Monday, May 13, 2013

Seoul Searching...in Hong Kong

I've done a bit of relocating since my last post, but hilariously other than the scenery not much has changed. Although I do miss my kids and my friends from Seoul, admittedly, Hong Kong is much more my style. Hong Kong presents a girl with a buffet variety of adventures for a girl to get into *wink*

The whole living with nuclear threats from a country being ruled by some pompous dickhead was not really up my alley of comfort.  For the duration of about three weeks I was ridden with anxiety - specifically at night.  I would wake up at any sound outside my window from a starting car to a meowing cat.  My nights consisted of about three hours of sleep, my days, ten hours of screaming kids.  I had a few friends of mine leave based on the advice of an ex CIA agent and was answering to the pleads of my own parents to flee the country.

When I talked to the native Koreans about all of this, they had no response.  I begged for information on what to do if there were to be an attack: on where to take shelter, how to evacuate the school, what to do with children if we were to leave.  My inquiries were met with blank stares.  The native South Koreans were so numbed to the continuous threats from the North that they swept my concerns under the rug.

There were several different threats that were causing me to reconsider my stay in Korea, but ultimately it was a conversation with my father that broke the camels back.

If any of you have a father like mine, you know, are far as communicating goes, dads are usually in the background while mom is asking five million questions that inevitably move one to preemptively end a conversation .  He's calm, cool, collected, nothing really fires him up or moves him to make bold statements.  He didn't say much, but it was enough.

 "Leave Suz.  This is not your war.  It doesn't matter if they don't attack, but if they do, you're 30 miles away and it'll be too late.  I am already losing my dad, I refuse to lose a daughter.  If it's duties you're worried about, I absolve you of them, blame me for any trouble you'll be causing, I don't care, just get out.  Go."    

 He called at 9PM on a Monday night, I was in a taxi to catch a flight to Hong Kong by 6PM the next day.

 I have a friend here in Hong Kong that has been trying to persuade me into moving here basically since he did.  He has already convinced two other friends to make the move so I kind of just jumped on the band wagon.  Since I've been in Hong Kong I feel like there is a world of opportunity here that just isn't available in Korea and doors have already been opening in my favor.  I now have a job, which I start of Wednesday, and I live with a girl whom, unbeknownst to me, I graduated college with.

The story of my adventures in Asia is far from over it's just being displaced to another country.  I'm still searching for that soul...in Hong Kong.