Epilogue: 소감 (Final Thoughts)

Hello all~

Part of this post is being written as I sit on the plane during the first ten hour leg of my trip home. Ugh, I hate flying. Forget self-driving cars, someone needs to invent teleportation like, yesterday. The other part is being written at 2AM as I get over my jet lag. Honestly, it’s not going too well. I just want to sleep.

This is going to be the final update I’ll be making for this particular blog. I definitely hope that I can write more in the future should I end up going back to Korea. Or maybe I can write about other things? I’ve discovered over the last few months just how much I really love writing, so I’ll be keeping an open mind.

While you definitely got a taste of my inner thoughts and the rollercoaster of emotions I went through during this year, I kind of wanted to just take the time to really explain what this year was like in terms of challenges, successes, and the overall growth I felt between the moment I arrived and now, both in my language skills and as a person. I feel like this can get pretty long and disorganized if I simply write down everything that comes to my head, so I’ll try and organize it somewhat.

First things first, here is a recap of my very last day in Korea, since the last update I wrote was written on the day before my flight took off.

The night before my departure day, I tried to stay up late so that I would be extra tired the next day and sleep throughout the flight. It kind of worked last time when my friends and I pulled an all-nighter, so I figured it would work again this time. It kind of did? Honestly, I’ve already kind of blacked out the entire trip home from my mind lol.

So I stayed up until maybe 3AM and woke up at 6 AM to start getting my stuff together. The time that night was spent singing lots of karaoke and watching some of my favorite shows. The morning of my flight saw me rushing around Anam like a mad woman in an attempt to tie up all my loose ends. I of course had to finish packing (which somehow only got done literally 10 minutes before my taxi came), had to go to the bank to close my account, and then had to go to the phone store to cancel my phone plan. And it was raining really hard that morning, so that was fun. Somehow it all got done with minimal panic and before 11 AM when my taxi would be coming. Thank god.

Shout out to my boarding house owner who helped me with last minute cleaning and saw me off. We suddenly got very close in those last 4 hours of my being in the country haha. She also wanted to take a commemorative photo, which I thought was cute. I was under the impression that she wasn’t too fond of me after I hadn’t shown up for a meal in like, 2 months, but luckily that wasn’t the case.

Then before I knew it my taxi was arriving at the front door and I was off once again to Incheon International Airport. It was about an hour ride, and I think I might have unintentionally dozed off for maybe 40 minutes of it. Oops.

But then I arrived (the taxi driver was nice enough to help me load my two 50lb bags onto a cart, bless his heart), and suddenly it kind of really began to hit me that, hey, I’m leaving this country after a whole fricken year. Crazy. My friend was nice enough to come and see me off, and we had one last meal together (I requested kimchi stew because I know for a fact I will probably never be able to eat it that cheaply and well made ever again unless I go back to Korea) before parting at the security line.

재연~이 걸 보고 있으면 너무 보고 싶다고 하고 싶어ㅠㅠ

I probably already said this, but Korean airport security is so chill. I think there were maybe only about five other people in line with me, and you don’t have to take off your shoes and go through all those complications. So. Easy.

I won’t go through the whole journey, but basically I had a 10-hour flight from Korea to San Francisco, a two hour layover (that included going through customs and rechecking my bags and going through securityㅠㅠ), and then a last 4-hour flight from San Francisco to Chicago.

My family was waiting for me at baggage claim and suddenly I was on my way home. And to be honest, it really doesn’t feel like much time has passed at all. Yeah, it was a whole year, but also I’ve lived here for the last 22 years, so obviously I’m more familiar with the States than I am with any other place. Of course there are some things that I need to get used to, and I suppose there is a sort of reverse culture shock that I’ve felt, but for the most part everything is exactly as I remember it.

The sunset that was here to greet me on the drive home. Didn’t see a lot of these in Korea, so I’m happy about that!

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, there are a couple things that I wanted to reflect on and share my thoughts about. This is kind of me just spewing word nonsense, but definitely feel free to read if you want.

Language

Probably the most important matter of this entire trip, is it not? I came on this year abroad to really immerse myself in Korean culture and the country itself all with the goal of becoming a more fluent and professional user of the language. I say “user” instead of “speaker” because it wasn’t just my speaking that improved, but also my reading, writing, and listening skills as well.

And yes, I do in fact think that I improved. While test scores are certainly one way to measure this (as of now I jumped from Advanced Mid to Advanced High/Superior in one year), I also gained a lot more confidence in myself in terms of conversing with others and just going out and doing everyday tasks. It still amazes me how I can now hold really any type of conversation, though of course there will be some mistakes. But the fact that I can now talk about interest rates and the economy, the relationships between Korea, American Japan, and China, the use of nuclear energy and global warming all in Korean is amazing even to me. While I’m definitely my harshest critic, I am also not blind to the fact that I did actually gain a lot from this year.

