breaking things

things get broken in our lives sometimes without our consent. bones, spirits, trust...the cause can be an accident, a relationship gone bad, or anything lying in a wide spectrum of circumstances beyond our control. there are also times when things break because we have made a conscious decision to risk it. we have put ourselves into situations to test our beliefs and perspectives or to challenge the strength within ourselves, and we find that things fall short of what we thought they were. we're not as whole, as solid, as we thought. but whether the breaking happens because we allowed it to or not, ultimately the healing of those breaks serves to make us stronger.

over the past nine months i've experienced much of the first two kinds. i've felt like my spirit's been broken by loneliness, my trust in people has been damaged by a failed friendship, i've discovered that my convictions weren't as strong as i liked to think, i've questioned almost everything about myself and not always come up with positive answers, parts of who i am have seemed lost.

i'll be honest...every one of those times sucked. some of the hardest things i've dealt with emotionally and mentally have happened during my time so far in korea.

but anytime anyone asks me how korea is, the first thing that i say is always, "i love it!" and this is because all that negative stuff, all those tough times and all that brokenness, they have been positives in the end. they've brought me to the point i am at now—a point at which i've come to understand the best kind of breaking: the kind which we do on our own terms. it can't happen until we've healed from past breaks and begun to recognize the strength we have. the way i see it, everyone has layers that must be removed before they see who they truly are, and sometimes it takes being broken down gradually to get to that person within. that's definitely been the case for me.

so now here i am, all these layers taken away by korea and the situations it's led me to and through, and i'm starting to see myself for the first time. or rather, who i truly want to be and how to work toward that point. ah, i'm on such a journey here! it's a journey whose destination i did not know when i set out but which is now suddenly so clear.

let me explain. i can break boards now, and not just one at a time. tonight i put my fist through three and my foot through two! you should have seen my reaction the first time i did it, about two weeks ago. i didn't stop smiling for at least an hour. here's the thing, though. it's not even hard. anyone can do it; you just have to know how.

and there's the secret: you just have to know how. not in a million years would i have thought i could break boards. i thought that that cool skill was reserved for black belts and other such martial-arts-y types. but as it turns out, it's quite simple. you learn the process, the technique, and the steps, and then you make sure you follow through.

that understanding has applied directly to other things in my life that i wish to change...habits, reactions, interactions. things that i don't like about myself whose patterns i can now, thanks to korea and taekwondo, break. things that don't need to heal to make me stronger because my strength grows in the breaking itself. all i have to do is work out how and then commit to following through. in the past, that would have felt like a huge easier-said-than-done task. but now...well, to understand what this realization feels like, know that i've never seen myself as an especially strong person. so to get to this point feels a little like i've finally been able to reject a not-so-great opinion i had of myself. in other words, it is the first break in a sequence of many that i look forward to initiating.


in two days i leave for a trip to my second and third countries in southeast asia, vietnam and thailand. this is the first christmas ever that i'll spend away from my family, and that's been hard. but skype is a lovely, useful invention—thanks to that, i was able to talk to everyone who was up visiting pennsylvania :) and i am very excited to travel...things i hope/plan to do include washing an elephant, bicycling around bangkok, relaxing in a hammock on the beach, go rock climbing over water, and eat lots of awesome cheap vietnamese and thai food. i will definitely have many photos to post when i get back! but for now, here's a link to december in pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011190&l=6f921&id=148800130


i love and miss you all! have a wonderful christmas and enjoy ringing in 2009 :)

peace,
heather

remember you're alive

yesterday morning i was woken around 11:00 by a call from my friend erik. "wanna go bungee jumping today?" he said. a few hours later, surrounded by beautiful mountain scenery, i jumped off of a 160-foot metal tower with an elastic cord harnessed to my waist. i screamed bloody murder as i plunged toward the lake below, and then alternated between relieved laughter and small shrieks until i stopped bouncing and was lowered into the boat waiting below. it seemed like it was over in the blink of an eye, but the adrenaline rush lasted for hours afterward.

let me point out two things in regards to this adventure:
one, this past month has been all about taking risks. conquering fears. doing things i've never done before, things i never wanted to do, and things i never thought i could do.
two, i am terrified of bungee jumping. i have never wanted to do it, and until about three weeks ago when we all first talked about going, i didn't think i ever would.

