Today marked the start of another year of my life here in Korea. I can't believe ten years have gone by since I touched down on Korean soil and started to call Korea home. I vouch that it wasn't until my mother passed that I started to really feel that Korea was my home though, over 3 years ago now. Friends and family back in Canada no longer ask me when I'll be moving "home", meaning moving back to Canada, and likewise I no longer ask them when they're going to come visit me.
A lot has changed. I have changed.
I went from being a kindergarten ESL teacher to a professional boxer, manager and coach at my very own boxing club, and did a multitude of various and numerous jobs in between. Whether it was doing a KIA car commercial with the Wonder Girls, marrying the boxing club's bad boy, or Korea sending me to fight in Japan as a Korean boxer, I've had quite the life here. It's been filled with both the sweet and sour but I wouldn't change it for the world.
I think Korea has made me a lot more open minded to differences and consequently more intolerant to people's close-mindedness, particularly that of my fellow foreigners who reside here. If they don't like Korea, that's fine but they're always more than welcome to leave if they really don't like it here. After all, they left their own native country to come here. Their country couldn't have been so great then. Don't get me started on this topic, it's like opening Pandora's box. I have too many and too strong of opinions on this issue. Learn the culture, try the language or at least learn to respect them.
I love Korea. I think it's an awesome country. Do I think it'd better than Canada? Well, I think the two are too different to compare. I have things I like and don't like about each country but now I think I'm more adapted to the way of life here in Korea. My life is so much easier in many ways here but harder in others.
The hardest thing for me here in Korea isn't the language or the culture, it's friends. I have a group of solid friends here but they're 99% Korean and most of them are guys -- friends Snickers and I have introduced to each other and now share. I find that as the years pass one-by-one my friendships with those back in Canada get stronger and stronger via things like Facebook and text messaging, consequently I put less and less effort towards meeting new friends here. "I don't need new friends", I'm always telling Snickers, "I have friends, many friends, they just don't live in this country". And it's true. I do have lots of friends. It's very easy for me to make up for the lack of friends I physically hang out with here after work thanks to not only the time zone difference with my friends back in Canada but also the Internet. Throw in the fact that being a professional athlete here has really switched up my life and I now run my own business, people have no idea what those two points have done in terms to who I surround myself with and how life now is for me. It's been much "safer" for me to resort back to friends I made during my childhood, friends I connected with when we all were but little kids running around in the school yard with snotty noses and dirty hands. So that's what I've been doing ever since Hulk's opened, reconnecting with childhood friends. They know me and there's no explaining to them what I'm about. Our lives are so different now and in many ways I know they may not be able to relate with me but I think that's what I like; they're just a fresh breath of air for me. I miss my friends in Canada everyday and I wish they could meet my Korean friends. They probably wouldn't be able to understand a word they say but I'm sure they'd see why I love both my groups of friends so much.
I have changed so much since I came here and today it felt strange to wake up knowing I was now starting my eleventh year. As for how many more years I'll live here, who knows. I honestly didn't think I'd be here more than simply the first year but now look at me. My life definitely didn't go as I had planned it to be but thank God it didn't... ain't that the truth!!!
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