A lot of people ask me, “Why Korea?”
Why of all places in the world, why I did I choose Korea?
and so I decided I would sit down and tell you, I guess you could say, my Korea story.
Make sure you sit back and you relax because this is going to be a long one
and yes there are dark and maybe sad parts to this story,
but I really do hope you stick through until the end because there is so much hope and joy that I experience now
and if all of the bad didn’t happen I wouldn’t be where I am today.
SO! Let’s get right into it~
I was actually living in China and I had my dream job in China.
I truly thought this job is going to be my life job.
I’m just always going to live overseas, I’m going to work abroad,
I'm gonna love on people abroad,
I'm gonna share truth abroad, like - this is what I thought my dream job was.
In China is actually when I found out about South Korea for the first time
there was this beautiful cafe near my house
they very much took South Korean cafe hopping culture and they brought it to their cafe
because this cafe was stunning and delicious
and when I found out they (the owners) were Koreans I was like, "Oh! ...
Where's Korea?"
Like I had heard of South Korea but I had no idea where South Korea was
so I find out that my friend's really into BTS (famous Korean pop band)
so she starts educating me and my other roommate on K-Pop
and I was really loving the way that Korean sounded. I thought it sounded so beautiful
and I was like: Man, I wonder if I can learn a little bit of Korean.
I could maybe go to this cafe that I literally go to every day
and I can speak just a little bit of Korean with them to maybe help those Korean cafe owners feel a little bit more like at home.
And so I just - like, you know - walked in one day
(in Korea) "Hello~" and they just like
(in Korean) "WOW!" They freaked out!
but they were just so happy
to see their face (because there was no masks at the time because Covid hadn't hit yet)
to see their faces just light up with joy
was so - I mean it was so worth it,
and I was as trying so hard to learn Korean but I was also in Chinese classes
and Chinese is so dang difficult
so I had my little notebook, I would go to the cafe, I had Chinese on one side Korean on one side
Well, you see I planned to go to Korea in January of 2020.
I had my ticket and everything...
then all of a sudden I am not living in China.
I unexpectedly found myself on a forced plane ride back to my home country
and this picture is me sitting in the Seoul airport because I just so happen to have my layover to America in South Korea.
I was basically sent home - like - I didn't have a choice but I had to leave this job.
and honestly this part of the story wasn't that difficult.
When things are out of your hands you just kind of follow through.
I think that in most traumatic experiences it's later when the pain and the trauma of what had happened hit,
and i don't want to spend too much of this video talking about this traumatic experience
but let's just say my whole life, and i think you might be able to agree with me,
my whole life I just wanted to feel like my presence mattered... you know, to somebody.
I wanted to be known
I wanted to be known for who I was now not who I was in my past
and so I think from this state of wanting to matter I was way more vulnerable
thinking that maybe opening-up my vulnerability to others would lead to them knowing me more
which would lead to more intimate relationships with people
and what ended up happening was the more I opened-up the more I was maybe misunderstood or misjudged
but also I would say that I did have a tendency to maybe be verbally dramatic with people who I am really close with.
So if I felt really close to someone I would even less-sugarcoat it
like I was already blunt but with people who I knew, knew me - I was even more blunt
or maybe even far past blunt - like, I would emotionally exaggerate what I was saying
and I really think this was like a attention seeking thing
and everything collapsed within 48 hours so I literally had nowhere to go but my parents house
and I pull-up to my parents' house
I don't have a friend within a few states of me.
For some reason Korean was something that still - I had interest in.
and I really don't even know why.
At that time I started watching these videos about Got7 (a K-Pop group)
and they're the only group that I maybe know anything about?
I mean I know their names... I know they're not together anymore I don't know much other than that
but i did - i watched these videos because these guys were just so funny
I loved their sense of humor.
and when you are so deep in sadness, anything that is enjoyable or just like maybe helps you escape your current reality
I was binge watching all of it.
and I started watching K-dramas and I literally would shut out the world around me because I didn't want to be in it.
I would shut out the world - I wanted to numb the world because I had felt so forgotten
and I also forgot in myself what my purpose was in the world.
Like why? Why would I be here?
Why would i go through ... just - what is the point of the sadness?
What is the point of just continuing when you feel so dark?
so I tried to think back to things that I used to love to do
I love this Korean language, I love watching these videos that bring me some joy
I wonder if I could learn Korean?
just because it's - - Like
everyone says there's one language that is their love language
and for me it is Korean.
When I hear people speak Korean it is - WOW it's so beautiful
I just love the way it sounds!
and I started taking acting classes because I went to school for theater.
I grew up on the stage I loved acting.
So I was like, "I'm in Atlanta. Atlanta has become like the number one film producing city in America (it now beats Los Angeles)."
So I was like, "I'm here - I might as well - you know - go for it! This could be another distraction you know from reality..."
