Korea and How We Met

I'm not sure who took this photo, but that's me staring off into the distance. Husband Sol is also in this photo. He wasn't my husband at the time, of course. You can't quite see his face. He's wearing a green jacket, and this was during our orientation program in our first days in Korea. In this blog, he writes about how we met in 2012.

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Let’s take a break from cat chat for a few posts. A stray will probably follow me home in the next few weeks so you won’t have to wait long for your next hit of catnip. If you’ve been following Sparkles of Sol for any length of time, or even just reading these blogs, you’ll be aware that the small business was started in Japan. But the story of Levy and I begins in a different country, coming up for nine years ago now. We first met in a city called Jeonju, in the west of South Korea during the orientation for the English teaching program we’d both signed on for.

For those reading this who are either married or in a long-term relationship - do you remember the very first thing your significant other said to you? You will doubtless recall the day you met your other half and the circumstances, but can you recite the exact words they first said to you? Because I can.

“That’s a nice tie.”

Now, I have reason to believe those words lacked sincerity. Mostly because I wasn’t actually wearing a tie and because we were doing a demo lesson on sarcasm. It was fun but looking back all these years later, what a hopelessly stupid topic for learners of English that was. Anyway, when we invited participants, our fellow to-be ESL teachers, to come to the front and give us a sarcastic compliment, a hand shot up. The hand belonged to Levy who at that time was just a beautiful, ethnically ambiguous stranger to me. She rushed forward to deliver the immortal words. Funny how those key moments, those instances where the entire direction of your life changes in an instant, aren’t always apparent at the time.

This is Levy interjecting Husband Sol's blog. I have to add some pertinent information. We were told to wear business attire during these practice lessons. Everyone was uncomfortable in their suits and ties, and I felt the need to point out that this dude did not follow the rules. I was throwing shade. Ok, back to the hubs.

But let’s jump back a few months so I can answer the obvious question: Why Korea?

I did a few underpaid low-level jobs after graduating in the mid-2000s before realizing I was on a path to complete misery if I didn’t make some drastic changes. Korea was really quite incidental, a friend mentioned a government program to teach English in South Korea and I applied on a whim. I knew next to nothing about the place and when I was asked to rank my choices of location, I pulled up a map and chose a city along the southern coast, Busan, as my first choice. The only reason I picked Busan was because I grew up next to the sea and liked the idea of being near a beach. Had I chosen any other destination at all, I would not be writing this now.

The orientation was a two-week intensive course that was held in a university in Jeonju. It was early February and bitterly cold, even inside. Korean weather basically has two settings: freezing winter or scorching summer; spring and fall last about five days each. A Song of Ice and Fire would be a pretty fitting title for my time there if George R. R. Martin hadn’t already taken it. We learned about Korean culture, the rigors of teaching English, and made laughable attempts to get a grip on the language.

Learning to read and write Korean characters is incredibly easy, you can do it an afternoon or two with a bit of effort. Hangul, Korean alphabet, was specifically designed to be simple and quick to learn. Can you draw straight lines and circles? Congratulations! You can write Korean. Speaking it and actually knowing what those lines and circles mean, is a teensy bit more difficult. And by teensy bit, I mean, only feasible with years of dedicated study. Still, I made a little bit go a long way. Some broken Korean is better than none and usually locals would try to meet you halfway if you made the attempt.

Those two weeks were all a bit of a whirlwind, it was like being in college all over again but having a steady-paying job in a place with an insanely low cost of living. The best part of the experience was the cultural activities. As I mentioned earlier, I went into this adventure blind so greatly appreciated the chance to learn. Korean music, dance, a taekwondo lesson & performance, and arts & crafts. I still have the little box I made almost nine years ago. I ended up using it to collect coins from the places I visited over the next seven years. Levy and I pop up in the same pictures taken, not quite aware of each other’s existence at that point.

Levy speaking: I found this photo of me and hubs (before he was hubs) during a crafts class at orientation. I wish I smiled, didn't make a duck face, or at least pretended to be paying attention. Alas, this is it. Alrighty, back to the hubs.

I can’t say the lessons on teaching were much use though, that was very much a sink or swim experience when it came to the real thing. Oh how I cringe thinking about that first week on the job.

Levy and I ended up sitting next to one another on the final day when school placements were announced. We chatted for a bit and then left for our separate destinations, I assumed our paths wouldn’t cross again. Thankfully, I was wrong.

Levy: It took some digging to find this photo. This is our orientation group for all the foreigners going to Busan in the Spring 2012 intake. There's the hubs at the top left wearing a green jacket and wisely keeping his distance. I'm at the far opposite corner at the bottom right.