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| hotel lobby at "times square" seoul |
I'm not going to say I have it all figured out, but I do! I went to dinner with a new co-worker this week and after dinner they asked me: do you like to be negative about everything? No doubt it caught me off guard because I wasn't complaining or being pessimistic about anything at the time but I wasn't quick to answer no, so it had me thinking, do I 'LIKE' it? NO I don't LIKE it, but do I enjoy it? Sure! Now more importantly, this wasn't a close friend of mine or a relative or an extended acquaintance. It was a brand new person who is a tangent of my life asking me such a prosaic question. Not only did they ask me that, they proceeded to ask another not too long after of whether I am a Democrat or a Republican. Haha. I didn't answer. So enough with the "fluff" talk (all you iBT people know what i'm talking about) and on with my Main Idea (another interactive english teacher's favorite).
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| sarah and moi at pavox |
Living in Korea, you have to be quick to make friends and I learned the easy way fortunately, last year. So what I'm saying is that I shouldn't have been taken back by their pragmatical questions one after another. Making friends in Korea is like having a "big girl" interview. You go in prepared to answer these wit-lacking questions with even better answers or sometimes lack thereof. It's actually kind of nice because then maybe you're set to go back home to the States and either jump right in with your old friends or easily (maybe) make new friends if you needed/wanted to.
This co-worker asked me what I really liked about Korea this year and all I could think about was how lucky I was with the group of friends that I had for the nine months that we were together (every single day). We were like the breakfast club. We had a southern black guy, a californian taiwanese guy, a southern californian white boy, and an orange county turned charlottean blonde all with this los angeles turned southern korean-american girl. We have all walked those different paths of life growing up but somehow and in someway we ended up together in Suwon, South Korea to spend a glorious nine months together with our ups and downs colliding. Not to mention we had another very good friend for the first three months before she left to go home for a few months, not only to come back again!
Hmm so what's my conclusion? KOREA IS AWESOME! She has taught me how to quickly make friends whom I will NEVER FORGET! Now Justin Bieber has taught me to say: never say never, but I think this goes without saying that this time it's okay. For the new co-worker? They're cool and could maybe possibly be my new friend here for the following couple months!
