Chronologically Impaired.
Let's brighten the mood and talk about orientation a little bit.
I arranged for Fulbright to fly me from Maui to Seoul back in July so I could visit Jen for the preceding week. Little did I know, this decision probably drastically affected the entire course of my year in Korea. Boarding the plane in Honolulu, I found myself sitting next to a petite Asian girl with her hair obscuring her face, talking at 100mph on her cellphone. So what would your first instinct be? Of course, bitchy Korean-American flying to Seoul to stay with a rich uncle or something, right? Fortunately, she pleasantly surprised me by being a fellow Fulbrighter, friendly and interesting to boot, and my first official friend in Korea! Yay! Turns out she lives on Oahu and went to Occidental, just a bunny hop from Pomona. Here's to you, Rach!
And so we arrive in Seoul, and I meet two more Fulbrighters that were on the same flight. Traci also lives on Oahu and went to Pitzer (5-C representin') and turns out we have a few mutual friends (Glenna! Social Chair Extraordinaire!). I had never met her but apparently she had "heard of me" before. I guess I'm the "Asian guy who isn't Asian" around the 5-College scene, according to her. The last guy, Jonah, went to Bowdoin and was visiting his girlfriend in Hawaii, so he had his flight changed, just like me. Funny coincidence, huh? Doesn't stop there.
Jonah was also a philosophy major, wrote on the same thesis topic using the same primary source texts, and when we arrived at orientation, we turned out to be roommates. Freaky, huh? I bet we could switch girlfriends and they wouldn't even know the difference. Except he's a 6'1" white guy who listens to country music.
Anyway, the big thing is not that we were all on the same flight, but that we arrived one day earlier than all the other ETAs. We had one precious extra night and morning to unpack, get a good night's rest, and get to know each other before the dorm became a living thing, hosting 60 other strangers. Long story short, even though we were all meeting dozens of people for the first time, memorizing names, faces, schools, basically too much information to realistically remember, Traci, Rachel, Jonah, and I always had our cozy little clique to fall back on. Knowing each other for one extra day really meant we were light years further along in our friendships than anyone else. And being the only non-jetlagged folks in the dorm that first night, we decided to go out and have our first drinks on the town while everyone collapsed in exhaustion.
And that was how my year in Korea began.
To this day, the three of them are among my closest friends in Korea. Traci and I live in the same city and Rachel lives about an hour train ride away, but we see her several times a week. It's amazing to realize how each individual decision you make can have such an expansive influence on everything that comes after it.
I arranged for Fulbright to fly me from Maui to Seoul back in July so I could visit Jen for the preceding week. Little did I know, this decision probably drastically affected the entire course of my year in Korea. Boarding the plane in Honolulu, I found myself sitting next to a petite Asian girl with her hair obscuring her face, talking at 100mph on her cellphone. So what would your first instinct be? Of course, bitchy Korean-American flying to Seoul to stay with a rich uncle or something, right? Fortunately, she pleasantly surprised me by being a fellow Fulbrighter, friendly and interesting to boot, and my first official friend in Korea! Yay! Turns out she lives on Oahu and went to Occidental, just a bunny hop from Pomona. Here's to you, Rach!
And so we arrive in Seoul, and I meet two more Fulbrighters that were on the same flight. Traci also lives on Oahu and went to Pitzer (5-C representin') and turns out we have a few mutual friends (Glenna! Social Chair Extraordinaire!). I had never met her but apparently she had "heard of me" before. I guess I'm the "Asian guy who isn't Asian" around the 5-College scene, according to her. The last guy, Jonah, went to Bowdoin and was visiting his girlfriend in Hawaii, so he had his flight changed, just like me. Funny coincidence, huh? Doesn't stop there.
Jonah was also a philosophy major, wrote on the same thesis topic using the same primary source texts, and when we arrived at orientation, we turned out to be roommates. Freaky, huh? I bet we could switch girlfriends and they wouldn't even know the difference. Except he's a 6'1" white guy who listens to country music.
Anyway, the big thing is not that we were all on the same flight, but that we arrived one day earlier than all the other ETAs. We had one precious extra night and morning to unpack, get a good night's rest, and get to know each other before the dorm became a living thing, hosting 60 other strangers. Long story short, even though we were all meeting dozens of people for the first time, memorizing names, faces, schools, basically too much information to realistically remember, Traci, Rachel, Jonah, and I always had our cozy little clique to fall back on. Knowing each other for one extra day really meant we were light years further along in our friendships than anyone else. And being the only non-jetlagged folks in the dorm that first night, we decided to go out and have our first drinks on the town while everyone collapsed in exhaustion.
And that was how my year in Korea began.
To this day, the three of them are among my closest friends in Korea. Traci and I live in the same city and Rachel lives about an hour train ride away, but we see her several times a week. It's amazing to realize how each individual decision you make can have such an expansive influence on everything that comes after it.
posted by Uzura at 10:58 PM
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