A Seoulful Marriage

At around three months, in a moment of poetic inspiration, I wrote the following: “I believe that my honeymoon period in Korea has officially ended. Everyone warned me that it would, but honestly, who thinks about the marriage when there’s the whole fiasco of a wedding to plan? And an exciting and severely distracting new adventure to follow that? And then suddenly BAM!, you’re smack in the middle of a brand new life that you wonder if you really are mature enough for, you’ve forgotten several things when you moved away from your old, comfortable house (and life!) that is now miles away, and the communication’s all off because the other party in this arrangement doesn’t seem able to a utter a single word you can make sense of; all of a sudden you realize that the partner you were once totally fascinated by is in reality smelly, dirty, particularly loud and at times rather poorly planned. I mean seriously, where was all this helpful insight before the commitment? And more importantly, now what? I mean, there’s always divorce, but realistically a girl has got to put in at least a few more months so it won’t look like she married for the money."

I realize now more than ever that culture shock if a very mysterious thing. It occurred to me (thanks to one of those unique subway conversations) that although I have always believed this phenomenon to strike upon immediate contact with drastically new surroundings, it is instead akin to the natural reaction of your body when you break a bone. By shutting down for a while, your body gives you the chance to get accustomed to the idea before sending pain. You board an airplane filled with adrenaline and determination and thus your initial existence in a new place is exciting and surreal. You aren't upset by the changes because you don't have to truly live within them, not yet. Before you have to face a different reality, these chemicals and this mindset provide a temporary refuge of mindless floating and fun… you know, to put it technically.

It is now more like five months into my contract. Since the seemingly overnight ending of that amazing honeymoon period, it has felt very different around here. At first it was tough, and the coinciding of my return from the world of 'visiting adventurer' and Christmas away from home didn’t help, but in the end it created an even stronger contrast with January. If this were university, the dawning of 2008 means I am now somewhere in second/third year, the middle film of any good trilogy, the time for settling in, living in the moment, knowing your way around the place and enjoying the knowledge that there is nearly as much time behind you as there is waiting to be spent. The fun now is in learning to live inside the cultural idiosyncrasies, embracing the commitment and truly enjoying the differences.