Blog – Incandescent

30 Things I’ve Learned in 30 Years

Cable TV is a waste of money.
Closure does not exist. You’re lying to yourself if not having closure is the reason you can’t let go of someone.
Your intuition is always right and gets more and more accurate with age. Trust your gut. ALWAYS.
Do the dishes immediately after you eat and put your laundry away immediately after it’s done. If your home is put together, your life will feel put together.
The people you surround yourself with are a reflection of you. Protect your energy and peace. Eliminate bad vibes as soon as you feel them.
Travel as much as possible, anywhere and everywhere you can.
Don’t worry about what others think of you because they’re too busy worrying about themselves.
Spend as much time with your parents as you can. While they’re watching you grow up, you’re also watching them grow up.
You’ve already survived 100% of the problems you’ve encountered, so chances are you’ll also survive whatever you’re going through right now.
Take your makeup off and wash your face before bed. Every. Night.
Date with low expectations and high standards.
Actually listen to people when they talk. Everyone has their own interesting story.
Outgrowing friendships and relationships is normal. People are constantly growing and changing. Most of us don’t hold permanent places in other people’s lives and that’s okay!
EXERCISE. Not only for your physical health, but also for your mental.
Whatever topics you find interesting, learn as much as you can about them. Even if it seems like a useless topic. Everyone loves a random fun fact about bottlenose dolphin hierarchies.
Don’t wash your hair every day. Especially if you’re a bottle blonde like me.
A healthy amount of rebelling will help you build character. *Occasionally* break the rules. (But you didn’t learn that from me lol).
Everyone should try living abroad if they get the chance. Especially to experience being a minority in a foreign country.
The damage to your ego is the main reason why rejection hurts so much. Allow yourself to be humbled. You aren’t for everyone.
Adopt a pet. It teaches you to take care of something other than yourself.
Say yes to things even if you’re feeling lazy. Your future self will be grateful for the memories made.
Befriend people from different cultural backgrounds. We are more similar than we are different and it will drastically change how you view the world.
Tanning beds are not worth the health risks and premature wrinkles. Also wear sunscreen every day. EVERY DAY.
Money is best spent on experiences, not material items. Go to the concert. Go on the vacation. Fuck it, just do it.
Sweet wine is NOT GOOD and not worth the hangover.
There is absolutely NO excuse for cheating in a relationship. Never ever. If someone loves you they would never intentionally put you through pain.
If you can fit in kid size shoes they’re significantly cheaper.
There’s humor in every situation. Don’t take life too seriously. Pretend it’s like a Sims game.
If everyone should go to the doctor, then everyone should go to therapy and there should be no judgement for it.
If you’re miserable because of your relationship, job, living situation, whatever it is, you have the power to change it.

Homesickness

“So…are you homesick yet?” Honestly, I hate this question. Something about the word “homesick” just leaves me nervously searching for ways to segue to a lighter topic. First of all, it’s a very intrusive question to ask someone, and most of the time the person asking isn’t really looking to play therapist as you explain the most vulnerable depths of your thoughts. It’s a topic I wish to bring up in my own time when I am ready to the people I feel most comfortable with. I don’t even know what I define “homesickness” as anymore. When I was in preschool, I would cry when my mom dropped me off in the morning. In elementary school, I would fake stomach aches in the nurse’s office in hopes she would send me home early. I was clingy to my family and had trouble feeling comfortable in places where I felt alone. I don’t think a lot of children with attachment issues grow up to be in my position. I have always played it safe. The university I attended was less than an hour from my home town. I had never lived outside of the Maryland/D.C. area. As I got older I discovered my love for travel and that’s what a lot of people knew me as, but in retrospect, traveling is easy. My comfort zone brainwashed me into thinking the only way to see the world was through a round-trip ticket. It took a long, long process to decide to MOVE to Korea (*see previous post), but low and behold, here I am! Today is the first day of October 2021, and sometimes I forget I haven’t been home in almost 8 months. Most days I am fine, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit my rough spells. I am an emotional person, and always have been. My “homesickness” usually comes in waves triggered by random insignificant moments throughout my day. Sometimes it’s the weather, certain songs, or smells. Sometimes I even see the faces of my family in people I walk past on the street. Believe me, I have spiralled several times and gone through some very dark periods that I kept private. I’m an introvert and have a tendency to isolate myself a lot. Even though I am surrounded by amazing people, sometimes I need to recharge alone. Back in America, this was fine. There was no amount of alone time that felt like too much. In Korea, too much solitude sends me into a bad headspace. I’ve really had to push myself to keep busy and distracted, to not overindulge in seclusion. I have found that my biggest enemy isn’t other people, it is myself. But then, if I am in control of my thoughts, why would I pick the ones that cause me anxiety? I have learned to fill my free time with exercise, meditation, yoga, music, anything. Mindfulness is a revolutionary tactic I have instilled. Focusing on the present moment, because essentially nothing else exists. I remember hearing a quote, “Depressed people live in the past, and anxious people live in the future.” When your loved ones are a simple Facetime away, the world feels ultimately small. A “home” doesn’t necessarily have to be the place where you grew up or the place where your family resides. A “home” is wherever you are.

