By this Author: Anon of Holland

Even though my adventures in Korea have been over for quite some time now, I've decided to keep posting some stuff that I didn't post while I was there, or that I just thought of, so you will see some more posts popping up over the coming weeks/months.
Besides, I have to keep this blog warm for when I'm going back to Seoul, right?

So this post is about living in a guesthouse in Korea.

It can be pretty rough; every time you want to take a shit, someone's taking a shower; when you want to sleep because you have to get up early, someone's going/gone clubbing and thus crazy loud; and when you want some privacy you're shit out of luck because you're sharing your room with 1 to 7 other people.
But even though, especially in the first months, I considered moving to a hotel many times, it didn't take me that long to discover the positive sides to living in a hostel.

The first full month I stayed there was December, and my room (8 bed mixed dorm) was always filled with incredibly loud and obnoxious people. Unlike when doing volunteer projects, the people you meet in a hostel definitely aren't all awesome. In fact, most of them are assholes. But after the neverending waves of clubbers and "I done gon' screw me sum yellow pussy" people in December, I got to experience the real guesthouse life.

I shared my room with one, sometimes two people, and they were usually very well behaved. Some people came in who would also start living there for a longer time; my Korean hyung Kwang Bong, who was in his thirties but always acted like a kid; the Kpop crazy Swede Caroline and later on the tallest and manliest motherfucker ever, Daniel.
Aside from that, the staff was also incredibly homely. Watching TV together, eating pizza, drinking somaek, Jin always greeting everyone with a cheery 'good morning!' even though you stumbled out of your bedroom looking like a zombie at 15:00; it's all stuff that you would never get to experience in a hotel room.

On top of that, I realized living in a hotel would be so lonely. At Pencil (my guesthouse) I met about 10 new people each week, if not more. And even if 9 of them were assholes, that's still 1 good person every 7 days! I thinking living there has made me a bit more social, and I'm sure it kept me from getting depressed because of loneliness many times. Hell, I even let myself be persuaded to head out clubbing with them sometimes, and whenever there were some people there who were just in Seoul for the weekend to get drunk, we had drinking games and lots of great times in the communal living room. Maybe knowing the chances of ever seeing one of them again was so small had made people a little less cautious, but there's a lot of great stories I got to witness while I was there staying sober while people went out and came back from clubbing.

One situation stands out in particular..One morning I woke up and stumbled to the downstairs bathroom to take my morning wee, but found it was locked, a big sign saying 'BATHROOM IS BROKEN, I HAVE CALLED THE PUMBLER -DJ' plastered on the door. All morning people were talking and complaining about it, wondering what had happened. Some rumors started flying right away, because people had heard some drunk chick had flooded the upstairs bathroom which had led to water damage even downstairs. A little later, a guy came down to explain to us what had happened; one of the American guests had had a liiiittle bit too much to drink the night before and had decided to take a shower. Subsequently, she passed out while the water was still on. The drainage in the upstairs bathroom wasn't very good, so the water started to rise and fill the room almost up until the threshold when he walked in and saw the girl sleeping on the floor, water almost completely covering her mouth and nose. She could've drowned if he hadn't lifted her up to put her in bed.
That wasn't the end of it though. I didn't actually know who he was talking about yet, because he didn't mention her name, but somewhere in the afternoon one of the girls came down the stairs. As most other people, she was complaining about both bathrooms being locked and unusable when I asked her about her night. She said she only remembered stepping under the shower and then woke up in her bed. Some pieces of the puzzle started coming together and the guy explained to her it was her that caused all the damage. It was totally hilarious to see this sudden realization, let me tell you. "I DID THAT? FUCK. I ALMOST DROWNED? I BROKE THE HOSTEL? I BROKE THE HOSTEL! FUCK!"

Even though I learned to enjoy such antics and the constant presence of other people, I sometimes needed some time for myself. I usually retreated to the table in the kitchen that no one ever used, hooked up my laptop, and ignored everything else. The table was kind of out of sight so usually I'd be ignored while people were talking in the living room.

Over the course of my time there, Pencil really started to feel like home to me, and I miss it dearly.
Even though I am planning to get my own room when I go back to Seoul, I'm pretty sure I will try to stay there again, if only for a little while.

Naast deze birthday message wil ik graag een mededeling doen voor m'n Nederlandse matties, een mededeling die van behoorlijk fundamentele aard is, in zoverre zelfs dat het m'n leven eigenlijk een compleet andere kant op gooit;

Ik ga volgend jaar voor een jaar naar Korea om daar werk te zoeken, en na dit jaar besluit ik of ik in Korea blijf wonen, of terug naar Nederland ga.

