Having a small amount of fame is kind of fun.

I had been gone from my motel room no more than 10 minutes when I was ID’d by another expat.  I was taking the photo below (which I like) when I heard “Are you Kelsey?”

Turns out I had been shooting next to Jason of Mississippi to Korea, who is a regular reader of my blog and recognized me.  We stood and talked about cameras and photography and life in Korea and blogging.  I enjoy chatting with other expats.  Sure, there are now 7 of us down on Jindo, but I prefer to chat with people I don’t get to see every week.  He, like many expats, has been here 4 years and is feeling that this will be his last year in Korea.  There seem to be different degrees of K-expats here.  One group come only for one year.  Another comes for one year and ends up staying for two (this would be me, if I could).  A third group stays for 4-5 years, and the final group marry Koreans and stay for 10+ years.  I have some theories about why there are these specific durations.  Here they are:

1 Year Folks:  They come here to travel, earn money, and live a (relatively) easy life.  However, they find that Korea isn’t particularly hospitable much of the time, and they leave.  Or, like me, they never intended to spend more than one year, as they are using it as a gap year between college and grad school, or something else.

2 Year Folks:  These are people who intended to stay only one year, but realized at the end of their first year that they were just beginning to get comfortable and that it would be a bad time to leave.  However, after that second year, they feel that they have more completely experienced Korea and that it’s time to go home.  I’m in this group, but can’t stay.

4-5 Year Folks:  Expats here tend to waffle back and forth between loving Korea and hating Korea.  It comes in waves.  At the end of 2 years there is a strong pull to go home, because you’re starting to feel as if you might never leave if you stay longer.  However, many folks realize how much money they have saved after 2 years, and feel that they can push past their aggravations with Korean culture and stay longer.  For some reason, very few teachers stay here for only 3 years.  It seems to be either 2 or 4-5.  Most of these expats have either serious boy/girlfriends or are married, either to other foreigners or Koreans.  Most of these speak reasonably good Korean – at least good enough to hold a moderate conversation.

10+ Year Folks:  These expats usually have gotten out of the teaching scene and have moved onto other industries, or at least into less typical areas of the education field.  They are almost invariably married to Koreans, and are about as integrated into Korean society as a foreigner can be, and many (though not all) are fluent in Korean.  These folks have ceased to see Korea as a foreign country and begun to see it as their home.  About half of them do intend to eventually move back to the US, and the other half are unsure.

I do wonder how this trend compares to the expat communities in other countries.  I have many, many expat readers living in other countries who read this blog, so I ask you guys:  what is the expat community where you are like, by comparison?  Feel free to use this as fodder for your own post on the subject.

Here, by the way, is a photo I took of Jason, my fellow expat:

The friend who was going to be in Seoul this weekend with me has had to cancel, as stuff is going down at her school and she’s not even sure if she’ll be in Korea by the end of next week.  While I’m disappointed that I won’t get to show her around Seoul, it does give me a little more freedom to wander around at random, which I enjoy.  I tend to be extremely aimless when I travel, and while I enjoy having traveling companions, it often makes me feel somewhat restricted.  The weather’s kind of funky today, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do today.  I know that I’m going to go to an American restaurant in Itaewon that I’ve been wanting to visit ever since Paul Ajosshi did a write-up of it, but other than that, I have no plans.