I spent the last week of July on vacation in China; it was the first time since returning to Korea in October that I'd left the peninsula, and it was good. I knew I needed out of my Korean life for a bit--I'd needed out of it for several weeks--but the escape ended up pushing me into thought rather than, as I’d expected, allowing me to just zone out. The things that I’d been dealing with and working through back in Busan went and followed me to Beijing. I realized this and thought, “No. I'm going to just be here and enjoy here, because who knows if I'll make it back to China?” Easier said than done, however, so I found myself thinking and processing on top of the Great Wall...in a corridor in the Forbidden City...by a lake in the Summer Palace...
The truth of travel, which I understand more fully the longer I do it, is that it more often than not ends up bringing us deeper into ourselves. The new things, the absurdities and differences (big and small) that I encounter while away from what I know...they contrast with how I am who I am regardless of my environment to force me into facing myself. Annoying? A bit. Challenging? Usually. Necessary? Absolutely. And I think all of that is why I love traveling so much--it gives me the changes in surroundings that I need in order to grow while allowing me a home base for the continuity that I need in order to relate that growth back to something.
That week, while it wasn’t an escape from thoughts, was still an escape. A change in environment is what I needed, and Beijing was that. It looks and feels different from Busan in many ways; between all the smog and chaotic traffic lies a certain feeling (“international” is the word that comes to mind, but I’m not sure that’s entirely correct) that is noticeably less existent in Korea. It hit me soon after arriving in Beijing--foreign residents and tourists everywhere, tapas restaurants and hookah bars lining an old street around the corner from the Forbidden City, and a visible lack of conformity to what is “right” or “proper” or “expected.” At the same time, though, China felt much more Asian to me than Korea really has. By that I mean that there is an undercurrent of history and identity running below all the modern buildings and the millions of people going about their lives. China is a country who knows who it is (for better or worse), and that is something with which Korea struggles. To go from a country that is like a rebellious teenager, having been in existence for such a short time and wanting desperately to become like all the cooler older people around it, to a country that is more like a grandmother, having had a long life and knowing and accepting herself...it provided a lot of food for thought about my own identity and the things that (I allow to) shape it, and for how I live my life.
I have struggled lately with truly being where I am. The other day I found myself wishing that it was a couple weeks from now so that I could know what was happening next and so that a few situations bothering me would no longer be relevant. I heard myself saying that, though, and had to take a step back. I’m repeatedly getting smacked in the face with the fact that I need to work on being. here. now. It’s a lesson I’ve been trying to learn since I got back to Korea in October, one that I know is necessary but somehow have failed to let fully sink in and put into practice the way I’d like to. Life is nothing if not continually moving, though, and I want to continue to move with it and keep learning. I’m less than three months from the end of my contract, and these last few months have the potential to be amazing. This is probably the best possible time I could have been reminded (yet again) of this lesson; I want life here to be as great as it can be right now, and I’m the only thing that’s going to stand in the way of that. My reactions to situations, my feelings about life and about uncertainty...I need to get past those to a place where I just live.
At the moment I am entirely unsure where I will be when my contract ends in ten weeks. I was going to do another year in Korea, and maybe I still will, but I am thinking long and hard about whether or not this is the best place for me right now. I’m waiting to hear about jobs as well, and probably won’t know about those until sometime in September. That’s frustrating, but I can’t change it. What’s there to do, then, but soak in everything I can about life here and be as present as possible? Said in terms of weeks, the time I know for sure that I have left here feels like nothing. There are reasons for everything we feel, everything we go through--I’m realizing over again as I write this that the crazy amounts of “meh”ness I’ve felt toward life and its seeming inability to get itself sorted in the time frame I think it should were partly based on there being no limit to it, no set end point. The way I was feeling was indefinite in that I didn’t have something to motivate me out of feeling that way. There was nothing that made me smack myself in the face instead of waiting for life to do it for me. Now I’ve got that motivation, and I’m beginning to actually understand the importance of truly being present rather than just seeing it and thinking it looks like a nice way to live. What I now see is the contrast, and that makes me appreciate the change so much more.
This post has been in process from the day I returned from China until now, and has gone through several edits in that time. As I read back over it, I see that I’ve come full circle from where I wanted to be mentally while in China to where I actually am now mentally back in Busan. The fact that traveling and returning has given me the insight I needed only proves to me again the necessity of flowing with life and being present on the journey--there is much to be learned and appreciated in every place to which we take off, every base to which we return, and everywhere in between.
I hope this finds you all well and in places that are considerably less typhoon-y than Busan is at the moment. Links to my recent photos, including those from my trip to China, are below (sorry, there are a lot). Enjoy!
Annyeong,
Heather
Apparently I've taken a lot of pictures lately...
From the neighborhood:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017405&id=148800130&l=d9f86ffc99
Fun around Busan and elsewhere on the weekends and in between:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017693&id=148800130&l=20d3392977
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017715&id=148800130&l=b51f1300aa
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017716&id=148800130&l=5f1de8234c
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017958&id=148800130&l=ca8493c43a
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017959&id=148800130&l=6389c89972
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017961&id=148800130&l=1edc7a21bc
Mudfest:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018081&id=148800130&l=b427594ac4
China:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018253&id=148800130&l=e3e66c2958
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018258&id=148800130&l=e722f6d7d2
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018259&id=148800130&l=1f76fb44c8
