GRRRL Goes Whimpery in Her New Korean Location

How do you take a bath in Korea?

Let me tell you how I just did it.  I washed over my sink and shaved my legs by propping them up on my toilet lid.  Yes, a toilet lid can have more uses than just one when you’re in an efficient country like Korea.

But smart-assing aside.

You haven’t heard peep from me since I’ve arrived in Korea, as I’ve been in an intense transition and it just hit rocky.

The “rocky” is something I’m still working through. I’ll fast-forward over my escape from the draft of flu, my partial hearing loss due to airplane travel with a cold and my suspended bowel movement, which had me alarmed for several days. I will blow past my initial romance phase with Korea- my wonderful EPIK orientation, experiencing Korea for the first time and the “ I love being here!“

I’m gonna start my Korean blogging with my first “real” GRRRL whimper… the moment when “yours truly” turned girlie whiny and wanted to book the first flight home!

Yup, you heard me. Within an hour of arriving in my apartment, I wanted to go back home.

They say first impressions count in Korea

… like dressing well, welcoming a new colleague/newcomer and maybe even taking them to dinner after a 3-4 hr long bus ride (and at that point, even a McDonalds will do…).

Nada.

Instead, my co-teacher picked me up and drove me to my apartment, letting me know our school/my apartment is located in one of “poorer”, more “remote” areas of Daegu and that the job of co-teacher was “compulsory “. She did not choose to be my host, but the job was given to her and she had no choice but comply.

A co-teacher (abbrev: CT) is a Korean native. She’s a colleague working in our school and the support we were told would help us with our move, but upon my meeting my co-teacher, she wasn’t smiling but letting me know that she burdened with by responsibility of it.

Culture shock.

We arrived at a 3-story nondescript and unthrilled-looking apartment tucked into a dark ass-crevice of a street alley.

I met my predecessor Suzi, a young Canadian girl with rosy cheeks, a cartilage piercing and whose backpack was roaring for Thailand.

She quickly ran through the operations of the apartment and left me with a tiny 3×5″ notebook paper scribbled with:

•   A passcode numbers for the apartment doors (my apt bldg is all electronic and has no keys)
•   The address of my school so that I could have my mail forwarded there (the apartment is a hit or miss with the mailman and taxis),
•   A tiny hand-drawn map to the subway
•   The name of the subway stop for E-mart (the Korean K-mart).

No sooner  as Canadian Suzi whizzed through the instructions of my apt, she and my co-teacher were off to the airport.

Bye.

My co-teacher left me her phone number (despite the fact, I don’t have a phone) and said she’d pick me up to take me to my first day of school… three days later.

That was it.

It was a three day holiday before school started.

Armed with Suzi’s tiny note of instructions, I knew nothing about my area, my job, my school… I knew nobody.

I was alone.

45 minutes after arriving in my Daegu apartment…

My excitement…dwindled.

I was dazed, confused and housed in the seemingly “shadier side of town”. Alone in my new one bedroom apartment, my starving vegetarian stomach was giving off an audible growl of “lost and lonely”.

Unpacking, I noticed little “welcome gifts” left from Suzi… crumbs, old  refrigerator food and a thick coat of dust around, under and behind my bed. The bed padding and linens were a lovely shade of “used”, spotted and had grown some blond strands of Suzi-hair in the process.

The bed was rickety and the “mattress” was a bunch of springs with a thin layer of dirty-looking padding.

My chest started to constrict and I didn’t know whether I wanted to cry or to clench my chest and say “Ouch”.  I didn’t know if having a cigarette would make me go into cardiac arrest or chillax me.

A two-word mantra played in my head:

Quit tomorrow!

Life is all about presentation.

Presentation colors our first impressions of things. I might have been blindly happy, had my co-teacher just lied to me about my location. But there were no lies. No fake smiles. Just the raw truth.

That I was an unwelcome guest in my co-teacher’s life, I resided in the bad part of town and I’d find my way and get my household items on my own.

As an Asian-American, I think and speak fluent …”Asian”.

Thus, I’m just as unforgiving as any Asian can be. The “first impression” of my new host was colored the shade of bleak.

I may be Asian-American. I may not speak fluent Korean or Japanese, but this doesn’t mean I slack on my expectations for other Asians, when it comes to expecting a proper Asian welcome. In fact, I’m more critical of my own kind, as we’re raised with a strict traditional discipline.

Respect your elders.

Don’t shame your family.

Be humble.

Strive for perfection.

And be a hospitable host…!

These are just some of the ‘given’s that work across the board of Asian cultures.  As a westernized Asian I know this and live by it.

So there’s simply no excuse for being a bad Asian when you live in Asia!

Hostels abroad vs. Homes abroad is the Difference between Dating and Marriage.

As a traveler, I’ve roughed it before and in invariably worse ways… insect-infested rooms, rooms without ventilation or sleeping bundled up with layers of scarves, mittens and coats to avoid the cold or…bundled up to my eyeballs to avoid mosquito bites.  So why am buckling in this one-bedroom mildly furnished apartment of warmth, which to an average New Yorker may seem like a palace?

Why? Simply put- I am ball-and-chained to my situation for a year! I liken this to my vegetarian dietary habits abroad. For instance, when backpacking through a developing country or meat loving society (and not a vegetable is in sight), I know there’s an eventual end to my starvation rainbow. Though I can’t taste it, I can see it. But when you’re contracted to a country for a year, there’s no way to hold out on eating for that length of time unless you’re a Buddhist monk!  You must either make concessions, which you will not like or changes which are more effort than its worth. Me, being chained to a potentially lame situation spells a bad marriage to have to live with and I won’t do it.

