Back in February when we were freezing our gonads off and I was taking daily cold showers (seriously, I hadn't had a hot water shower in my apartment till about 2 weeks ago) we had this saying amongst us "When it's warm..." This year in Korea has felt funny at times—Am I a tourist? Or am I a person simply living and working abroad? Are the two mutually exclusive? No no no, definitely not.
The first few months in Korea my friends and I were fanatic about getting to events, special concerts, always investigating a new neighborhood to go out in or eat dinner. In some ways those first months mirrored our abroad experiences (I am using “our” because all of us had spent at least 1 or 2 semesters studying abroad while at Wisconsin). It was all go go go, get here, see this, do that.
Winter coincided with the period of time that extended longer than any of us had been abroad and it was around this time Korea started to feel like a place where we lived, like home. Instead of running about to see this palace or this temple, we settled in, slowed down. We crammed into each others apartments, we laid in, around and on top of each other wherever we could find space. We’re like a travelling clown car, our group squeezing upwards of 10 people into shoebox sized spaces. We became locals—we go to the same galbi restaurant now almost every time we are out in Hongdae, a place we call “meet street” even though we are only talking about one restaurant. Life became more “normal” in a way, because we were just living, going about our daily business. And the excuse for our relaxation was always “When it’s warm… we’ll go see this, visit here etc.”
And now that the end is in sight, we’ve stepped up our game and started acting like tourists again. We have schedules and bucket lists to make sure we don’t miss anything. It’s always a mad dash at the finish just like it was in Dublin and Prague. But I’m grateful that I’ve had ample time to experience life in Korea as both a tourist and a “temporary local.”
Below are some pictures of our time over the last several months in no particular order (all photos by Chris Bailey, Olivia Darmali, Zoe Jerchower and Joanna Cohen and me).
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