Last week, I stepped onto a flight from LAX for what was probably the sixth time since coming to college. This time, however, I knew that coming back from Korea back to school would be different. This time, there would be faces I'd grown used to seeing nearly everyday that I might never see again. And this time, it would be my last time returning to a place I called home before I, too, would follow many of my friends' footsteps to graduation.
Coming back to my legal home usually brings mixed emotions; there's excitement at being back in a familiar place, of being somewhere outside of school, where I don't have to worry about finding the next meal or waking up in time for classes. Being in Korea always means being at rest, taking a break, having the time to slow down and binge-watch K-dramas and eat tons of good food—all in the name of being with family. Because for most people, that's what being at home is all about.
The other side of the coin is (ironically) a sense of restlessness and boredom. It's too slow, so much slower than what I'm used to at school where I can't go single day without accomplishing something. It's also too empty: I've grown so used to spending time with friends everyday that being at home by myself with no one but my family for company is a kind of agony. The weekdays are a long, painful wait for the weekend when I'll have at least one guaranteed social interaction—church—to take me out of the house.
Being in Korea this time, though, has brought me another insight. I think I'd always known it, but every time I was away I imagined it would be different, that now that I had friends and familiar faces to see in what felt like a foreign country, that it wouldn't be so bad. The first time I took a walk outside my house on the streets, I felt not at home, but rather suffocated. All around me were people who looked like me, and at the same time, looked nothing like me. They were all Korean, sure, but I no longer fit in with their idea of what it meant to be "Korean." I might as well have been a foreigner. And I'm sure a few interactions could have quickly revealed to them that I wasn't like them. I didn't feel like one of them. It's funny how I can be a minority both here, in my native home country, and back at school in California where I'm really an alien. Still, being different at Biola felt okay, because I was surrounded by a culture that embraced difference a little more openly. Korean culture, especially in the suburbs where my family lives, is still strictly monocultural. They're used to doing things and looking a certain way, and anything that doesn't fit that norm is considered "weird" or "unnatural".
Another thing that makes this short transition hard is my mom. She understands that I'm different, yet she insists that I conform to the standards around me while I'm here. For her, conforming to the surrounding culture, especially one that I "belong to", is the right, respectful thing to do. Her motto is that I should "act like a Korean" when I'm in Korea. What's hard is that I don't think she understands that I don't belong here. I don't know if I ever will. I've just grown too used to life outside of Korea, too used to Western culture to feel truly comfortable here.
There is one thing that brings me a bit of hope, though, every time I come back to this place I need to call home, this country that's both welcomes me with its familiarity and jars me with its cold indifference. The church I've been attending since freshman year, Jubilee, made me feel at home in Korea for the first time. That's one of the reasons I keep going back to it—not only is it an English-speaking community, but it's a community that understands my third-culture identity. Everyone there, too, has some experience feeling like a part of both Korean and foreign culture. It's a temporary home for international school kids, foreign exchange students, business and ambassador families and even missionaries. It's, in short, a place for people like me. And that's why I feel at home there, even with its ever-changing population, even when old, familiar faces are replaced by new ones every year.
Korea isn't all that bad. There are things I miss about it everyday: good public transportation and mobility, amazing food, and cheap almost everything. Seoul is a modern and fast-paced city, and that's the kind of environment that I thrive in. At the same time, people can be rude, communicating in Korean is hard, and there's a sense of impatience and insensitivity that often permeates the sardine-can environment of the metro, the streets, the overcrowded shopping malls. But like every other city I've called home, in the end it's about the people I find, the friends I make, the communities I connect with that makes me feel at east and peace. It's the same reason I'm excited to go back and spend a summer, for maybe one of the last times, in good old La Mirada. Again, it's a loving church community that brings me back to Biola, a place I can call home for now for the people I've met.