De reden?
Zoals (de meeste van?) jullie al weten ben ik in Korea verliefd geworden op een van de Koreaanse medevrijwilligers. Het hele verhaal is nogal lang en gespekt met drama en intrige, maar in het kort had ze aanvankelijk een vriend, werd ze toch verliefd op mij en eindigden we samen.
Normaal horen 'vakantieliefdes' achtergelaten te worden waar je ze vond, zo hoorde ik, maar ik zie een toekomst voor ons en ik wil er dan ook alles aan doen om te zien of dit kan werken.
Vandaar dat ik volgend jaar Engels les ga geven in de hoofdstad, Seoul, en uiteindelijk moeten we dan beslissen of ik daar blijf of zij (omdat niet al onze internationale kennissen van ons af weten gebruik ik nog even haar naam niet) naar Nederland komt. Ze komt halverwege Augustus voor 3 maanden hierheen om te zien hoe het hier is.

Ik snap dat ik hiermee m'n studie eigenlijk weggooi en m'n droom van de rechterlijke macht moet opgeven, maar door naar Korea te gaan (het eerste wat ik ooit echt voor mezelf gedaan heb) heb ik geleerd dat gelukkig zijn belangrijker is dan je uitgestippelde pad volgen en dat onzekerheid ook best leuk kan zijn.

En omdat ik het van m'n prachtige vriendin voor m'n verjaardag kreeg, is hier een introductie video:

Been back in the Netherlands for a few hours now.
My time in Korea feels so far away, like a dream that's constantly slowly but surely disappearing. All I have left now is a ton of pictures, 22kg of stuff and a heart twice broken. I don't feel at home in my own country, and I miss every single thing about Korea.
And I miss you, my love.

안녕~
I’ve been meaning to tell you guys about my trip to Wando last weekend, and I have some free time, so I thought I’d give y’all an update.

I had been thinking about going back to Wando before I’d leave Korea for quite some time, since I had missed my kids from the second I had left my beautiful island and I thought I’d feel regret if I didn’t at least go back one last time. However, the costs of going all the way to Wando from Seoul are about 35,000 won for a one-way trip, and I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing Sahmonim again, so I was kind of on the fence about it.
Cue the two awesome Frenchies who I met at the Kimchi Project (that I surely should’ve blogged about, but contained too much awesome to be put to words in a small post) and who would be taking care of my old project starting in February; meeting them was the last push I needed to decide to venture back to Wando before my time here was up.

And I’m so glad I did. Sure, it cost me ₩70,000, but it gave me many nostalgic moments and happy memories. Driving back into Wando, I felt like I was coming back home after a long time, instantly being flooded by memories of my time there. The taxi driver must’ve thought I was strange, sitting in his back seat with a giant grin plastered all over my face.
I arrived around 16:00 after a 5 hour bus ride, so I had only missed one class. Most of the students instantly recognized me, and I was glad many of them were so happy to see me. Even the kids who used to ‘hate’ me seemed to have softened up to their sonsaengnim and talked to me in that lovely broken English I had missed so much. Unfortunately, not everyone was there since there was some sort of school holiday going on, but still I got to see most of my students so I was very glad. Not surprisingly, many of them asked about where GaHui and Anne were, and I got the feeling some were quite disappointed I didn’t drag GaHui along with me.

Donia and Mikaël (the Frenchies) were kind enough to host me so I didn’t have to sleep in a motel, and I got to sleep in nostalgia as my designated room was GaHui’s old bedroom, a mirrored version of mine. Naturally the evenings were spent in true Wando fashion; by drinking soju and beer and going to bed late without actually really doing anything.

The next day I could finally meet my kindergarteners: the kids I’d missed the most. They all seemed to remember me, and were so happy to see me again. It made me feel all warm inside, but when I think of the fact that I won’t be able to see any of them again, it makes me feel really sad.. I spent as much time as I could playing with them and hugging them and they were all just as cute as they were when I left them. Especially my favourite (the girl with the big mole under her eye) and my second favourite (the girl with the glasses) had missed me a lot. The one with the glasses was actually ignoring me the first 30 minutes because she felt so strange to see me again, but when there were 20 kids pulling my legs she told them to leave me alone and hugged me. Aigoya I want to be a kindergarten teacher in Korea ;_;

In the evening, the kids had a church camp, which took place (surprise!) in the church, so it was a perfect opportunity for me to impose and just tag along without asking anyone for permission. Surprisingly, Sahmonim hadn’t even tried to bother or even talk to me at all, and all of the church mothers were happy to see me, so things were pretty relaxed.
This way, I got to spend all day until 21:30 with my kids, and I even met some new ones who weren’t at church camp before.

Saying goodbye was difficult, but not as difficult as the last time.
I think this way I got some closure on the whole thing, and I know my students didn’t forget about me and still hold warm feelings for me in their hearts. Li Ha, my favourite elementary school student who wrote us the cutest little letters and hugged all of us crying when we left, kept holding my hand whenever she could, even in spite of the constant “EWWWW ARE YOU CRAZY!?” complaining of her much, much less cute classmate Soo Bin. That really made me feel like we made at least a small difference in this community, and I feel like that’s something to be very proud of.

[p.s. here is a picture of a crab holding a cigarette]