Returning to “Normal”: Hitting the Easy Button on Stateside Life

We loved our experience of living in Seoul and wouldn’t trade that time for anything. It was hard to leave a city we had come to love and the people who made our year really special. As happy as we were, we knew that parts of life in a different culture and with a significant language barrier were very stressful at times. The moment we landed in Hawaii, our first stop in the U.S. after leaving South Korea, we were reminded of how much easier life’s simplest tasks are when you are in a familiar culture and speaking your first language. Here are some of the first everyday “easy button” moments that surprised us with their sudden simplicity.

Asking a question at a hotel/restaurant/store/really anywhere at all

For much of our time in South Korea, we had grown accustomed to figuring things out on our own by using the often limited online travel resources in English. More often, we would rely on advice we collected from others who’d previously traveled to the place we were going. Some activities we just didn’t do because we couldn’t figure out how to get there or how to make a reservation without good Korean language skills.

Given that we’d never been to Hawaii before, we occasionally found ourselves with questions about what to do or where to go in the area. At first, we found ourselves painstakingly combing online resources for information about whatever we were trying to do. Or we’d be in a store and not know where to find whatever product we were seeking. Then suddenly it occurred to us – we can just ask someone! Ah, the miraculous power of language.

Reading a menu and ordering food in a restaurant

Sitting down in a restaurant and trying to figure out menu items, followed by actually ordering the food, was often challenging throughout our time in South Korea. Particularly outside of Seoul, many restaurants would not have English menus or any English speakers to assist us. Given enough to time to translate and figure out our order, we were fine with this.

We discovered, though, that just pointing at a menu in Korea is often not enough to accomplish ordering. Many restaurant workers were eager to ensure that they prepared food to our liking and would have follow-up questions that required us to do more than just point at a menu. This well-meaning hospitality often had the unintended consequence of stressing us out as our Korean langugage skills frequently could not keep pace with the questions. Plus, the menu is often on a board and not available on paper (see below).

Back in the U.S., the first time we sat down in a restaurant and read a menu quickly, followed by easily communicating our order to our server, we breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Bacon, decaffeinated coffee, and ice water

Speaking of food, we were also super excited about the contents of that first restaurant meal back on U.S. soil. It happened to be breakfast, and the chemist was extremely excited to get back to American-style bacon. (Not that you can’t get bacon in South Korea, but when it is served it’s often Canadian-style. We intentionally didn’t seek out a lot of Western-style foods in Korea, so some of our “deprivation” was self-imposed!)

At a local diner in Kauai, I was very happy to be served a cup of plain old drip coffee, and when I wanted a refill I could even ask for decaf! Coffee is really popular and widely available in Korea, but it is almost exclusively espresso, not drip coffee. This means you never get a free refill, and decaf is usually not available or costs extra.

It also felt great in Hawaii to drink a big glass of ice water. We could always request water to be served with our meals in Korea, but it was almost never served with ice. I don’t know what it is about Americans and ice, but I admit I love a drink with as much ice as liquid in the glass. So refreshing!

Chitchatting to your neighbor

Not until we were standing in line at stores and restaurants back in the U.S. did we realize how much Americans tend to “chitchat” to the strangers standing around them. Granted, you might find this more in a small town than in Manhattan for instance, but anywhere you go you’re liable to have someone standing close to you strike up a casual conversation.

Because our Korean language skills weren’t good enough to start talking to random strangers in Seoul, our life in public places was pretty isolated. I didn’t realize how unusual this was until we came back and suddenly started having conversations again while standing in line. It felt really, really normal.

Making a phone call

We used our phones a ton while living in Seoul – to text, call, and videochat friends both in South Korea and back home. However, we almost never used our phones to call anyplace in Korea for information. If it was hard for us to use our Korean language skills face-to-face, it was ten times harder over the phone. For instance, if we wanted to know if a restaurant was open we pretty much just showed up there and hoped for the best. Or if we wanted to make a reservation we were dependent upon online systems and email. Once we landed stateside, we realized if we had a question we could just make a simple phone call. Amazing!

The comforts of home

In each hotel room during our stateside travels, several items struck us as different from what we’d grown accustomed to in Korea. Immediately we noticed the Western-style bathrooms, most notably with drains in the shower or tub instead of in the middle of the bathroom floor. Shower heads were always mounted well above our heads and never above the sink. And the towels – ahhh, the towels. Large, fluffy towels always big enough to wrap all the way around your body. In our experience, not the norm in Korea where we used lots of small, thin towels.

We also noted that we were back in the land of fitted sheets, which we didn’t see much in Korea. (Not to say they don’t exist, but we didn’t have them in either of our apartments or in most hotels we visited during our year.) It’s so much easier to make a bed with fitted sheets, though some of the quilted, flat bottom sheets we slept on in Korea were admittedly very comfy.

The chemist speaks!

I was really focused on developing some Korean language skills as a way to feel more independent and more a part of everyday life while we were living in Seoul. Admittedly, this was a slow process, and I didn’t advance as quickly as I had hoped over the year. While the chemist learned some Korean, he needed to be more focused on his work in the lab and didn’t have as much time as I did to study. He also had the advantage of spending most of his days with Korean/English speakers who helped him anytime he was outside of the lab.

Because my Korean language skills were slightly more advanced, I ended up doing all of the talking whenever the chemist and I were out together and needed to speak Korean. This was true whether I understood what was going on or not! We both realized it was a relief when we returned to the U.S. and he could speak for himself again.

Coping with Culture Shock

In every transition, there are bound to be bumps along the way. Certainly, there were many changes to our daily life that we had to adjust to in South Korea. After a year away from the U.S., there are new adjustments we need to make now that we’ve returned. This is a really normal part of culture shock and is the phase called “re-entry” or “reverse culture shock.”

We had prepared ourselves as well as we could to cope with this final phase of culture shock. One way of coping is to allow ourselves to focus on those things that we are enjoy about our home culture. On the days when we really miss life in Seoul, it’s helpful to remember that our current “normal” has some pretty good points, too.

Thanks for journeying with us! Coming soon to a blog near you, we explore the other side of the adjustment coin: the things we miss most about life in Korea.