A Farewell to Garlic Town

I don’t know that I have ever been so tired of eating in my life. Last week, I posted a photo from my middle school’s weekend teacher trip to Jeju with the joking hashtag #theneverending회식. (회식 hoesik = a gathering of coworkers or acquaintances from other groups, generally involving a large amount of food, and sometimes even greater amounts of alcohol) Little did I know that the “never-ending 회식” would stretch far beyond those three days…

As I drew ever closer to the end of my time in Uiseong, it seemed that I ended up having dinner or some other kind of meeting every night with a different group of people wanting to say goodbye. It was a lovely gesture; so many people have gone out of their way to make me feel comfortable and welcome in Uiseong, and I am eternally grateful and will miss them so much. It’s just… these goodbye parties involved so. much. food. And when there are large amounts of food in front of me, I just keep eating, because:

1. I like food.
2. People keep telling me to eat. (많이 드세요…)
3. I want to show my gratitude to the people who have provided me with this insane quantity of food.
4. I tend to sit in semi-awkward silence a lot of the time at these shindigs, so eating gives me something to do.

This situation would be at least slightly better if I hadn’t still been recovering from food poisoning in Jeju. (That’s what I get for trying multiple kinds of raw fish/shellfish simply because I hadn’t had them before. Sometimes trying to expand your cultural horizons can come back to bite you…)

Saying goodbye is strange. Over this past year, I have experienced several periods of intense loneliness, and at many points I felt that even I was a stranger to myself. Until these last few weeks of my time in Uiseong, I don’t think I had realized just how many people had touched my life, and how truly fond I have become of them despite the ever-present barrier of cultural and linguistic differences. I have often been asked what my favorite part of living in Korea has been, and though it may sound sappy and cliché, I can honestly say it has been the people. Thus, I shall devote the remainder of my final post for the grant year to these people.

Fellow teachers

Although language barriers prevented me from making close connections with many of the other teachers at my schools, everyone was always very kind to me and gave me help when I needed it. On our trip to Jeju especially I felt overwhelmed by their kindness as many of them went out of their ways to make me feel comfortable.

Uiseong Middle School teachers on 우도 U-do, a small island next to Jeju-do

Volleyball club

I’ve always been terrible at volleyball. Thus, I was not very sold on the idea of going to a volleyball club in Korea when Becky had first mentioned it. She somehow managed to drag me along anyway, saying that even if I didn’t really like the sport I could have a good time with the people there. She wasn’t wrong. Volleyball night quickly became my favorite night of the week.

Most of the volleyball squad at a 회식/birthday party

Church friends

I started going to church in Uiseong not from any particular desire to grow in my faith, but rather because I felt lonely and lost in my new setting and needed to feel some familiar sense of community. I don’t know that I was really expecting much from it; it was just kind of a desperate shot in the dark. However, I found a warm welcome at Uiseong Presbyterian Church and made some very good friends among its young adult group members.

Language exchange partners

When I came to Uiseong, I was disappointed that there would be no opportunity for me to continue taking Korean language classes. I tried some self-study techniques, but found them to only be somewhat effective without someone to check over my work. I was so fortunate to meet 영은 Youngeun and 선영 Sunyoung, two elementary school teachers who were looking for a chance to practice speaking and learn more English and who were more than willing to help me with my Korean. We became fast friends over vocabulary cards.

I just realized that I don’t have any pictures of us together ㅜㅜ So here’s a filler image of coffee and a Korean textbook since we always studied over coffee…

Fellow Fulbrighters

Although they are not Koreans, this is a group of people whom I would have never met had it not been for Korea. After orientation, I did not get to see many of these individuals as much as I would have liked, but they provided a great support network for lesson planning, troubleshooting, and weekend meet-ups.

Our cohort at our final dinner together in Seoul

Uiseong expats

While it was wonderful to make new Korean friends in Uiseong, it was also great to have an (albeit small) group of native English speakers with whom to meet and converse in a more natural manner. A special shout-out goes to Becky, my doppelgänger.

This is from a couple of months back at this point, but…ta-da! My travel partner/fellow Uiseong expat teacher Becky and me.

Homestay family

To be honest, things had been pretty awkward in my homestay for quite a while. I have felt very out of place and am ashamed to admit that I was counting down the days until I could move out. That does not change the fact, though, that I am grateful to them for taking me in. I wish them all the best in the future.

A picture with my homestay family from several months back. (Note the difference in hair length)

Students

And last but not least I must mention my students. After all, they are the reason I came to Korea. Last July, when I found out rather unexpectedly that I would be stuck working in an all-boys middle school for a year, I couldn’t imagine how I would possibly survive. The beginning was…hellish. (You can refer back to earlier blog posts for evidence of my feelings at that time.) It wasn’t until much later when I had a better handle on teaching and had built some rapport with my students that I began to like my job. (Things improved as the first semester progressed, but the second semester was when I really got into my groove.) I’m not going to pretend that everything was rosy from there on out; I had plenty of classes that totally bombed and there were times that the boys’ behavior left me so drained that as soon as I returned to my desk I would look at the calendar and count down the days until my contract ended. Through it all, though, they made me laugh a lot and never failed to surprise me. I was never bored when I was teaching them.

“They make themselves ugly for you.” Thank, boys. This is one of my second grade classes; they were always pretty fun to work with.

I didn’t just teach at the boys’ middle school this year, though; I must also recognize my Oksan students–all 15 of them. From the beginning of my time teaching, my Tuesdays in Oksan were always my favorite day of the week. It was so quiet and peaceful there, and so much easier to get to know (and control) the students simply because they were so few in number. I’m going to miss my time in that idyllic apple hamlet.

With my Oksan 3rd graders on our last day together

I will be living in Korea for one more year, so there is a chance that I will be able to see some of these people again. With many, I have made tentative plans for meet-ups, but know all too well how these things tend to fall through as life moves on. I’m going to miss them, but right now there are people whom I miss back in the States and am excited to see in the coming weeks, distracting me from too many feelings of regret for the time being.