7 Months In

I'm 7 months in to my one-year contract, so it's time to start thinking about whether or not I want to renew for another year. I don't need to make the decision right now, but it's something I've been thinking about. It'll be hard to leave my job. I enjoy it, even when it's working me ragged, and I think I'm pretty good at it. Not to mention the money: I live in one of the most expensive areas of Seoul; I eat out at least once a day, everyday; and despite the 15% devaluation of the Korean Won over the past 6 months, I should be able to save about $15,000 by year's end. That's without doing privates, which is illegal, though common. It's not a bad deal.

The language barrier is significant, though, and Korea is not a good place for those who are uncomfortable being alone, or who are prone to feelings of loneliness. You have to get used to mood swings; "mood swings" isn't the best choice of words, due to its usage in psychology, but it'll have to do. There's no neat way to describe the up-and-down feelings most expats experience here.

My supervisor--who I'm fortunate to count as a friend--says that I'm generally a positive person. I've heard this before, and I suppose that it's borne true. I don't complain about Korean people or culture as much as most expats. I'm generally fond of Korea, despite its faults. And it's not for a shortage of faults: racism, sexism, and xenophobia suffuse the attitudes of many, probably most, people here. It's frustrating. My sense is that many expats allow that frustration to breed resentment (it should be said, though, that far from all of the resentment directed at Korea is fair). I don't feel that way, but many do. My attitude about this is not unlike my attitude about Korean racism directed at the Japanese: I understand the reasons for it, and I sympathize with those reasons, but I don't follow them to the same conclusions. I understand the feelings, but I don't share them.

Anyway, these are some of the things I've been thinking about lately.