Moving to Rural South Korea – My Journey

Let’s set the scene: It’s September 2020. America is still in the midst of the pandemic. I am out of work and sitting at my kitchen table eagerly counting down the minutes until my DoorDash dinner arrives. I start to fall down a YouTube rabbit hole. Naturally after several “BTS Crack” videos, the algorithm starts to tailor my “recommended” section to Seoul vacation vlogs, “Calling My Boyfriend Oppa for 24 Hours Challenge” videos, *ew, gag,* and finally, “A Day in My Life as an EPIK Teacher.” I started picturing my life if I had moved to Korea when I was 23, the first time I heavily considered the idea. What would I be doing now? Would I still be teaching? Would I be back in America? I had spent the past five years working at a company and was way past my expiration date. I’m sure we can all relate to staying in situations for too long because they are comfortable. I had also recently turned 28. With two years left of my 20s, I kept thinking about what I really wanted to do. Your late 20s are a weird transitional period in your life. Half of your friends are married with children, and the other half are taking tequila shots on a Tuesday night. I had nothing tying me down. Nothing was holding me back from picking myself up and dropping her in a new country. The idea of moving abroad was taunting me. Why teaching? That five year job I worked at was in management. Retail Sales Management to be more specific. I was a Store Manager of associates who were teenagers/college-aged kids working their first jobs. What I hated about it – customer service, (if you know, you know). What I loved about it – the managing aspect. There was something so rewarding about training a teen working their first job, watching them grow within the company for several years, go off to college, and visit occasionally as an adult. In a way, I was already a teacher. Also, working around the Washington, D.C. area, I was constantly interacting with people from all over the world, even a large Korean population. A lot of my associates were Korean American and I can credit them for introducing me to the culture. After doing more of my own research, I found that Korean culture has so many facets that I believe Americans can take note of. Korean culture is based on respect, respecting your elders and your community. American culture is based on respecting yourself. I’m sure some will argue with me, but from my personal experiences, I have concluded that American culture tends to be self-centered. I mean, take one look at how the US handled COVID and compare it to Korea. I have such a deep appreciation for people from other cultures. America is a melting pot and the diversity is one of the main things I cherish.

Okay, I’m starting to ramble. Moving on…

After a grueling process, I submitted my application to EPIK, with a preference for Seoul. Since it is a competitive program, and almost all applicants request a placement in the capital city, I was not entirely shocked when I received the news that I was hired by the Jeollanamdo Language Program. (In case you’re not sure how EPIK works, they are essentially a recruitment agency that puts you in contact with different POEs/MOEs who are hiring Native English Teachers). Specifically, I would be living in Boseong, a rural county best known for their green tea and being less than an hour outside of Gwangju. Panic started to set in when one quick google search directed me to basically zero information other than pictures of fields. “Oh my God. I am going to be living on a farm and washing my clothes in the river,” I spiralled. I reminded myself of how bad I wanted this job and how bad I wanted the cultural experience. Well, this would be quite the cultural experience indeed. The good news is Korea is a tiny, tiny country. Public transportation is perfected and easy to use. We live in 2021 and technology has advanced to a level where translation apps make language barriers nearly obsolete. I was ready to take on whatever adventure lay ahead of me.

