Thoughts on returning back “home.”

I do feel like Korea is my home, although I’m living a counter culture lifestyle. It’s easy to make everything in my apartment American and familiar to me. I don’t watch Korean tv, basically because I don’t understand it. The shops always have it on, and it seems they have the same shows. Being in the states, everything seemed so foreign to me. I forgot how to go places and was amazed at the selection at the grocery store. My students tell me they want to go to America. People here think that life is somehow better in America. I find it odd, because when I ask them if they want to stay there, they invariably say no. I read an article in a magazine here about a guy going back to Canada after several years. I agree with many of his sentiments. He lamented that people were obsessed with trivial things, like weather and politics or news. For some reason, life seems more real when out of the bubble, that is the U.S. My Korean language partner asked me what I knew of Korea before coming here. I said I just knew about the Korean war. People from other countries, mainly the least well known countries learn about different countries.