I Have My Reasons

I really do, as much as you may wonder why in the world David is off to another country - and not Europe, mind you, or Canada or some other reasonable place - teaching English, learning Korean, leaving his friends and family behind and dealing with numerous inconveniences. There were the two months with no hot water, and diplomas submitted and not returned, and taxis that wouldn't pick up foreigners. Why put up with it all? Why stumble into law offices where hardly a word of English is spoken and try to get a document notarized that costs 50 dollars extra simply because - it's in English?

You might look at it a different way, though. Why live out your life in the ordinary way, continuing after a relatively uneventful, mostly successful cruise through college to the obvious grad program? Why idle away at home or in an easy career, thinking the same ideas and repeating the same words until the groove they wear in the mind is smooth and too deep to scramble out of?

Korea is, for me, another way to explore myself. It offers a history influenced by but distinct from the West, a people receptive of Western ways but uncertain of Westerners. It offers a language more challenging than those studied in American high schools because it is unrelated to English, a language bewildering because it reflects the intricate system of formality and courtesy ingrained in Korean society.

To learn it well, I have to try hard, and to keep on trying longer than I've ever done. I am a meddler and a dabbler, a prince of dilettantes, and no sooner have I started a new project than I've set it down again. This time, though I'm going to find my follow through. I'm going round the world again, and - this time - I'm not coming back until I've finished what I started.