Blogging is tough when your days are nothing special

So basically the title sums it up. I think this is as great a time as any for a little exercise I call realization and reality check. Instead of offering up a summary of how my life has been extra ordinary instead of extraordinary for the past three days, I would like to allow a deeper look into some of the observations I have made while here.

Originally this looked like a real honest-to-god paper. It had the same cold feel, had logic trying to prove a point, but who needs that? This isn't a paper writing class. This is a neat little blog I like to keep because it gives me a chance to express myself in a situation where it's hard to do so on a regular basis with anyone I wish.

Let me start off with a question.

Why Study Abroad?

I asked myself this a considerable amount of times when I first entered college, and my answer was always the same. "If I want to graduate with honors, I have to study abroad." That was that, I thought, purely obligatory.

It would be easy to say that's how it ended, that I went and ended up enjoying myself for a couple of weeks. I went on a couple of two week excursions into new countries and really did enjoy myself. The experiences were great, and the classes fun and interesting.

The best part about study abroad is that there is a deeper, less obvious benefit to spending money on a trip and class rolled into one. I never really got it until I got back after my trip to Korea in 2008, but once discovered, it could only be described as an awakening, a blinding flash of light which engulfed me, picked me up, shook me around, and sat me gently back in my chair.

Through my travels on the first two trips I realized something profound: There is more to the world, more to humanity, than what is offered in America. The U.S.A. is a melting pot. It's a populous country where things are good and things are bad but as Americans, we have a feel for it, and it's comfortable to think it's all there is.
Even though it's all of those great things, I see that we're pretty isolated from the rest of the world, both in thought and attitude. From what I can tell, isolationism is second nature to us. We want what's best for our country and only our country. We're afraid of anyone who doesn't like us, and our idea to fix that wasn't to improve relations, it was to shut ourselves off even more. That stuff is easy to see, and when concerning yourself with a country for just 2 weeks is certainly great, it's like getting a slice of the pie. It's certainly delicious, but when you're done, you kinda want to see how the rest of the pieces taste. The whole pie is the semester abroad, and is just as delicious as the first piece was.

Studying abroad is like being able to broaden your horizons a little (the jump is comparative to the transition of black and white tv to color) while gaining an appreciation for who you are as both a citizen and a person.

Being engrossed in a culture which can certainly be seen (opinion starts here) as an America that still has faith left in the world (end opinion), I have come to understand the subtle differences and the traits we share. Their are also blatant differences, but they should be easy (they're blatant) to spot.

I have come to understand that the American mindset is very unique.

To each other, I believe Americans feel some sense of duty to their country, but greatly feel the need to be some sort of emerging dissenter. Nothing every comes of partisanship, except a sluggish system and resentment towards fellow citizens.

To other citizens of the world, Americans come off as very different. Some see us as too patriotic. Others see us at not patriotic enough. Furthermore, some see us war-mongering blubbering idiots, while others view us as kind and gentle creatures with hearts three sizes too large.

What are we really? I believe we're somewhere in between, and everything at once. I'm sure any able bodied American can think of times when each of the previous criteria applied to them. When compared to Koreans, it's easy to see where it's true.

Koreans are naturally very passionate people. The average person here is very willing to assign themselves to a cause and truly care about people. They have a sense of unity and patriotism that Americans can certainly look up to. I believe patriotism is a good quality, and should be separated from nationalism. The former is a love for one's people and place in life (country, people, province, hometown, etc.), while the latter is a biased view towards issues driven by one's elitist attitude. I don't know how many Americans every day that can be seen the same way, but I won't tell you your own experiences.

Koreans are extremely kind people, as far as I have seen, and truly love Americans. That being said though, there is certainly a dark side to every situation. While they love Americans (I should really say caucasians), they treat other races much differently. Koreans are actually pretty aloof and cold to each other, based on their social system of respect and politeness rather than their heart size, and treat people who aren't caucasians like second class citizens. This observations don't include black people, though, because Koreans treat them as mainly an anomaly I think (there are not many black people at all in the entire country of Korea).
I think this behavior is the opposite of how Americans treat each other, for the most part. We are often afraid of foreigners and warm to those fellow Americans around us (sometimes).

This entry was supposed to have so many different paths I'm pretty sure that I ended up straying several times, and it's actually kind of hard to keep a train of thought up. I will keep posting my observations about Korea as time goes by. There are plenty to be had, thats for sure.


For Now
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

P.S. I will have the video of Haeinsa up tomorrow.