to long (for) — it has been too long

The winter and spring of 2015 passed in a flurry of deadlines (grad school apps, magazine articles, Korean tests) and now the summer is dashing to a close as well. Here in Boston I miss the hot, hazy evenings of Daegu — the interminable summer. I completed my Fulbright grant on July 17th, 42 days ago. I left Korea on the 26th, but only in the last few days have I begun to feel an ache at the thought of a warm bowl of seolleung-tang, at photos of my students picking their noses on facebook, at the posts on this blog, recalling for me the very start of my journey.

On July 17, 2013 I wrote about listening to Big Bang for the first time. Almost two years later, in April of 2015 I saw Big Bang perform live at Seoul Olympic Stadium. So many memories — of meeting my host family for the first time, minor existential crises along the way and budding friendships that have since flowered. 

Looking back on my last blog post it has been almost a year since I went AWOL. So many significant moments have happened since then, moments that shaped my experience of Korea. Instead of moving on immediately to my new life in Boston, I hope to retrospectively bring this blog up to date, both as a way of recording and processing my memories. 

Even though I have left Korea now I continue, out of habit, to translate my thoughts into Korean. Reading through my old blog posts today the word that came to my mind was 그립다 (geuribda)— to miss, to long (for), to be homesick (for). Geuribda can apply to a place, to a person or even a time. 그레서 (geureseo, therefore). 학생들이 그리워요. 한국이 그리워요. 한국에 했던 시간이 그리워요. (I miss my students. I am homesick for Korea. I long for the time I had there.)