Feeling Foreign

Sometimes, it just hits you - just how different you are. And that everything you do, say, and are is somehow misinterpreted. And that you, in turn, misinterpret and misunderstand everything around you.

Feeling out of sorts. Feeling down.

When my grade 3s arrived (like 5 minutes early -- or else they wouldn't have caught me), they found me crying in front of my computer. I felt children's hands on my back and shoulders, and one girl looked in my face and said, in a sort of Korean-English mix "Wae I'm sad? Wae I'm sad? Wae I'm sad?".

What could I tell them? I miss Canada, I miss my friends back home, I am looking at the wrong end of a drab Korean winter (oh, right, and a month's vacation in Bali, which had better hurry up and get here soon), I miss my friends from Suncheon last year, I miss Ty, I miss being able to express myself clearly and be understood. This is going beyond culture shock (I have missed things like food and toothpaste before, but I have assimilated enough here and I have enough Western items around me now that I don't miss little things like that anymore).

I taught my four classes in a row - I can honestly say that teaching has become such a separate part of me (the Virginia/Ms Parker dichotomy is not as strong as in La Pocatiere, but it exists nonetheless) - that I can essentially lock down however I am feeling and teach no matter how I am feeling. Funny thing, those were four of the best classes I've taught in the past two weeks.

And so, then I was sitting in the cafeteria, and it started again. I could feel the tears welling up and I knew I had to get out. As luck would have it, I was sitting across from my vice-principal, who I am convinced doesn't like me to begin with. I scooped up my un-eaten lunch and tried to escape before the onslaught of tears (not an easy task when every single kid is waving and saying "hi" to you).... and made it to my office. About five minutes later, there was a knock at the door - the vice-principal and her secretary, with a plate of cookies and a bottle of mango juice (of course, this just made me cry harder at their kindness), murmuring things like "Baginia nice teacher" and "What breakfast eat?". I felt soothed, guilty, like a prize idiot....

It's not always easy to live overseas. On this blog, you see the things like the vacations, the happy children, the outings with friends, the delightful cultural differences (or culture shock recounted with an ironic twist), you don't see the loneliness, the homesickness, the incomprehension (or the comprehension when you have just enough Korean to understand that someone is saying something a bit nasty about you). The fact that just leaving the house is enough to get you stared and pointed at. That not everyone can get over how different you are (although it is sometimes a very positive thing to be told that you are beautiful over and over, there comes a time when you want to scream "Look at ME, WHO I am not WHAT I am!"), nor are you able to get over their differences.

The objective part of me knows that this is will pass. That tomorrow, I will read this and wonder why I was being so melodramatic. The emotional part of me wants to go home and pull the covers over my head and cry, and cry, and cry.