Peaks and Valleys

I read the following on a forum devoted to teaching in Korea, and it caught my eye because it really captures how I am feeling lately:

"Expect your relationship with Korea to be a continuing cycle of peaks and valleys, the lows shallower and the highs more diminished with every cycle. I doubt they ever end."

There is so much truth in this statement. For myself, the cycle seems to pretty much coincide with the week days and weekends (no surprise there, right?) The lows come during the week and the highs come during the weekends. The reasons why are pretty obvious I guess. During the week, Korea annoys me and I can't wait to get out of here. I go to work, I come home, I sleep, and not much else worth telling. It's not that I don't like my job, it's just that my job is not satisfying enough to keep me interested. And working in the evenings is not good for me. My weekend mornings are spent sleeping in and hanging around until I leave for work around 1:00. Sleep in, lazy mornings....what I always dreamed about back when I was getting up at 5 a.m. everyday. It sounds like the ideal, right? But somehow it's not as great as it sounds. I can use mornings to do productive stuff, but the stress that comes with worrying about making it to work on time really stifles what I can actually do. Any my evenings are pretty much shot because I get off at 8:30. After work I usually just have dinner and go home, where I watch DVD's, read, and do email. Pretty boring actually. I feel unproductive and uninspired during the weeks. And during that time, I get easily annoyed by everything about Korea.

But just when I swear I can't wait to get out of here, the weekend hits again, and it always seem to make up for it. Almost everyday, every night, something cool is going on...places to visit, festivals to attend, new friends to meet, old friends to keep up with. Dancing, drinking, eating, being a tourist, whatever. Seoul is a fantastic city when you really get out there and experience it. I have been out late every weekend night pretty much since I got here, and I practically spend my weekdays recovering from the weekends. And during the weekends, I enjoy Seoul and the people that I have met here so much that I'm already sad that I will have to be leaving in 4 months.

It really is like a roller coaster. But the highs are never as high as they were in the beginning.

Right now, I am looking forward to summer. I know that my last 4 months here will pass like a whirlwind, and I am in the calm before the storm. First of all, I will be working Intensive from June through the end of my contract in August, which means 11 hour work days. During that time, I will also be cramming in all the things I have not done or seen yet, along with going back to all the places I want to see once more before I go. I have also been meeting a lot of new people lately that I have a feeling I will be spending much more time with, so I'm predicting a full social calender. It will be World Cup time, which ensures plenty of celebrating, especially if Korea does as well as they did last time. I get a week off during which I might go to Japan. There is a Mud Festival in the southern part of the country. I still need to make it to the DMZ and the green tea fields.

And on top of the chaos of work and fun, I will be gearing up to leave on a 5-6 month backpacking trip, which involves some pretty epic planning in and of itself. The kicker is that I lose my apartment and only have 2 weeks before my visa expires, I will pretty much need to be ready to go by the end of August. I'm just hoping my boss will let me stop working a day or two before I have to move out so I have time to do all the packing. So yeah, it will be a crazy summer for me, no doubt. But, I am looking forward to it.

I am also starting the get the inevitable question more and more: Will you come back to Korea for another year? My answer is no. But there is a part of me that wonders. From my experience talking to all the foreigners I have met here, Korea seems to be an addicting place. So many people say that being here drives them nuts, yet they still stay because they also love the place. And yes, the money is quite good in relation to the work involved in teaching here.

If you ask me during the week, I will say that I would never do another full year in Korea. Another year of shitty weather, spitting men, boring teaching and a noisy small apartment...no thank-you. But on the weekends, especially after a great weekend like the one I just had, I can almost see myself coming back. It's easy to be optimistic when you are looking down from the peak.