Here I am, Friday evening (by choice; really, it's not as sad as some of you young folk may think it sounds) back in the homestay, relaxing, reflecting and cleaning my room after having just completed my school's winter English camp this afternoon.
Before I tell you about my winter English camp, let me say a few words about being back in Korea.
Many colleagues told me that as much of the United States--in all of its individuality diversity liberty and brimming glory--as we might enjoy, there would come a time when we would return to Korea and arrive with a curious sense of...home. There would be a sigh of relief, a smile of warmth, a gravity that settles us in the most relaxing way possible.
Sure, it varies and depends on the person. Sure, it matters what kind of traveling and travel experiences you have before you arrive back in the land of the morning calm. Sure all those other potential causes and explanations matter to some degree.
But I was willing to give credence where it was due. And I have been happy to say that my arrival in Korea--nay, more specifically, Jeonju--did feel like a certain home to me. I felt an ownership of the city, I felt I had come back to a community, I felt as if I had created a bond with the city itself; like I had been a dandelion seed that flew across the Pacific, landed in a more rural region of Korea, and began growing my nascent roots (or what might be barely conceived as roots).
This is not to say this is my new home, because home, to me, has always been where the family is. And my family, right now, is in California. That has been, is, and always will be, home; where the family is.*
*1) For this reason, I cannot recall a time in college when I called my dorm room my "home." I would always go back to my "room," but it was a "home" in as much as any other space I occupied temporarily would have been a home; in as much as the dining hall, the basketball gym, the classrooms, the campus grill, would have been a home. I became attached to the entire campus certainly, but shied from calling a single room my particular space, or home.
2) Now my own home which I will come to occupy and own will have a different tincture to the title of home. The title will be imbued with a different color, respect, and meaning. But the kind of home that I now refer to, where you know that even at your worst the home will remain imperturbable, adamant in its position to be your touchstone and guide, is a home that never yields to give you a sense of ease and comfort and confidence.
Now, one could argue that anything after a twelve-hour flight in a three-seater would look and feel like a home. Trust me, I could not agree more.
Yet, I guess I have become familiar with the city to some capacity. I have met different kinds of people in a variety of lifestyles here: I found my barbershop (beauty shop, really) where the Korean middle-aged women come to shoot the breeze about their children and nephews and husbands and they see me and urge me to eat one of the pastries they brought in; I work at a school whose teachers I spend time with daily and whose students I run into often and engage with smiles laughs and all; I attend orchestra rehearsals whose members come from all over the province and span jobs ranging from pediatrician to elementary school teacher; I frequent a coffee shop whose owners and workers I have become friends with; I often take taxi rides simply because 90% of the taxi drivers in this city are disproportionately kind, interesting, and engaging people who seem to actually care whether you have a nice day or not; I live in an apartment placed smack in the middle of all these different parts of the city, with a family who both abide by and repudiate the many stereotypes of a modern Korean family.
I have come to love this quaint city for all its peculiarities and idiosyncracies, a place visibly teetering between modernization and the old guard, between wanting to develop and holding on to its title as the immovable and eternal bastion of traditional, historic Korea.
This is what happens. Dammit.
I'm too tired now to say something about English camp.
Next time...
Much love; thanks for reading.
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