so i jumped.

it's korea's fault. living here has opened me up to so many new things, put me into so many tough situations and challenged me in so many ways; when i learned and grew in the face of those things, it drove me in turn to begin challenging myself. in the past two or so months in particular i have pushed myself to do crazy and/or scary stuff and put myself in situations that made me nervous, and it has been amazing. some days i still can't believe i came here, but that thought is always immediately followed by an immense gratitude that i did. i feel like all of this, the past seven and a half months, has been leading up to this weekend and the incredible sense of feeling alive that i now have. it's deep and it's beautiful, and i can't imagine any other road that would have led me to this point. every new thing i do is another step on the journey to becoming the person i want to be, a person i was just starting to see before leaving. that leap into thin air is a true affirmation of the growth i've experienced since coming here.

and to think i was going to spend yesterday relaxing in bed.

my wish for all of you in the days and weeks and months ahead is that you experience some moments that remind you of what it means to truly be alive. savor them. breathe them in. take them and run with them.


i hope this finds you all well. i miss everyone and appreciate all the emails, photos comments, and wall posts. keep in touch! here is a link to my photos from november:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010982&l=b64ab&id=148800130

much love,
heather


it is the passion flowing right on through your veins
it is the feeling like you're oh so glad you came
it is the moment you remember you're alive
it is the air you breathe, the element, the fire
-nelly furtado, "forca"

reflections, realizations, and a few good memories

hello! october has been a crazy/busy/awesome month so far, so please forgive the lack of recent updates. as i have now been in korea for half a year and thus am halfway through my contract, i'm going to use this post to reflect a bit...

the past six months have been a constant struggle to find balance. balance in how much i care about teaching, balance in what i do with my free time, balance in my feelings about being here. i've learned a lot through all of this, and i am not naive enough to think that struggle is over; in fact, some days i feel that it's harder the longer i'm here and the more settled into life here that i get. but then there are the days on which i hit that line perfectly, and those feel so good. lately i've made several new friends (while watching football--bonus!), gone on a temple stay, and had some really good conversations. all of those thing have given me a perspective i've been needing on what this time in korea truly means for me.

a few weeks ago i came across a situation that really threw me and made me question my decisions over the past few years. i realized that i haven't done anything because i truly wanted it, nor have i wanted something so fully that i was willing to risk getting hurt to go after it. going on cross cultural, living in dc, working at park view, and now moving to korea...all of the biggest decisions i've made since i started college have been based on me needing a change from whatever situation i was in--not based on me seeing something i truly wanted and going after it. every one of those things has been great and has made me grow, but the reasons behind them were lacking.

i came here because i needed to get out of where i was and this was a great opportunity on many levels. i've never been drawn to asia, though; in fact, it was pretty far down on my list of places to go. and this country especially--who goes to south korea? it never crossed my mind, that's for sure. yet here i am. and this is exactly where i'm supposed to be.

what i've realized in the past month is that an experience like this is vital to understanding who you are as a person and who you want to become. a lot of people don't give themselves that chance because they're scared, or think it won't work out, or whatever. but here's the great thing--it doesn't have to involve moving halfway around the world. it just takes putting yourself into a situation or an environment in which you are forced to question and define yourself. for me, that environment happened to be southeast asia. crazy, yeah. but perfect.

i've only recently come to understand what the coolest thing is about living the life i do here, and about what makes this experience what it's been for me. it's the complete and utter lack of any outside accountability. the only person i have to answer to here is myself. that's what screws a lot of people over, i think--they don't have to answer to anyone and so they do whatever they want. it's easy to end up a) not caring and/or b) coasting through life here. but the flipside is that you can take it as an opportunity to challenge yourself in every aspect of life. take work, for example: i really don't answer to anyone. okay, there's a director and a manager, but as long as no children get hurt i can pretty much do whatever i want in class. so my motivation at school is that i want to be a good teacher, i want the kids to learn, and i want them to like me. what i do to make those things happen is entirely dependent on what i put into it. now look at my daily life: again, i don't answer to anyone. i'm only at school for five or six hours a day, and the remaining 17 or 18 are mine to do with as i please. i can watch tv, i can read, i can lay on my bed and do nothing. my motivation each day is that i want to be growing and learning, i want to explore new places, and i want to be balanced in how i use my free time.

