Written on: March 14, 2023
For years now South Korea has my undivided attention. Gotten into it because of the music and expanded towards the infamous dramas, the interesting culture and beautiful language quickly after, I am absolutely fascinated with this country. Not knowing what to do after graduation and working a parttime job that brought me more sleepless nights than joy, I wanted to turn things around. I wanted to do something, learn something new.
After research on bachelor and master degrees, where I unfortunately couldn't find anything, I stranded on a language program. And not one of those in the neighborhood that come together once a week. But one where you have five classes a week four hours a dag and where you will be surrounded by the culture and the language 24/7. A Korean language course, in Korea. I had been studying Korean on my own for a while and it was the only thing that gave me motivation. It seemed to be the only thing I wanted to do. And apart from the language, it would also be a great opportunity to experience the culture first hand.
A journey that started with preparations in December 2021, became reality after a lot of arranging, planning and the additional stress in August 2022. A week after I quit my job I was on the airplane with my sister that would bring us to the bustling city of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. After spending a week in this spectacular city, I said goodbye to my sister and traveled to Daegu, where I would be attending the Korean Language Institute of Yeungnam Unversity.
I had only been there a few weeks when I started to regret my decision to come to Daegu. The organization that helped me prepare the documents I needed for my application had sort of warned me that students that came to Korea for the first time would be better off in Seoul, but I didn't listen. I wanted to learn Korean and with the money I saved by picking Daegu over Seoul, I could travel to Seoul as much as I wanted.
But I felt incredibly lonely. Really, really lonely. The only person I really talked to was my roommate, who was nice, but there was not really a connection. And in class there was no one that really talked to me. Most people in class consisted of Chinese and Vietnamese students, which was not a problem. But most of them didn't speak English and kept among themselves, which made communication very hard.
So I had this desire to go back to Seoul. All my attempts of making friends had failed: starting a group chat for people to meet basically left me ignored. I felt miserable. Especially when shortly after my camera broke.
Drawing is what helped me through those rougher periods and that helped me handle my emotions. It made me feel less lonely.
Slowly, but surely Daegu started to grow on me. I got to know an Italian girl from my class, who introduced me to a friend of hers. They mostly dragged me through the first semester and made studying fun. We would go to cafes to study and eat meals together sometimes. It made my existence there much more bearable. I continued to draw, especially when I met a certain person that turned my world completely upside down.
This is where drawing helped handling my feelings again, in a different way but it sure did help. Drawing him was my way of dealing with emotions I was scared to show, even though I apparently do wear my heart on my sleeve. I appeared to be very obvious about my feelings, even though I tried to be discreet about it.
It's really weird to experience emotions that strong, for me to the point I didn't know what to do with them. They were so incredibly intense. Daily I still feel those emotions, but every once in a while they become too much to handle. And when that happens, I grab my sketchbook and a pen, drawing him again just like I did when I first got to know him.
So my advice: if you ever feel lonely, sad, happy, angry, frustrated and you don't know what to do with those emotions... Try to draw. Even if it is scribbling lines on a paper, it helps. Trust me. It feels like all those emotions flow out of your body with the ink of the pen or the paint on a brush that hit the paper. It's pretty magical.