Choosing Overseas

When I was about 8 years old, my family got stationed in Seoul, South Korea. As many moving stories go, my parents had been almost positive that we would be sent somewhere else, such as Florida. Even now, I can vividly remember looking at houses to buy there with my dad. As you can imagine, our orders came as a complete shock, but the two years we spent in Seoul were some of the richest and most interesting of my life. Even as a kid, I learned so much and immersed myself in a new culture, and I think this was one of my main inspirations to study abroad for a year. 

My family was lucky enough to be one of the last to be stationed at Yongsan Garrison. While we were there, the post was slowly shutting down: the school, restaurants, and hospital were all gone before I was. Even though the base was deteriorating, the community of families still left thrived. We hosted barbecues and fire pits, sharing our experiences living overseas and in a halfway-abandoned neighborhood. The specificity of what we were living created a sense of camaraderie. Another thing I loved about living in Seoul was our opportunities to travel; to make the most of our proximity to so many famous destinations, we visited someplace new every few months. 

The two years we spent in Asia have always had a profound impact on the way I view the world, opening the doors to the ideas of travel and living overseas. I loved the frequent trips and missed the feeling of community created around a unique shared experience. After a few years and a lot of research, I set my heart on spending my junior year studying abroad. It took a lot of convincing, preparation, and hard work, but clicking ‘Yes’ on the acceptance email was one of the happiest moments of my life. 

During my year in Spain, I’ve thought a lot about how grateful I am to have been sent to South Korea. Without that assignment, I never would have been inspired to study abroad. I got to use those childhood experiences as a baseline to guide me through this new adventure as a teenager. The ‘leftover’ base community helped me make connections with my new friends. I got to plan my own independent travel, remembering the way my mom planned our vacations to Japan, China, and Vietnam. I practiced the curiosity and cultural awareness I developed while talking to my international classmates.

Now that I’m almost at the end of my study-abroad journey, I recognize how much of my success and learning can be attributed to our assignment in Korea. Though at first it seemed out of the way, living at Yongsan gave me gifts that I can now fully appreciate, and I’ll always be grateful that I chose living overseas again.