(re-)beginning

I've watched the sun set over the 다대포 (Dadaepo) beach a few times now (the beach is a ten-minute walk from my house—how cool is that?), and each time I've had this moment in which I realized that no one, at that point in time, knew exactly where I was. And that no one around me knew who I was. This, while sitting on a beach in front of the open sea under a huge sunsetting sky...it made the world seem big around me again. It's so important to me that I'm able to feel small. Not that I enjoy feeling insignificant; no, it's that I need doses of perspective like that every so often. I think that is because it reminds me that there is so, so much more left out there to be explored and discovered and learned, and to impress upon me the importance of continuing to strive for more. Not more things, but more meaning, more connection, more happiness, more understanding, more enjoyment, more passion, more life.

And I'm beginning to think that perhaps this is what I'm meant to learn here. That striving, and how to do so when I am very much going to be responsible for creating my own life here. I feel like it's going to be quite lonely for a while, if not for the majority or all of my time here. I don't see myself developing really close friends, not a good group of the kind of people with whom I want to surround myself. I'll have a few cool people to hang out with, yes, but not a close circle of truly good friends. 다대포 just isn't home to enough people with whom I can connect for the probability of that happening to be very high. And maybe I'll be proven wrong; it's happened before :) But if I'm not...well, isn't that what I came here for? To be on my own and to learn how to better do that? I think I thought that I'd be more surrounded by people and that I'd have to make a conscious effort to spend time by myself doing what really helps me grow, whatever that may look like. Instead, my surroundings have forced me into solitude, and the conscious effort I need to make is to value this solitude and use it in the best way possible.

There is not a doubt in my mind that I've ended up exactly where I need to be. To go from living in Jamsil in Seoul, where everything was busy all the time and there were plenty of foreigners around, to living in Dadaepo in Busan, where life moves a bit slower and I am the only foreigner within a ten-mile radius, has been interesting. I don't think living in this area would be for everyone, but it feels perfect to me. There were times in Seoul when I felt so out of place, so much like I didn't fit and never would even though it had become my home. But here, it's different. It will take a bit of time to become home, and I still won't ever quite belong, but it already feels right. In those moments on the beach, I've also felt extremely lucky, so incredibly blessed to be here and to have been able to come to this country that continually teaches me so much not once, but twice, and to have learned the awareness that makes being here so incredible. I am so very grateful that I can do this because of how important it is to me to keep journeying. I mean that in a physical/literal sense and in a figurative sense, and Korea really does allow me to do both.

Some people might think that I could have had the same experience in a different country. That thought has crossed my mind as well, more than once. But every time it has, I've immediately pushed it away because I know that's not true. It was always going to be Korea, even before I knew it, even when I had my doubts and frustrations, even though it still sounds a bit strange even now...this was always where I was supposed to be.

That same anticipation that I had before coming is still with me. I'm still so curious to see what this year will bring. I feel like I've been here much longer than twelve days, in part because being here has felt like I've come home in a sense. It's not so much a continuation of what I've known in Korea before—although that's part of it—but more like a reawakening to something warm and familiar. The setting is different but the feelings are the same, and I have missed being here.

Some moments, both good and bad but definitely memorable, from so far:
-Attempting conversation in Korean with the ajummas who sit on the curb near my apartment (and mostly failing)
-Returning home at midnight from hanging out with Carly and discovering that my washer had drained into my apartment instead of outside, soaking everything (including my bed because it's on the floor)...and subsequently walking half an hour to sleep for four hours in a noisy jimjilbang
-Walking into our school's lobby for the Halloween party to find that they'd decorated with pink “It's A Girl!” balloons
-Looking for two students I'd sent to the bathroom to see them running around the bathroom, soap on the floor and faucet turned on full blast
-Adjusting the wall-mounted flat screen TV in my apartment for just the second time and watching in horror as it fell off the wall (luckily I managed to half-catch it so it didn't land on my laptop)...turns out they had just mounted it into the drywall instead of finding studs


I am still waiting to get internet in my apartment, but I spent roughly four hours in Dunkin Donuts (pretty sure they hate me for sitting there so long stealing their slow wireless) so that you lovely people can see my adventures via photos. The links to albums chronicling my journey over here and the first few weeks are below. Enjoy! I hope that this finds you all well, and thanks for all your thoughts and prayers during my journey over here!

Love,
Heather


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015172&id=148800130&l=bdd8d08300
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015186&id=148800130&l=93c1861252
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015188&id=148800130&l=4852b47497
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015187&id=148800130&l=6612e10c26