Roughly 90 days ago I packed up my office in South Carolina, took the art off the walls, put the books in a box, unplugged my computer, and moved across the globe to South Korea. In between there were multiple hotels, visits with friends, stays with family, language confusion, a surprise landing in Japan, customs, and the Korean taxi drivers which get a special note because taxis were very much a novelty to me.
I grew up in The Outskirts. You know, the edge of cities. Not quite suburbia, but not quite close enough to the train station to make it viable. Buses were an option sometimes, but not always. And taxis were those strange things that were summoned when the hotel shuttle was broken and couldn’t pick up at the airport. Now I have an app for taxis.
Needless to say, there’s been some changes in my lifestyle over the past few months.
Let’s hit the Big 5:
1- PUBLIC TRANSPORT
Public transportation was not a thing where I lived in South Carolina. I don’t remember ever seeing a taxi in our area and the public bus system was so underfunded it was useless. Now, all my kids have T-Money Cards (good for buses, trains, and subways) and hopping on the bus to go downtown to the train station or the shops is normal. I have a bus app and a taxi app on my phone. I prefer public transport to driving. Gas is expensive and buses are not. Also, everyone here wears masks so the public transportation is much safer all around.
I will warn you, the bus drivers drive like they made a deal with death. They have no mercy and they will not wait. But the longest I’ve ever waited for a bus was seven minutes, so I feel like we’re doing okay.
2 – MARKET SHOPPING
Broccoli at the local indoor market is an imported vegetable and costs $6USD per pound. The local market has broccoli grown a couple towns over and for 3000₩ (about $2.50USD) I can get enough broccoli for salad and a nice soup. If I see USD prices in the window, I keep walking. I want to buy my veggies from a nice auntie who has the produce lined up on a table or on a blanket at the market. I plan my menu around what the 3/8 Market (the farmers market that opens on days ending in 3 and 8) has.
3- LANGUAGE SKILLS
I’m taking classes so I can speak Korean. I’ve used apps. I have at least five of the listen-and-learn audio books on my phone. And I feel I understand a lot of what’s said, but I can’t respond fluently. Which is frustrating when I’m on a bus or in a shop and need to answer questions. So I’m taking classes again. It’s good to be back in school. 🙂
4- APARTMENT LIVING
For the first time since 2011 I am back in an apartment. A really big one. Which is weird.
I moved to South Korea from The Deep South, aka Hurricane Central. Apartments in The South are built low and wide because high winds have a tendency to sheer off the tops of buildings. You just don’t get high rises in places prone to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and that also have very boggy ground. Here in Korea the high rise apartment is the preferred method of housing large groups of people.
The cities here are clusters of high rise buildings surrounded by farmland. The preference is for building up, not out. Clusters of apartments are super common, and they make it easier to live near everything. My kids love it because all they need to do to find friends is go to one of the four playground nears us, or next door, or upstairs, or downstairs and… POOF! Friends!
There’s some frustrating bits. Like, the view is of other apartments because I’m not in one of the apartments with a view of the mountains. Sometimes I can hear the upstairs neighbor’s toddler escape at bedtime and go running down the hall. But, overall, it’s pretty awesome to live near everything and everybody. I’m an extrovert and I enjoy talking to people every day.
5- NEW FRIENDS
I have lots of friends.
Most those friends live nowhere near me. But now I live in an apartment and take public transport, which means I need to walk places and go places and I see the same faces on a regular basis. So now I’m making friends who live here locally. Which is nice, because I can go meet a friend for lunch and it doesn’t involve using Zoom at our desks while we eat matching salads while living in different states.
There’s also an added bonus of meeting really interesting people. Because I’m not fluent in Korean, and because I definitely don’t look Korean, the people who usually speak to me are either expats or immigrants, or Koreans who already have a global view and better language skills than I do. The kind of people who move to new countries or learn foreign languages are – by and large – people who have interesting lives. They’re explorers, even if all they explore is the world in their own backyard. They’re a lot of fun to have conversations with and I’ve had a good time learning all their stories.
Three months into the big move, and I still don’t have my desktop computer back, but I think I’m finding my groove.
I started writing again last week. I’m re-opening to editing clients this week. I feel like I’m finally finding my sea legs and stabilizing.
How are you doing?