COMMUNITY
32 Expat Living
A Home Unexpected By Ashley Johnson
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
September 2021
J
uly 17, 2015. It was warm, even for so early in the morning, and dark outside. I can still remember the harsh, almost clinical lights of the airport as dawn and my departing flight to Incheon crept closer. My mother and father hugged me close, said their tearful goodbyes, and watched me funnel through the nearly deserted San Diego Airport security. After hours in the air, I remember the older Korean man who saw me sleepily struggling to make sense of the airline bibimbap and kindly mixed it all for me with a quiet smile. We hadn’t even landed yet, but his kindness was comforting, and I thought, even as my nerves bounced along on the tarmac as we descended, “Well, this whole thing is gonna be okay.” You know, I really thought I’d be back home in a year.
Can you still remember it? Was it that long ago for you? Do you remember your plane touching down, the confusion and the thrill of nervous excitement as you managed to get a bus ticket to Gwangju somehow, the bone-deep exhaustion of being brought to a tiny room, your tiny one-room apartment that immediately felt like a safe haven after your travels? Those first days of meeting bright-eyed students, adjusting to life as a teacher, putting on that role in the morning or afternoon and tailoring yourself to fit it. Those first nights out downtown, flashing red neon signs and red crosses, the sharp soured punch of tequila and lemon drowned out and sweetly chased by the crooners lining up behind the open mic, the comforting camaraderie of new friends seeking connection just like you.
I think most of us naively thought the same, too. “It’ll just be a year,” we think, “Two tops,” and then it’s back home, of course – back to everything that’s familiar to us – when we step on the plane, before we fly off into the unknown. But what no one ever prepares for, or can ever prepare for, is how deeply, irrevocably, and fundamentally Gwangju will change you.
The ebb and flow of newcomers, the shifting dynamics – the instant best friendships and the little tribes that form, as if by magic, all on their own. Camping trips and late nights, soju and noraebang and hoeshik (karaokes and dinner parties), the surprise of catching another sunrise, trips to jeweled ocean islands, endless river crossings, and tunneling through the very hearts of mountains. You’re so
2021�09��.indd 32
2021-08-26 �� 10:36:57