New Expat friends: The Immediate Panacea for Panic

I’d love to say I dug my claws in and handled my panic with a steel-cut New Yorker GRRR!

But this did not happen.

I was “freaking out”, didn’t think I could make it past a week and called the one number which was foremost fresh in my mind . It was the number of a quite solid, but roguish U.K. lad- Adam- whom I’d been briefly acquainted with through my orientation.

Thank God, I had internet in my apartment.

I gave Adam a Skype call.

Hi Adam,… um.. remember me?…

I explained what happened, how I felt. How I didn’t want to be alone and needed a friend.

… And that’s how friends are made!  (Ironically, this introduction scenario to my new Korean location is a very similar story to my N.Y.C move also- but I’ll get into that 911-stranded story only if I need to…)

Adam was kind and understanding and put me up for the night. His situation wasn’t perfect either- his apartment was still unmade, but his school and co-teachers were generous to provide accommodations for him, until they could go shopping with him for furnishings the next day.

Because I didn’t have co-teacher to help me shop, I went along with them.

Expat life: When loneliness calls, sometimes to your expat community for safety.

When you’re feeling panic, lost and lonely in a foreign country you’ve just moved to, building a bridge to familiarity and support is key.

I didn’t have time to develop a support group or “make friends”, but in cases like this, you make the best out of your limited resources and the kindness of people, whom you’ve met along the way

. I went through my EPIK orientation with approximately 100 other newbie Daegu-placed EFL teachers like myself. New to Korea and the EFL teaching experience, we are like solo travelers, who met as strangers and share a similar journey.

While I’d like to have more than just expat friends, knowing other expats can feel essential to the grounding process.

Expats help you gain a better perspective and understanding of your own situation.

Our experiences were all varied and mine stood somewhere in the middle of the road- not the worst and definitely, not the best. Comparing notes of our experiences with our new apartments, co-teachers and school expectations from us, made me feel infinitely better about my challenge and allowed me to put my situation into proper perspective.

Things to try when you’ve moved to a new place & you begin freaking out:

1)  Remain flexible and open.

Try not to have expectations about how your life will be in your new country or how things will turn out. Too many expectations of how your life will be perfect when you move to a new place, sets up big shoes to fill and culture shock will tear them down. (This was my killer)

Instead, be open to the good or bad that comes and take it as an opportunity to move your life into “the adventure of living abroad”.

2)  Keep some of your normal routines (i.e. your workout program, yoga, meditation).

You’ve uprooted your mundane life to live in a foreign country. “Foreign” is exotic but also unfamiliar and thus, you’ll also be vulnerable to times when your surroundings feel too unfamiliar.

Try to stabilize, find your core. Whether it was working out or doing a mundane activity which grounded you, try recreating some of that. This helps you to own and regulate your new space. 

It’s also possible that with your new environment, your tastes might change. You may not feel like doing the old things that used to ground you. So find something new… Join a community Taekwondo class or a language class… something which you can do on a weekly basis and which might also present opportunities to understand the community and make friends.

3)  Give yourself time and the situation/people a second chance.

Try your best to suspend your judgement and verdict.  Wait for the light of day and things may look different… or not.

4)  Explore your area and find the romance in it.

Find ways to fall in love with or find familiarity with your surroundings or neighborhood. It will help you find more happiness in your new home.

Own your location by making small connections through a favorite grocery store, etc… Make acquaintences who’ll give you a smile when you visit. Have a favorite bakery or restaurant.

Check out the resources you do have in your area.

5)  Be active!  Join activities, expat meetups and clubs… make friends.

It’s what I said in #2.

Join a community class, or something which bridges you to the culture so you can adapt to and enjoy it more. I took a Korean language class at the YMCA, to improve my lifestyle and so I could navigate Korea better. The language class was also a place where I met other expat foreigners like myself, who shared similar interests.

What other types of groups could you find? Hiking, traveling, language, taekwondo, volunteering (orphanages, dog walking, etc…), flag  football, vegetarian clubs, social groups, etc…  These were some of the things I and other expats found collective interest in.

Research Facebook to find other expats with similar special interests in your community or connect with your program and ask them if they know of any special interest groups that other expats, like yourself, often use as support.

6)  Remember that everything happens for a perfect reason: what you get is usually something you need.

Explore the lesson you might learn and be proactive about finding ways to make it a positive one.  Why did you choose to live abroad and teach English in the first place?

For me, it’s been a dream to provide education to children who are under-privileged. Either way, living abroad, there’d be change in my life and there would be highs, lows and great challenges that I was once excited to undertake. This was my original goal before I set out to teach or live abroad. Reminding myself of why I made this decision, made me realize why I chose to be in Korea (good or bad). I was fulfilling my original purpose.  My situation was not an accident. I had a purpose.

7)  Definitely 911-it for help or support when you feel you need it.

Other people can lend you an alternate perspective, a word of advice, a friendly ear to help put your own feelings/situation into perspective.

In my post about why one should join their expat community, bitch sessions are necessary. Feeling the comfort of familiarity once in a while and feeling a part of a community, is necessary.

Trial periods, holding your breath and waiting it out

Do I feel wimpy?

Hell yeah! In the grand scheme and from what I hear about others’ situations, my situation and living space is really not bad or the worst it could be.

Still, I have my fragile moments.

Thankfully, this wasn’t my very first impression of Korea- I’m still very excited by it. I love being in this country and I’m all for giving things and people a second chance.

For now, I’ll just give it some time and see…

Related Posts:

5 Tips for Expats in Korea

5 Reasons to Join your Expat Community