Fast forward to now. It’s been seven whole months since I moved to Korea, and I can honestly say that this was the best decision I have ever made. I love my job. I love my city. I love everything about my life here. Sure, it’s a challenge at times. I didn’t expect it to be easy, but I think I am the type of person who needs the constant stimulation of a challenging atmosphere to thrive. I teach at three different schools, two middle schools and one high school. I have met so many incredible people through this job. I really don’t think words could describe how much I love and appreciate my students. They are intelligent, funny, and have the cutest personalities. Since I live in a small city, I constantly run into my students at the local restaurants, convenience stores, 노래방 (Korean karaoke room), or just walking down the street. Even my lower level students love to talk to me. I hope one day when I have kids of my own they can be even half as awesome as my students. My colleagues too. I really don’t think I could have asked for better teachers to work alongside with. I have built great relationships with so many of them and they have become family to me. Some of my coworkers speak fluent English and can have natural conversations with me to the point I forget they aren’t speaking their native language. I have immense respect for anyone who can speak more than one language. If that applies to you, please know that I think of you as a superhero. My coworkers who aren’t yet fluent but want to better their English, let me tutor them once a week. They’ve already made so much improvement and we enjoy sharing stories about our personal lives with each other. As much as I would love to get specific about my job, I want to respect the privacy of my schools, students, and coworkers. Picture the most awesome person you know and then multiply that by 1000. Those are the people I get to interact with on a daily basis. Lucky is an understatement. Living in a small city means I get to know the locals on a personal level. Each morning I am greeted by the same people at the bus terminal, stores, restaurants, etc. When I first moved here the locals stared at me like an alien. I was one of the 6 foreigners in my entire city, and the only white girl. At this point I have just started to blend in. Some days I miss the celebrity treatment, other days I am content being just another face in the crowd. The scenery here is breathtaking. Some days I feel like I live in a Studio Ghibli film. Rural parts of Asia are quaint, slow-paced, and colorful. My Korean level has improved so much just from living here. I’ve realized I know a lot of Korean just from listening to the language every day. I even DREAM in Korean. It’s never in coherent sentences of course, more like “맥주 주세요,” or other random phrases I use day to day.

This entire experience has taught me how much hidden beauty lays in the surprising parts of life. Sometimes they are people and places we don’t necessarily go searching for.

In case you’re curious…

In February 2021, I packed up my entire life and moved to a country I had never been to, on a continent I had never visited. Crazy, I know. Why? Maybe the apocalypse of 2020 rewired my brain. Maybe it was my quarter-life crisis. Or maybe it was the toxic downfall America exhibited last year. But ANYWAY, keeping politics away from this blog, *cough* (thanks for nothing, Trump), teaching in South Korea has been an idea living rent free in my brain since I was 23 and fresh out of college. In fact I almost committed to it back then, but after a lot of thinking, (perhaps too much thinking), I talked myself out of it and surrendered to my stagnant existence of a life I so desperately wanted escape from. Okay, that sounds bad. No, I wasn’t running away from my life at home per se. At one point things were virtually perfect. I had a good job, my own apartment, an amazing family, friends, a boyfriend, etc… It wasn’t one single monumental moment that transpired this move, and I won’t give credit to any failed relationship or dead-end job for driving me away. I just knew if I didn’t push myself outside my comfort zone, I would forever look back at my 20s with regret and sadness. I’m a big believer in following your intuition. Some deep part of me that couldn’t let this idea go for 5 years felt like I was fated to come here. It’s weird how some things just seem to align perfectly, and I am not the girl to ignore signs from the universe.

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