My First Thoughts

Weird! Scared! Confused! HOMESICK!!!

I arrived on Wednesday night and after collecting my bags and being on my way out to meet with my lift I firstly had to change my Rand into Won. Their notes works in my thousands so 1000 = R10 and R10000 = R100 etc. It was quite interesting and it look me a little while to figure out how much it is in rand exactly. I got orders to meet my lift at the MacDonalds (very unique lol) but when I got there, there was no lift insight. I stood there for quite some time before somebody pitched up with my name on a little board. But it got sorted out. It took 2 hours to get to the town I'm living in. 

To describe the town it is a really small town and it's between a lot of farms. It looks like Johannesburg in the winter months at the moment so it's really ugly and cold. The place I stay in is quite nice. It's a studio apartment that's quite big and really close to a bus stop and grocery stores as well as some clothing stores and some restaurants. I arrived in the dark at this strange place and my first reaction was "Is this really where I'm staying?" It wasn't what I imagined. Nothing actually was what I imagined. It was scary. Everything was in Korean and I couldn't read anything on any board. The oven is completely Korean.... to the point where I couldn't figure it out at all.

The girl who stayed there before me left me a nice folder with a lot of tips and stories which I really appreciated. Although I would've liked to just have somebody explain to me it is quite an unusual thing to be able to understand Korean explanations. I made myself some two minute noodles but it was really bad and not what I expected. It had no flavour what so ever. I climbed in bed on Wednesday night super scared, alone and missing home so much. Homesick struck me hard to the point where I woke up at 4am in the morning and just started crying and I really could stop. I just wanted my mom with me. I stood up and the girl who stayed here before mentioned that there was a South African girl in the same complex as where I stayed. So being wide awake I stood up wrote "Hi" on a sticky note, went over to her room and stuck it. 

The following day at school I was still not in a really great place to communicate and interact with anyone. I really just wanted to be on my own and cry. I made a few Skype calls to my Friend in America (Maryke) to cheer me up a little but even that didn't really work that well. I had lunch with my co-teacher and at lunch I just thought of the people back home and started to get tears in my eyes. The co-teacher didn't know what was going on so I tried my best to explain. I went home at like 5pm and the first thing I did was to go see if this girl saw my sticky note and if she was there. I must say it took quite a lot of guts to actually just walk up to a complete stranger but I guess when you are in a completely different country you kind of have South Africa as a similarity and you grab onto them as you know them for years.

Anyway she was there and she took me on a tour in town. We had some dinner and it was really nice to eat food that I sort of know. I'm usually all in for trying new things and tasting new aromas but if you miss home and really just want mommy's food it helps a little to cure the pain with some food that you know. We also went to a coffee shop to have the most delicious cup of coffee and there after it was off to the Lotte supermarket to buy myself so nice breakfast and some snacks and stuff. So the night ended off with me walking around with my first Korean payslip of 39000Won = R400 for one little bag filled with goods. It's not that cheap after all.

I still miss home a lot and I'm still a little homesick but at least now I can communicate to someone in Afrikaans about stuff that bothers me or stuff I need to figure out. It's gives me some comfort in moving this far and not having any support system with me here. And to be honest it makes me a little bit more positive about moving so far away from home. 

I think so far what I have learned about myself again is the fact that I always choose one person to be close too. And if I think back on my school days and University days I've always done it that way and had one really really important friend which I cared about and loved and cherished. I have a lot of great and close friends and I love them to bits but it's a different type of friendship I guess. It's a relationship I guess...