2010 Christmas Letter

You can download this 3-page letter for printing HERE.

Dear friends and family,

Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2011 to you and yours! I am writing this letter on what will quite likely be my longest Christmas Day ever; by the time I see December 26th, I will have lived a full 40 hours of the 25th. This deserves some explanation, I realize.

The story really starts at the dawn of 2010, so this letter will be the story of my year as well as my prolonged Christmas day. In January and February, I was living in Vancouver with no idea how my year would unfold. Though there was excitement afoot—mainly the Olympic Games, which I took in avidly from outside the venues—I was fighting the inertia of unemployment and having second thoughts about not signing up for co-op in University.

This changed with an email from a debate friend, inviting me to explore a debate teaching job in Korea. I think it took about five minutes to make up my mind, and it seemed like only ten more before I was in Korea. I said farewell to my family at my grandparents’ 50th anniversary ten months ago, and plunged into a somewhat alien world teaching in Anyang, Korea.

Life in Korea has from the beginning had the feel of a Formula One racer: unceasing momentum. As I noted after a month, “the work days blur into work weeks, which are blurring into a whole work month, leaving only the weekend days to remind me that I'm actually halfway across the world from home.” I suspect this feeling is familiar to many in older generations, but it was fairly new to me.

As I predicted in that one-month reflection, I slowly built up my routine on the weekends. I found a Korean volleyball team to practice and play with and started fulfilling my urge to spike and block. I made friends outside of work and started to explore Seoul. I decorated my apartment with the souvenirs of trips around Korea.

One particular trip stands out for me. I had signed up for a group trip with Adventure Korea to a raspberry wine festival in southern Korea, but overslept and woke up to a confused trip director on the phone wondering where I was. He asked whether I would try to meet with the group or forgo the trip, obviously expecting my lazy foreign self to choose the latter. Instead, I summoned all my wits and took a train, bus and taxi to get to the little town where the trip was, joining them triumphantly (actually, somewhat awkwardly) before dinner.

Dinner was not very substantial, and there was free raspberry wine, which explains why I slept in the next morning too and missed the bus out of our hostel. I sheepishly called the trip director and rejoined the group (even more awkwardly) at lunch, riding on the charter bus for the first time on the way back to Seoul. Ironically, since I now claim the record for the shortest time spent on an Adventure Korea trip, I met a group of friends on that jaunt that I keep in touch with now.

I have a better track record for other trips; with Adventure Korea I have hiked in the southern mountains and partied at the Boryeong Mud Festival with thousands of other foreigners. With two travel companions, I took an epic three-bus trip into the mountain country east of Seoul for a mutual friend’s birthday. Each passing month, I get more comfortable with the Korean culture, language, and custom of not providing toilet paper in washrooms. It is this third adjustment that has probably been the hardest.

Going back for a moment to the initial subject: my protracted Christmas Day. I am writing this in the early hours of Christmas day in Korea; by midday I will be inscribing a great circle over the Pacific Ocean as I head home to see my family for the first time in 10 months. As I mentioned, the pace of life here is hectic, and this is my second week of holiday since arriving. The first I spent in a rather different fashion: in Malaysia.

It was late July, and it seemed a good idea to trade in the stuffy climate of Korea for the scorching sun of Borneo, so I joined several friends for a week in Kota Kinabalu, a small tourist town not far from the Indonesian border. It was a relaxing and enjoyable trip with tons of little adventures—a discover scuba diving course, river rafting down some admittedly gentle rapids, a hike in Kinabalu National Park, and plenty of time at the beach.

Kota Kinabalu is neat since the town’s tourist beaches are on several islands just a quick boat ride from shore. This is of course a money-making racket, as I am convinced the boat rides were the most expensive thing I bought while there. On one of those islands one sunny afternoon, I decided I’d had enough of sun tanning with the girls and decided to hike a little around the island. I walked to the viewpoint about 2km away and was about to turn back when I was shocked by a huge lizard only a metre away. I was too scared to get more than a quick picture, and ran a few hundred metres down the trail before slowing to a quick walk. I will rather sheepishly admit that I found out later that it was a mostly harmless monitor lizard.

The islands were also the site of our scuba lessons, which may have been the highlight of my trip. There is a world just 10 metres underwater full of alien beauty and inexplicable to me before the dive. Unfortunately, my gargantuan frame needs a lot of oxygen, and I was always the first to run out of air. (On one dive, the guide used only a third of the air I did!) I conclude that I would make an enthusiastic but perhaps not talented scuba diver.

Back in Korea, my year was shaken up by another employment opportunity. I was hired to replace the person that hired me, as the North East Asia representative for the International Debate Education Association (IDEA). The Seoul-based position is responsible for promoting debate around China, Korea and the rest of North East Asia, works mainly with nonprofits and universities, and includes a lot of travel.
It was as close to my dream job as I have been offered yet; I couldn’t say no.

While circumstances conspired to delay that job—which I am now quite excited to start in March—it has already taken me back to the world of debate. I have enthusiastically attended and helped at a few Korean debate events and made friends in the university community here, which has helped me expand my social world beyond my neighbourhood into Seoul.

Quite the highlight of my debate involvement here was my trip to Macau. That city is near Hong Kong geographically and historically: it was a protectorate of Portugal, but now is a special administrative region of China with its own set of laws and a reputation as the Vegas of Asia. IDEA sent me to judge at the tournament and meet debaters in the region, and though I was only there for three days, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The Portuguese and Cantonese food was scrumptious and—even better—not Korean, and the feel of the city was a refreshing departure from the texture of life around Seoul.

It would be tedious to list all of the things I have done in Korea—taken in screenings at the Seoul LGBT film festival, worked, been comped at a Lee Moon Sae concert in Anyang and an English play in Itaewon, worked, enjoyed the rain at Olympic Park and worked, to name a few—so I will sum up by saying that I have built myself an enjoyable life here. It’s not nearly the same as local music or gay volleyball in Vancouver and having the family a ferry ride away, but it’s nice.

All the same, I’m giddy with Christmas glee about flying home this long today. I will spend Christmas evening with my family and bring in the new year in Vancouver, though later on January 1st I will be flying back to resume my life in Seoul. What will 2011 bring? A new, more flexible and exciting job with tremendous opportunity for personal growth; travel around Asia and perhaps beyond; and of course the many little adventures that will find me.

May your new year be similarly full of adventure.

With love,

Stephen
Dec 25th, Korea