Coming home has been much easier than leaving, but my memories from Korea have followed me as I spent this summer helping my parents and reconnecting to my life back in the U.S. Every student, before leaving for their foreign school, is warned by the GW Study Abroad Office that the university and home environment they will return to will be different. We are also warned that very few people will understand or be truly interested in what happened to us while abroad, which is only understandable. I can tell me friends and family about the life I led and the problems I encountered in Korea, but there is little relevance to their own lives.
Parting with my host family was the most difficult part of leaving, by far. My host mother and two brothers are closer to me than anyone outside of my immediate American family. I have continued to speak to them through Skype, although it is more difficult to understand each other that way. Being able to converse comfortably with the three of them has become my strongest motivation to learn the language better, more than any benefit it could give me in the workplace or at school.
I have a few more pictures to share from my last month in Seoul.
This is the library at Ewha Women's University, the best women's university in Korea. It was one of the last places I wanted to visit before I left the country. The library looks like the parting of the Red Sea in the old Charlton Heston Ten Commandments movie. Flanking the thoroughfare are eight stories of library. My longtime Korean tutor gave me a tour of the campus, after which we got plates of dokpokki hot enough to bring me to tears and said a final goodbye at the subway station.
This same picture is now sitting on top of my desk at school. The next day my family drove me to the airport and said goodbye. I am sure I will see them again.
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