One of my first acting classes: we are supposed to pick partners
I didn't really know anybody in the class, and I randomly got assigned the one Korean guy
and of all the activities that we could do, of all the activities you could do in an acting class,
he decided to have us do this exercise. where we would tell stories to our partner
and the partner had to guess whether or not the story was true or false,
and so we, as actresses and actors, have to fake the story or we have to tell a completely honest story,
and so my partner started telling me stories about living in Korea and I was like,
"Oh my gosh... this is crazy because I was just thinking about how I wanted to learn Korean..."
so I get the guts to just ask him, "Hey... you know, weird question but do you happen to know anybody that teaches Korean
or a tutor or something like that because I'm kind of interested in learning Korean."
No joke he's like, "Oh! My sister literally. teaches Korean. She teaches classes here in Atlanta. They're once a week."
So guess who signs up for classes/starts taking these classes?
and that's actually when the pandemic hit by the way.
So I took online classes during the pandemic
in my Korean class I started making friends so they started introducing me to more Korean culture
because I literally knew...
I knew nothing.
I went to Korean BBQ for the first time with a dear friend of mine
if you guys are ever in Duluth (Georgia) please check out this Korean BBQ place
it is my favorite because the owner, Cha, she is just the sweetest thing ever
she taught me how to like wrap my first SSAM
(and SSAM is like when you take lettuce and you put the meat and then you put all the goods you fold it up and you put the whole thing in your mouth
you're not supposed to bite into it, like, you're supposed to literally put the whole thing in your mouth).
here I had this random stranger shoving SSAM wraps into my mouth - like - she was feeding me.
I was like, "I don't know what's happening but everything tastes immaculate. Like, I'm on cloud 12 (very happy)."
and then I also made a really good friend of mine named Reese through this class
her and I hang out and literally from the moment we met each other we just bonded right away.
and then I was like, "Okay, I want to move out of my parents house."
Pandemic is starting to slow down, I want to move out of my parents house, I need to get a job,
at the time, my friend - she's single but she has a spare bedroom in her house
so I started renting out that room,
and then I literally type (into google) "jobs near me - server"
because I wanted to work as a server because I wanted to make as much money as soon as possible,
and I didn't know if I was going to stay in Atlanta or not.
Closest serving job near me? It is a Korean barbecue.
Y'all like - I'm not kidding!
Korea just kept coming up into my life
and as I work at this Korean barbecue, I obviously make a lot of Korean friends
and it's like, again, I wasn't choosing this.
it was just randomly here, randomly here, connection made, connection made,
and I keep thinking in the back of my head, "Man.. I almost went to Korea.
I almost went to Korea. How amazing would it have been if I actually went to Korea
and then came back and was able to like maybe enjoy all of this Korean life/stuff
with the perspective of living in Korea and seeing it like firsthand..."
I literally just decided: You know what?
I'm going. I'm gonna go.
I've saved up enough money, I work really hard to be able to save to travel,
I've traveled to many countries - I've now been to like over 10 countries,
all I've done my whole life was just go. I just went for it.
I was like: Why should that stop now?
I don't have any ties - let's go!
and so I told my friend Reese, who was in my Korean class,
"I think I'm just gonna go. Like, I'm just going."
but I wasn't totally sure... but I wanted to,
and she really wanted to come with me but sadly finances just weren't really working out.
So I was thinking: okay I guess I have to go by myself...
literally the next day she shows up at my house and is like,
"oh, so I randomly got this huge refund from my school (college) and I suddenly have a few extra thousand dollars
and like I may or may not have already put in my two weeks in at work and like we're going we're buying our tickets now."
and I was just like,
"Okay... rewind... one more time - one more time?"
but I kid you not we bought our tickets and I think it was like a week or two
I want to say it was two weeks later
we were in Korea - March 2021.
We out here! We made it!
I literally couldn't believe it was happening... but let's talk about how insanely terrified I was.
Put the pandemic aside, once you get to a (foreign) country, you know you're just so excited to be there,
so you just go out and you see the world and you're like, "Oh my gosh! I did the thing!"
Throw a little bit of two week quarantine in there
and now you have two weeks to marinate on the fact that you literally quit your job
and you just up and moved to Korea and you don't speak Korean.
Like, you've been taking classes but you can't have no conversation.
You have two weeks just sitting in this room like, "What the heck did I just do?"
and by the time it was actually time to be released into South Korea and it's time to exit the quarantine facility
I wasn't exactly in a stable like place in life... this just enhanced the un-stability that was all up inside me.
Thank goodness for the wonderful Korean individuals who have literally like held me under their arm and taken me throughout the streets of Korea
and just showed me around because it's what led me to like be able to make videos for you guys
that's my, like, how I got to Korea the first time
but there's way more to why I came back and why this trip means a million times more than any of those other trips ever did.