In a previous post we spoke about feeling homesick the first couple weeks we were in Seoul and how we coped with it. Four months later and the homesickness has returned, but this time it's reversed homesickness. We miss Seoul like crazy and most people don't understand why, especially our family. Adjusting to life back home has proven to be really difficult to us. Everything constantly reminds us of Seoul and all we ever want to do is talk about Korea. Lately we've felt really frustrated about our return home. Before embarking on our journey abroad our study abroad advisor gave us a chart that displayed the different stages of transition that students studying abroad will most likely go through as preparation. I couldn't find the exact chart but it's a chart similar to the one below which we found on IES abroad and it's terribly accurate. That chart freaked us out, it's pretty much a roller coaster of emotions and it has definitely felt that way. We thought we'd take the opportunity to write about the most challenging things we've been experiencing so far.
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| IES Abroad Stages of Transition Chart |
1. The first challenge has been readjusting our sleeping schedule. Most days we fall asleep at 7:00pm and wake up really early and then go back to sleep, but we're pretty sure jet lag is also to blame. Somedays we just sleep through the whole day and wake up in the evenings. We have to readjust this soon because there is so much to do now that we're back home!
2. The second challenge would be boredom and alienation. Being back home is nice, but life has not been very exciting since we left Seoul. While we were in Seoul we spent most of the time on our feet exploring as much as possible. Our city is not fast paced like Seoul and there is also not a lot to do here. We really miss walking everywhere and Seoul's amazing public transportation. We can't wait to go back to Seoul! Also being home has changed our perspective on things. Take for example the size of things! Back in Seoul beverages and food portions are generally smaller than in North America and so after 4 months in Seoul we grew accustomed to eating less this even resulted in weight loss. We also grew accustomed to sharing our food and drinks which is something we continue to do and many people find this weird or even worse they somehow think we're just being ridiculous because nobody really shares a drink or food. We technically just buy a meal and split it because now we feel like it's too much food for one person. We can't help it! We understand though because when we initially arrived in Seoul we felt the same way about cultural differences. We've acquired a few habits from Korea and we constantly feel judge by those around us which brings us to our following challenge. People just don't understand.
3. Everyone has told us we have changed, some say in a good way and others (mostly just our family) think we've changed in a bad way. We don't think we've changed in a bad way it's just that we're not the same people we were before we left. We acquired some new habits, our clothing style changed, our way of thinking changed too and our family is having a hard time adjusting to these new changes. We grew accustomed to being on our own all the time. We come from a large family so it's been difficult adjusting to this once again. Studying abroad really did change us, we are a lot more independent now then we were back then, and we also became really outgoing. We feel as if we really came out of our shells because we learned to be to take chances and we also overcame many challenges. We had some bad experiences and some really great experiences too and all these have really molded us to who we are now. Though we wished we were in Seoul for the Summer, being back home has helped us reflect on our experiences these past 4 months.
4. Finally the most most annoying one for us has been people's reaction to our stories. Our family constantly lets us know that we talk too much about Korea and they're not interested in listening. We have the tendency to compare everything to Korea and all we hear is "You're not in Korea anymore." Even when they do listen to us most of the time they don't understand. We can't really explain just how wonderful and amazing our time abroad was and it's frustrating! Most of the time they think we're just boasting. So basically right now we're just really frustrated with the fact that we're no longer in Korea and it's been difficult to adjust back to our usual routine.
We have been coping with these challenges by keeping in contact with all our friends back in Korea even though sometimes they just make us even more homesick. We also have our favorite Korean music playing 24/7, but this is just a habit we had in Korea too. We just need to listen to music all the time. It's been kind of difficult to do this back home though, we like to play it as loud as we can and this doesn't work back home. I think the best thing we did though was send ourselves our favorite korean foods and snacks before leaving! We received the package this morning!
The most difficult thing has been getting our parents and siblings to understand that even though we're back home we're still on that study abroad roller coaster and we'll be on it for quite some time especially since we're going back! We know we're not the only ones that have been feeling this way. Many of our friends have been feeling the same way so it's comforting to know that we're not the only ones dealing with all these crazy emotions!
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