The Chemist and the Counselor Take Korea

What’s a social worker with no Korean language skills to do when her partner lands a research sabbatical in South Korea? Start a blog, of course! Does said social worker have any expertise that would suggest she knows how to build a blog? Well, no. But she has two weeks of Korean quarantine time to kill, so why not? Forty-eight hours after signing up for a domain name, many of them spent in figuring out how to get this far, here is the blog we will use to document our time in Korea.

Last summer, Peter first started talking with a fellow organometallic chemist in South Korea about the possibility of spending his 2020-2021 sabbatical at Seoul National University. For many months, we didn’t think the logistics would really allow us to go. It seemed like a dream that was unlikely to be real. Then, just as we were starting to think we could work it out, COVID-19 utterly changed the international landscape. Once again, the idea of moving to Seoul for a year began to seem completely unrealistic. Would international travel be safe? Would it be wise? Would South Korea even issue work visas to U.S. citizens? The uncertainty was very stressful, on top of the uncertainty everyone was facing with COVID concerns. We didn’t know what to tell our families, friends, or employers.

As the world was navigating a global pandemic, for better or for worse, we applied for and received one-year visas allowing Peter to become a visiting researcher in Korea. Of course, this required quite a bit of help and support from the professor who issued the invitation for Peter to work in his lab. It also involved a mid-pandemic trip for Peter and me to the Korean consulate in Manhattan so that we could apply in person.

Getting ready to go involved an incredible amount of work. Just preparing our house for the rental market and packing all of our personal belongings to store took months. Leaving a job I had loved and invested in for 11 years was hard – really hard. Given the state of the world, it seemed remarkable that only two months after we had initially planned to leave the U.S., we boarded a plane for Seoul.

Living outside of one’s country of origin is not for the faint of heart. It is humbling and often frustrating. We are also aware of the privilege that allows us to travel and to live internationally. Through this blog, we hope you’ll join us for our year of learning and adventure!