Community

One thing that has really delighted me about coming to Korea is the sense of community among the foreign teachers here. I think we are tied together by the common experience of

the discomforting, disorientating sensation of being dropped on Mars. We can't read the signs, we don't have any way of calling friends or family back home. Figuring out how to buy groceries the first time is a challenge, let alone navigation public transportation (a challenge in most places even when you can speak the language), or find outlets for making friends.

That results in two things I think. One is that there is a ton of stuff going on! Yoga classes, softball games, frisbee leagues, language exchanges, not to mention the everchanging spur of the moment events like theme parties downtown or organized day trips. Daegu is a small enough city that all the foreigners are linked by two degrees of separation. Just tonight I met a girl who had heard of me through someone else. And this someone else I haven't even met yet! We've talked a bit on facebook because she coordinated some yoga classes in town. It kind of reminds me of college in that way - there is some sort of comfort in the middle ground between complete anonymity and being stuck with the same crowd all the time. Moving into circles is easy, because you quickly find the links, and moving out is easy because there are enough things to do to keep from being stifled.

The other thing is that I've found everyone here so incredibly welcoming, friendly, and helpful. Koreans too, actually. In various places I've lived in the States, one thing I've found very challenging about being a new person in a new city is that everyone you meet already has their own thing going on - their own circle of friends, their own lives to live. I've found people not very easily accepting of a new person, because the necessity for that person's friendship is absent. This is not the case here. I feel like my friendship circle is constantly expanding. I feel like every time I meet someone new, they are eager to make plans to hang out again, to include me in things, to keep me in the loop about the Daegu social scene, no matter how long they've been here, no matter how many friends they already have.

This feels good. As I've blundered my way along the unmarked post-college journey, sense of community has been a strong motif in my life. Community keeps me grounded when I so often feel like a piece of seaweed being batted whichever way the current flows. Fear of the loss of community often inhibits me from going somewhere new. But I feel like in the short amount of time here, I've built as good of a network that, in other places, took a much longer time to develop. And that's pretty rad.