Korea, Challenges, and God

Ok so I'm trying to be more consistent. Writing and sharing my feelings, while incredibly therapeutic for me is not something that comes easily.

So I would just like to clarify a few things from my last post. I made some blanket statements and that was wrong of me. I can't just say things without supporting why I said them. I don't hate Korea...hating an entire country is a little drastic and something I would warn anyone against doing. What do you mean when you say you hate a country, an entire country? Do you hate the people in the country? Do you hate the government of the country? Do you hate the culture or the practices of the country? There has to be something specific you hate about the country, you can't hate an entire country based on a few things you know or a few things you have experienced without that country. Which is just one of the many reasons I don't hate Korea.

Korea has just turned out to be a...disappointment. Not that I had huge expectations to begin with. I mean when I told people I was going to Korea the typical response was "Why?" And I can't blame them, I asked myself that very question a dozen times before coming here and a few dozens since being here. Korea lacks a certain allure that other countries possess. It doesn't have the technology and innovation that Japan has. It lacks the culture of China. And it's too advanced economically to be exciting and challenging like Thailand. Not that Korea has nothing to offer, it has it's own culture and history and innovation, it's just on a lesser scale.

I guess at the end of the day Korea simply lacks originality. The thing that is most frustrating for me about Korea is that it's too similar to home. I went half way around the world for adventure and challenge and something new and exciting. Korea is not the challenge I was looking for. It's comfortable, it's easy, it's normal. And maybe that's just the way life is once you've lived in a place to a certain length of time. It becomes mundane...no matter where you are. And I'm not saying Korea doesn't have it's difficulties and that I don't have a ton more to learn. But at this point it seems like I came half way around the world looking for adventure and what I got was the mundane, except in this chapter of my story the mundane lacks the people I love the most, which the mundane, the boring, the everyday, the feeling like you're not making any difference, a lot more difficult to bear.

So that's what I'm most frustrated about in Korea. The fact that I'm ten thousand miles away from everyone and I'm doing something that I could have done at home. And I know I'm being challenged...but there comes a point where you have enough of being alone. I have friends here and I have people i can talk to, but it's not the same. There are people back home who know me, who understand me. But I do hope and pray that the decision to come to Korea was not the wrong one. I think God is trying to get me to rely more on Him, but I'm too stubborn or stupid to just do it. First I'm going to bang my head against the wall numerous times and if that doesn't work I'm going to try things my way and maybe if that doesn't work I'll ask God for His help. Or maybe I'll save myself the pain and ask for His help now, because clearly I am doing something wrong and I desperately need a change. So maybe God is the answer to my loneliness. He's our everything right? So if that's true than he can be my best friend and my mentor and my father and my mother when those things are an ocean away. There's a reason for everything and maybe my reason for coming to Korea was to renew my relationship with Him and figure out how much I'm willing to fight to sustain that relationship. I guess we'll have to wait and see...