alive

March’s word is 생명감, or “alive.”

During my first year in Korea, I was woken up one Sunday morning in November 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 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 that adventure. One, I was (okay, still am, a bit) terrified of bungee jumping. I had never wanted to do it, and until about three weeks before that Sunday, when we all first talked about going, I didn't think I ever would. Two, the month leading up to that day had been all about taking risks. Conquering fears. Doing things I'd never done before, things I never wanted to do, and things I never thought I could do.

So I jumped.

It was all Korea's fault. Living here 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 few months prior to bungee jumping in particular I had pushed myself to do crazy and/or scary stuff and put myself in situations that made me nervous, and it was 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.

That's the kind of moment I love having in my life, and that I want more of. The alive moments, the ones in which you forget everything except that slice of time and just feel it. The kind of moments I wrote about wanting on the plane on my way here four years ago. It doesn’t matter whether the emotions are positive or negative--the beauty is in the immersion and in the complete release of whatever else you’re holding onto. My instinct is to say that it's easier to have those beautiful moments if you live in a foreign country, especially one so different and new as Korea. And I think I would believe that to be true if I had left after only living here six months or even nine months. But I can look at it from a different perspective after having been here so long. When I think back on my life experiences so far, the feeling of being so deeply alive has come in two ways: in the context of unexplored territory, as in the case of my initial period of time in Korea,or in the context of familiar territory encountered with open eyes and no mental blocks.

For foreigners in Korea, our lives are here. Our worlds consist of storybooks and board markers and pint-sized Asian children, of packed public transportation and a pervasive kimchi smell, of the random and the unexpected, of encountering the same strange things day after day and adapting to them. The things that were new when we arrived are now normal, a part of daily life. They can still give us that alive feeling, but only if we are open to that happening. What it comes down to is that the moments of feeling truly alive are only rare if we allow ourselves to slip into the mundanity of daily routine. If, however, we remember to see each day for what it is—an opportunity to learn and see new things (or see old things in new ways), regardless of how typical our days may be—the alive moments happen all around us. For example, one of the cooler things I've done is stand at the top of the Empire State Building at night, looking down at the city lights spreading out all around me. But I've met more than one New York City native who has yet to visit the Empire State Building, and it's because they live there. Their worlds are New York City, and the cool things about it that visitors want to see don't entice them. We get so accustomed to simply passing through life, just getting through the days so that we can get up and do it again tomorrow, that we become numb to our surroundings and the possibilities that lie in plain sight.

That exact thing happens to us foreigners here more often than we’d like to admit. Schedule changes every so often, new people coming in and disrupting the routine, and teaching and living here for a long period of time...we get exhausted, we get jaded, and we begin to hate that. The longer we are here, the more things feel old and seen and explored, and we have trouble finding the vitality in life. But we have to remember to give this time the best shot we can. If we don’t enjoy it fully, we’ll regret it when we’re gone. Whether we're here for one year or four, time passes quickly in Korea. Very often it feels like this peninsula is in some kind of weird time warp. It’s easy for our time here to be over in the blink of an eye, and to suddenly be leaving with the feeling that we didn’t do everything you wanted to do. The best perspectives to have here are that there’s always something new to see, do, and experience; or that we have the option to open our minds to finding newness in the old.

As always, I hope this finds you all happy and well! Once again I don’t have any links to photos for this post; March flew by with the start of a new school year and staff changes at my school. Next month, though, I’ll have lots of photos of my brand-new, super-cute kindy kids and the fun we’ve been having as the weather begins to warm up. Miss you all!

Love,
Heather