Heart and Seoul

SEOUL, South Korea — I’m going to miss a lot of things when I leave Seoul. I’ll miss green tea ice cream and jjimtang chicken. I’ll miss being obligation-free after 6p.m. I’ll even miss living in "the Pink Zone"—a.k.a. the area surrounding Ewha Womens University. But most of all, I’ll miss the people I’ve grown close to over the past two months.

I have two good friends here who I may not see for a long time, if ever again. Da Eun is a recent graduate of Korea University—and the former bass guitarist of a rock band called Adrenaline. When I first asked her why her music group broke up, she answered: “Because all my bandmates are now lawyers.” Since it is one of my greatest fears that I’ll go into a years-long slumber only to wake up surrounded by friends-turned-litigators, I knew we would get along.,Caroline, is a French intern at my company. She’s lived in Korea for almost a year, so in terms of Seoul street smarts, she’s way ahead of me. Last weekend, she bargained a dress down 25 percent—in a boutique.

As a veteran traveler and a serial friend-leaver, I know what happens to these relationships when one of us departs for a different continent. Emails are exchanged every few months, along with a badly connected phone call or two. But everyday life is all-consuming wherever you are, and at school I can barely remember to call my parents, let alone my former host family in Honduras.

Nevertheless, a lack of communication does not erode my international connections. Two Australians I worked with in Honduras came to New York City last year and I made a six-hour bus journey from Boston to see them for an evening. In contrast, for a year I’ve neglected to visit close high school friends who live nearby. When I exchange updates with folks abroad, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve spoken, I’m struck by how easily we can pick up where we left off.

I think the difference is that my international friendships have always been based on our differences, rather than our similarities. Therefore, even if our paths grow far apart the dynamic doesn’t break down, it improves. In the course of Harvard life, I don’t often get to send emails that start off with, “How’s the Chinese medicine practice going? Are you still living on the commune?” (To Caite, my titian-dreadlocked Australian neighbor in Zanzibar.)

Next year Da Eun will finish up her contract with our company and take the Korean law school exam. These days she only pretends to go home after work, and instead climbs two floors up to an empty office and studies her thousand-page prep book until 9 or 10 at night. Caroline’s starting her fourth year of a five year bachelors-masters program in Nantes, of which she hasn’t decided her major. (“I’ll figure it out when I get [to registration],” she claims.) We may never live in the same country again—but that's why we will always enjoy sharing our very different lives.


Anita J. Joseph ’12 is a Crimson editorial writer in Leverett House.