, not really stopping for a pause, not stopping to think. And that action of stopping to think is strangely important in such a big busy world. Today I was forced to stop, and it gave me an amazing look at myself. I had to go to immigration today, but because of the time I got there, I had to wait about an hour for the person I was meeting to finish lunch. So I decided to look around a bit, intent on going to Holly's Coffee, a coffee shop that I knew pretty well; a familiar place. But for whatever reason, I decided to stop at a closer coffee shop, one that was not a big name, nor a name I knew at all. I walked in, ordered an iced coffee mocha and sat down. And I paused. I paused to think, paused to take a moment to breathe. I looked out the window and just sat. And it was amazingly liberating. I wasn't stressing about doing something, I wasn't thinking about what to do next, I was just sitting and enjoying a beautiful moment.

When my coffee arrived, I just sipped it slowly and thought. I thought about what a huge decision this was for me, one that will change me and was already changing me. I thought about what I had already accomplished, simply by making this seemingly simple decision. And I realized something that kicked me out of the rut that I had been in.

I thought I hadn't been doing much, hadn't been doing enough. But the very act of making this decision was very very challenging already. I dropped everything to move to a country I was wholly unfamiliar with, to a language I never very little of, and to a culture very different from my own. So maybe I'm not picking up the language as fast as I want. So what if I think I should be doing more. This very decision is incredibly challenging, so it's okay if not everything moves at a blazing pace. It's okay to just take a moment to breathe. And then this song came on, and I moved out of that rut and into a mindset much more positive than the one I had been feeling. What had started out as a run-of-the-mill day turned into a much more amazing one.

Plus the coffee was the best coffee I've ever had and I proceeded to have a lengthy conversation with my taxi driver on my way to work in Korean, so everything's looking up. There probably won't be another update until after the weekend, as I'm going camping for three days, but I'll be sure to tell all of you about that when I get back. Thanks for sticking with me even though I haven't posted as much as I should have.