Korea Is a Dream

There’s delicious food everywhere, and culture and history galore which is certainly a dream come true for me 😀  I love being able to find new food in every other building; most of which is scrum-dilly-umptious! If I’m feeling lazy, I don’t even have to leave my building for tasty goodness.  The fact that I can walk or take a short bus ride to sites that are hundreds of years old and kept the same as in their bygone era is marvelous!  I love walking through history and learning about the culture.  Koreans are generally very helpful, kind people which makes being a foreigner easier and less stressful 🙂  In some ways, it’s all so easy.

Chocolate Toast and Strawberry Bingsu with Cheesecake

Despite everything above, when I say South Korea is a dream, living here is much more like trying to remember a dream after you’ve woken up.  The visuals are usually pretty clear, but the exact words anyone spoke are vague at best.  This is how I feel whenever I interact with a native Korean speaker who doesn’t speak English.  Most (as in 99.9%) of Korean is gibberish to my ears and in my mind, so I never know what I’m being told.

As in remembering a dream, there are often a couple pictures that stick out, crystal clear.  Even those visuals sometimes have murky and unclear pieces though.  Since so much is written in Hangul, I can’t quickly and easily read anything, so all the writing I try to remember is fuzzy.  At least when Korean words have been Romanized, I can remember them with some semblance of clarity.  This is the only reason I know any street names around here and bus stops, and subway stops for that matter.

Thus, more accurately, being in Korea is like trying to remember a dream after waking up.  The most dreamlike aspect is how great my students are 🙂  I love them all, even the ones who need extra help and are “bad” students.

Flag at Hwaseong with Kites

“Cut away every safety net, Live your life so you won’t regret the road” -We Are Giants by Lindsey Stirling and Dia Frampton