the point is that being an english teacher in korea, with its ridiculously easy and carefree lifestyle, is the best challenge in learning self-control, discipline, and balance that you could ever ask for. you are the one who chooses how much you want to challenge yourself, and it's so much more fulfilling to be proactive in that. i may have ended up in seoul for lack of anything more appealing (and feasible at this point in my life), but now that i'm here i'm going to get every last drop of living and learning and growing out of it that i can. i had no idea how much i was about to discover when i got off that plane six months ago, over-packed suitcases in hand, mentally freaking out that i had somehow ended up at the wrong airport.


some highlights of the past six months:
-the first times of everything from galbi to noraebang to teaching to dumpling soup and kimchi for breakfast
-finally memorizing the word for "bathroom"
-watching monday night football replayed on tuesday night and still yelling at the screen in hopes that the players could hear us
-running through a huge fountain on a kindergarten field trip
-finding sharp cheddar cheese at costco
-spending summer vacation on jeju-do (and meeting the new zealand olympic triathlon team manager while there)
-staying up all night dancing at the world dj festival
-seeing endless city lights in every direction from a pagoda on a hill
-conversations over soju and fanta in the park
-finally having the nerve to elbow an ajuma on the subway
-wearing monk clothes and experiencing almost 24 hours of life in a buddhist temple
-sleeping in a dvd bang in busan
-stumbling upon a nunchuck practice in olympic park
-rolling down a massive hill (illegally) in olympic park
-renting a bicycle and riding along the han river
-actually finding that hostel in the middle of nowhere in the mountains

there are oh-so-many more but it would take forever to list them all. these are just some of the great memories i've made so far, and i know there are lots still to come! i hope this finds you all well and that you're enjoying fall and the changing leaves :)

love,
heather

my jeans are [not] wrong

what does it mean to adapt to something? dictionary.com tells me that adaptation is “the modification of individual and social activity in adjustment to cultural surroundings,” and that it's usually a slow and unconscious process. i beg to differ on the latter portion of that definition.

i came to korea almost six months ago (by the way, WHOA) with no expectations and not much clue as to what the culture would be like. i really believe that that was the best way for me to come here, but man if it hasn't been a crazy journey. i've gone through more mental tug-of-wars, more challenges to who i am, and more lengthy thought processes than i ever could have imagined. and i'm not even halfway done the year.

my most recent struggle has been with, of all stupid things, clothing. this culture is very appearance-focused, and i found myself buying clothes that i wouldn't have looked twice at back in the states, dressing up in said articles of clothing every time we would go out, and just in general caring way more than i ever have about what i looked like. all for the sake of feeling like i fit in. i even had the thought one day while walking down the street that my jeans were wrong.

this thought pissed me off.

my jeans aren't wrong. i happen to like my jeans; i find them, like my $2.50 old navy flip-flops which awesomely enough have yet to wear out, very comfortable. they're just not the tight skinny ones that all the korean women wear (although i now have a pair of those), and i wasn't wearing heels with them, which is also typically part of the dress code.

the frustration i felt with this change in myself led to a lot of thinking, which then led to the following conclusion: moving to a new culture and making a life in it is a weird challenge to who you are as a person. no one wants to change aspects of who they are that they like, but you have to be willing to adapt somewhat if you want to truly live as part of the culture in which you've placed yourself. and i believe that adaptation can be a very conscious process.

part of who i am is someone who desires to accept and respect different ways of doing things for what they are, and to take on aspects of those things if they fit in with my perspective. so here i am in korea. i'm surrounded by the culture and i want to learn everything i can about how life/society/etc work here. i've learned a ton so far, both about korea and about living abroad in general, and now i'm at a point where i can begin to make choices about what i absorb and what i accept for what it is. i can choose how i will and will not adapt, and the fact that that can be a conscious decision is really cool to me. in that regard, i think korea is a great first place to live overseas. the lifestyle is easy and it's similar to what i've always known, which allows me the time i need to learn and process new things—like how to really live in another culture without losing sight of who i am. that is important because while i've traveled a decent amount, this is the first time i've moved to a different country to live there.

some recent fun things:

-nick (another foreign teacher at my hagwon) had a friend visit for two weeks. this meant a lot of going out and doing cool stuff, like having steaks on top of namsan and watching a dance-off at a new club we found.

