I’ve been living in The
Netherlands for almost seven months now and what a fantastic seven months it
has been! Unlike my move to South Korea in 2010, my move here was fairly sudden
and more ‘on a whim’ but just like my move to Korea, my move here has been one
of the best moves I have ever made!
Before moving here I made
the mistake of assuming that living abroad this time would be just like living
abroad last time. I was wrong. And it didn’t take me long to discover that. The
greatest things about my time in Korea (the freedom, all the time on my hands, the
lack of responsibility, feeling like a student again, the way of life because
it’s so cheap to live there, the ability to live life to the absolute max, the
person I became) are things that either don’t exist here or are much harder to achieve/
maintain here (predominantly because the job I do here is what takes up most of
my time...and energy!) But on the flipside, the things I liked least/found the
most challenging during my time in Korea (the mind-numbing, uninspiring job,
working for people of totally different and often clashing cultures, values and
opinions, being so far away from home... and normal life!) are not a problem
here because the opposite is true for each.
So, to conclude, both experiences
are ENTIRELY different and shouldn’t be compared (although I still do more than
I should). All I know is that whilst I’m
enjoying and appreciating the things I have here that I desperately longed for
in Korea, I must MAKE time for all the things that made me happiest in Korea. And
in some ways, being that girl here, in spite of the demands of a high pressure
job, will be more of a challenge than the quest it took to find her in the
first place. So I’m still that ‘Seoulsearching’ girl I was a couple of years ago
just in a slightly different place and on a slightly different journey...
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