But as someone who is prone to just all types of stress, getting to this point wasn’t easy. Not that I expected it to be. But there were many restless nights spent panicking over presentations or trying to get all of my homework done in one night so that I could relax. I’m the type of person who, if under stress, will focus on that one problem or task and will be unable to move forward until it is complete. Therefore I feel like I lost a good amount of free time where I could have been out exploring and having fun simply because I was too stressed about assignments and studying. Amongst our little cohort, I earned myself the reputation as being the one who studies the most, but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Also just general social anxiety created some speed bumps along the way. I am more than capable of going to a restaurant and ordering food (that’s something they literally teach you in level one), but the fear of being judged, of making a mistake, is what held me back from doing some things. I can’t say for sure whether or not me going out more often would have really pushed my language skills up, but it’s certainly something to think about.

Lifestyle

I am a homebody through and through. Of course as you could see from my posts, I did go out a lot and had a lot of fun times exploring, trying new foods, seeing new sights and all that, but at the end of the day, sitting in my room with some takeout food while watching Run BTS was my idea of the perfect night.

My one friend was almost the complete opposite. I felt as though they had plans nearly every day to meet with someone to go eat or do something. They expressed how, because of Covid, they weren’t able to join clubs and make a lot of new friends and that that was causing them to feel a terrible sort of loneliness. Luckily, they took off running during the spring semester and became quite the 인싸 (insider, social butterfly, the person who knows everyone) amongst those of us our cohort.

But me? I don’t think I ever really felt a loneliness to that extent. Yes, I certainly felt lonely at times, especially when I suddenly found myself with nothing to do but feeling an urge to go out and do something. But most of the time, a majority of the time, I was completely content to do things on my own. I hiked by myself, went to cafes and restaurants I wanted to go to and just sat and read, and went to sing karaoke by myself (my throat is literally still not recovered). And that was all great. The bottom line is, I find solace in my time alone, and have come to discover just how important this time is to my overall well-being.

The downside to this is that when it comes to language learning, being social and being open to meeting new people and putting yourself out there is a major part that you need to make the progress you want. My friend who joined clubs and met with Korean friends nearly everyday made such exponential progress in such a short amount of time it’s honestly shocking. Yeah I’ll admit that I’m jealous. No one really explicitly tells you this when you start language classes, but unless you’re studying a dead language like Latin where you never even need to speak, a huge part of language learning depends on your ability to socialize in the language as well.

Again, do I have any regrets? Maybe, maybe not. Of course putting yourself outside of your comfort zone is important, but let’s be real, just being in a foreign country for so long was me being plenty out of my comfort zone. Adding a busy schedule on top of my already busy schedule would have probably been too much, and I value my mental health too much to do that. But it’s certainly something to think about, and definitely something to learn from in the future.

Mental Health

Stress is one thing I’m overly familiar with. We’re all overly familiar with it. Honestly, if you’re not stressed, are you even human?

Classes plus adjusting to a new culture and environment plus having to constantly “adult” in a foreign language made for a pretty fun concoction of all types of stress, up to the point where my ideal day consisted of me just laying in bed for the entire day, order delivery food and just not move. Pretty sure I achieved this three or four times throughout the year. What great days.

I like to think that stress and anxiety are what push me to study so hard. Well, actually, I don’t like to think that. Because let’s be real, that’s not the best mentality to be having. But it’s the truth at the moment. And honestly, I don’t even study that hard, contrary to what everyone seems to think. I think going forward, I obviously want to continue studying Korean, but I want to study it because it’s interesting and fun to do, not because I feel stressed and pressured to do it. Of course, you can’t exactly take a class without feeling some sort of stress, but I’ll try and reduce the stress levels just a bit for the sake of my health hehe.

Along with that, I must admit that the last three months of my being there saw me pretty much at my worst in terms of burnout. I might have mentioned this in a previous post, but sometime in early April I hit a really bad slump and just didn’t have the motivation or energy to do literally anything. I guess it was noticeable enough that my teacher ended up taking one of my feedback sessions and just using it to talk things through with me, eventually letting me take the weekend off from assignments and tutoring and just relax for once. It helped a bit, but I’m afraid that that burnout just sort of stayed with me until the very end and made it a bit more difficult to summon the energy to go out and do things. Of course, I did my best until the very end, but this year, especially these last few months, were probably the lowest I’ve felt in terms of energy.

Now I’m back here and suddenly being faced with the very real task of moving forward with my life, and it’s kind of just as hard as I had thought it would be. I’m still not sure exactly “what” it is I want to be doing, but I’ve started looking here and there for things to do to keep my skills up and keep myself occupied. And earn money. That’s important. So if you ask me about future plans, just know that I probably won’t have an answer just yet. But believe me, I’m trying.