-the kindergartners had a field trip to seoul forest on thursday. this meant running around a giant playground and getting soaked while chasing the kids through a big fountain. i should point out that this was especially awesome because i've been wanting to do both of those things, and i finally had the perfect excuse.

-my new friend michelle (who ellie randomly met on the street one day) took me to a really chill music bar the other night. this meant sitting at the bar and talking to alex and smokey, the cool koreans who work there, while requesting whatever songs/music videos popped into our heads to be played on the big projector screen.

korean class update:

the book we've been using just got really complicated. kate (korean co-teacher who's giving the lessons) decided that it's not so useful to us, so she's going to start teaching us more conversational stuff. this is cool, because i'm starting to meet more korean people and it will be great to actually speak to them. making new korean friends has also meant that my vocabulary is growing to include some more colloquial phrases. recently i've learned "see you later", the equivalent of "oh crap that scared me!", "you're kidding!", and a few choice words which i will use on the next old korean man who asks me if i'm a prostitute (apparently i look russian, which can be an issue because most of the russian girls here are prostitutes).

well, the kids across the alley have finally gone to bed, so i'm going to end this here and get some sleep. i hope that you all are doing well and that september has been a good month so far. i miss everyone—keep in touch!

love,

heather

noraebang nights (photos from august)

this is a reposting of my fifth facebook album of korea for those not on the site.

 

friday night fun:

hanging out in our apartment

"let's have a photo where we're all laughing!"

jimmy decided to go the safer route in opening the second bottle of sparkling wine after the first nearly took his eye out

nick brought back a beverage from across the border (north korea) for us to sample. in the next few photos are the faces it caused

jana is skeptical

jimmy is horrified

nick is trying not to spit it out

i am disgusted

noraebang!

getting ready/picking out our set list

jimmy had to sing "creep" by radiohead even though everyone else vetoed it

singing to his lady :)

one of a few impromptu thriller dances of the night

franzi came to visit:

we grabbed some street food while shopping in dongdaemun

some of it was sketchy

but we enjoyed our nice snack break

at dinner in itaewon. friends for twenty years!

this was the best burger i've ever had

we took a night cruise on the han river...the weather was perfect and the lights were beautiful :)

the famous 63 building

city glow

seoul forest:

you can climb inside this giant wire man. next time i come here i'm going to play in the legs with the korean kids

beautiful peaceful area near the deer enclosure

sun setting behind n seoul tower

bridge across about ten lanes of traffic

hello little friend

fun, but not water that i'd want to risk falling into

sunset over seoul (taken from the midpoint of a really long walk across the river via highway bridge)

rush hour. this is why bikes are better

a beautiful, random kindergarten-less thursday morning...aka why it's great to be an english teacher in korea

 

venturing up to namsan one evening:

this was the only direction-giving sign i saw besides the one right outside the subway station. in between i encountered a lot of winding alleys, a highway with a tollbooth, and lots of stairs

my ride to the top!

playing with the macro feature on my new camera

this sign made me laugh

city by night

pagoda near the top

view on the ride back down

city hall on a saturday afternoon:

this huge representation of the south korean flag is hiding renovation/construction work on the city hall building

city hall plaza. there was some drama presentation going on...

...fountains to play in...

...and a chili pepper festival, complete with a chili pepper tunnel through which you could walk

spicy little buggers (but only if you bite the seeds by mistake)

seoul museum of art, a short walk from city hall plaza

they had an awesome exhibit on optical illusions. the walls, floor, and ceiling in this room were covered in mirrors, and there were mesh balls of different sizes suspended from the ceiling

the "black hole" room. trippy.

holographic portrait

abstract art exhibit upstairs. konglish finds a home...

hanging out by the han river:

i'm not sure what this giant ruler is for, but it'd be scary if its purpose was to measure water height when the river floods

dusk at the boat launch

olympicgyo (olympic bridge)

night falls on the city

do yeon's birthday:

ceiling filled with balloons at his friend's bar

delicious cake! (thanks jin ho and julius)

helium + speaking in any language = good laughs

blowing out the candles