Dealing with Different Perspectives- A Year of Growth

Before coming to Korea last July, I had never been out of the United States. I didn't even own a passport until a few months before I left. I grew up in the same small town with the same people my whole life. While the area was in some ways diverse, it severely lacked an Asian population. I think that might be what made Asian culture so interesting to me when I started to research it. It just seemed so different from how I was used to acting and thinking. 

When I made the decision to come to Korea, a lot of people asked me "why?" Why did I choose Korea? Why didn't I want to go to Europe? But I just felt like I needed to go somewhere completely new. I am a teacher. As a teacher, I knew I would have to have a lot of different types of children in my classroom, and I wanted to do something that was completely new and so far away from my norm, that I would change how I thought about others. 

When I first arrived, I was not immediately thrust into the Korean population. Instead, I was, thankfully, placed in a six-week orientation. Just being around 86 people from all around America for six weeks was eye-opening for me. Everyone had their own story, their own views, and beliefs. Even their own ways of playing classic games like UNO!

But that wasn't the real test. 

The real test came once I arrived at my homestay. I knew very quickly that it would not be a smooth transition. A lot of the food that they ate, I just couldn't! I couldn't eat spicy food (yet). I also didn't eat fish, one of my host dad's favorite dishes.

As the weeks passed, I had to interact with people who differed drastically from me on the way they thought and acted. And for a while, I felt like they were in the wrong. After all,  I was here to show them how the Americans did this or that, right? But then I came to an important realization: my job was as a teacher, but also as a cultural ambassador. So while I showed them what it was like to live in the United States, I also began to accept that not everything about the way I grew up is either the best or only way to do things.

A good example of this is when I started to take taekwondo lessons. I had been doing martial arts for ten years, so some things are just ingrained into my muscles; so when the Master in Korea told me to change how I did things, I was resistant, and neglectful, often forgetting to do them. This could be anything from the way I was standing, or how I held my arms or the way I tied my belt. But after doing lessons for a while with this new Master, I realized, that I was starting to do things in the same way as everyone else around me. I don't know when it started, but all the sudden I realized the Master was correcting someone else on that one thing I had always got wrong, instead of me!

Another example of being challenged to change my thinking was when speaking to Koreans in English. I would, at first, get annoyed by certain phrases that everyone seemed to use.

But learning more about the Korean language, I now know they were just directly translating phrases that are very commonly said in Korean into English. It wasn't wrong. It still made sense. It was just different. 

I have come to realize that when someone does something a little differently than me, it doesn't automatically make it inferior. They probably have a purpose for doing it that way. And I have learned to respect how people interact with me and others. Especially after doing more research about the history and culture, giving me a reason why. 

By accepting these differences, it has led me to be able to have new experiences I never would have done if I had stayed close-minded.

*This post was originally created for Reach The World, a website that connects classrooms with people traveling around the world.