Pros and Cons of Korea

Moving on to a bit lighter of a topic, here’s a list I’ve compiled of the things I’ll miss about Korea and other things that I’m honestly perfectly fine living without.

Pros

• Public transportation - I miss the subway. It was just so easy to get everywhere and just go and explore on a whim
• Walking — along with that, everything was just so close and compact that it was so easy to just go for a walk and have everything you need within like 100 feet. Cafes, restaurants, markets, banks. Literally that was all on the tiny street my boarding house was on
• Delivery — cheap delivery food. A life saver
• “Service” — aka free stuff given to get you to leave a good review. For example, I got two whole steamed red bean buns when I ordered a delivery order of dumplings. For free. We do love free
• Mountains — really nothing could beat the view of mountains in the distance over the city or the view from on top of the mountains
• Cafes — Korea’s cafe culture is in operable in its superiority. Enough said. You’ve seen all the pictures
• Cheap karaoke — ….I miss my 노래방 (noraebang — karaoke room). Seriously. I’m going through withdrawal
• Convenience stores — they’re everywhere, they’re cheap and they’re….convenient. The GS25 worker became quite familiar with my face I think over the last year
• Korean food — my kimchi stew. Kimchi fried rice. Meat. Seollangtang. Bubble tea (okay that’s not “Korean” per se, but it was so accessible and good. Hhhh GongChaㅠㅠ). Bingsoo. Kimbab. All the goodies.

Cons

• Recycling — Ok, I am all for recycling, but Korea’s system of 분리수거 (separating trash) was so complex and confusing and constantly changing that I honestly was afraid I’d be fined every time I put something in the recycling bin. It’s so strange to come back to the US where we just throw everything in one bin or just in the trash. Like, you don’t recycle the vinyl plastic wrap stuff??? Insane. Anyways, I’m all for recycling, but Korea’s system had me feeling all new types of anxiety
• Lack of trash cans — It’s just as it sounds. There are like, absolutely no public trash and. The streets are surprisingly clean, but it was very annoying not to be able to throw away trash and basically have to carry it all the way home or to the subway station where there may or may not be a bin
• The humidity — the last maybe three or four weeks of my stay were during the summer, which is hot and humid and just gross. I hate summer. Winter is superior
• Fine dust — a very serious problem. Due to pollution there is just always a layer of fine dust shrouding the entire country, which is not very awesome to say the least
• The fashion trends / lookism — it is kind of an objective fact at this point that Korea is a bit more intense when it comes to lookism and beauty standards. While it didn’t cause me horrible anxiety to go outside not dressed in a similar fashion to everyone else, you can’t help but notice how much you stand out when nearly everyone is wearing the same thing. And also they’re all very nice clothes. I just want to go out in my running shorts and t-shirt without feeling like I’m being judged, darn it.
• Photozones — Ok, yes, I am also a Gen Z’er who takes picture of their food before eating and has more pictures than I know what to do with, but even I can recognize that it’s a bit extreme and over the top sometimes. Now go to Seoul where photozones (aesthetically created backdrops and stuff like that) are literally everywhere and you can be a bit overwhelmed. Like, tourist attractions I get. But my friend was telling me about a restaurant that was only popular because people liked to take pictures in the front entry way. The food was just okay. Then I saw a line that was maybe two blocks long at Seoul Forest where people were waiting to take pictures with a cherry blossom tree. As someone who doesn’t really like having their picture taken, I was not too impressed
• General crowdedness — I meant it’s Seoul. It has like a fifth of the population in one place. Of course it’s going to be crowded. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it
• Self-verification — You need to go through verification for literally. Everything. Which included putting in your phone number, resident number, birthdate, etc. like, why did I need to do that when I downloaded a food delivery app? I get it for online banking and stuff like that, but I just wanted to order some chicken!
• Water cups — If you had eaten a meal with me in Korea, then you would have heard me complain numerous times about how freaking small the water cups are. Like, just why?? I’m sure there’s some backstory, but come on people, I want to stay hydrated and your little metal cups that hold maybe a half a cup of water aren’t exactly helping.

Photo for reference. It’s small. Just believe me.

So yeah. That’s a wrap on my capstone year in Korea. Once again, I want to thank everyone who has stuck with this blog up until this very last post. I hope I was able to give you some entertaining stories or at least some fun pictures to look at when you were bored. I know that this is a year that I will never forget, and it has opened so many doors for me and really helped me discover lots of new things about myself that I wasn’t even aware of before. I’m still waiting on my results from the program (Seriously, people. How long does it take? There were only seven of us.), but will maybe edit this post once those come out.

Here is a picture of Hamilton as a sign off to this post. Can’t wait to see many of you soon!

끝까지 읽어주셔서 감사합니다! 앞으로도 한국어를 열심히 공부하고 계속 더 잘 된 사람이 되도록 하겠습니다~:)