Well, folks. We’ve done it. We’ve hit one month living on the Korean Peninsula. And boy howdy what a month it has been! There have been SO MANY adventures, both big and small – and along with all of that there have been so many emotions too. I’ve got to be completely honest: adjusting to life in Korea has been WAY HARDER than I anticipated it being. I thought FOR SURE by the time I’d been here a month I’d feel completely comfortable and would be taking on Korea all on my own. But that is SO not the case.
In fact, TODAY on this one-month anniversary of my arrival, I FINALLY went grocery shopping in a KOREAN grocery store BY MYSELF (+ two toddlers), with a shopping list, for a FULL NORMAL grocery trip. And something amazing happened… I didn’t die! Seriously, the thought of going grocery shopping in a Korean store where I can’t understand anything has terrified me for the past month. Tandem paragliding with a complete stranger who doesn’t speak English? That’s fine. But grocery shopping… yikes.
And I think I would be totally fine shopping at the Commissary (the grocery store on the military installation) all the time, except for one thing: the Commissary here is EXPENSIVE! Everyone acknowledges it, so it seems like most people shop off post. And it honestly took us spending so freaking much on food at the Commissary last month to convince me that it was time to figure something else out.
So this morning I woke up and I was feeling brave. And if you know me, you’ll know I don’t like to plan to do scary things if I don’t have to. Instead, I like to wait until I get an overabundance of courage and then I do the thing I’ve been fearing really fast before I have a chance to talk myself out of it. Ha!
My friend had texted me a list (and GPS pins) to her favorite grocery stores. So I picked one out, got the kids off to school, loaded up the little ones in the car, and headed out first thing in the morning (because again, I would talk myself out of it if I didn’t do it). As soon as I pulled into the parking lot I realized I’d made my first rookie mistake: I forgot the reusable grocery bags. And my friend even reminded me to bring them too. Oh well.
I’ll spare you the rest of the details about me wandering aimlessly around a grocery store where I didn’t even understand the alphabet, let alone speak the language. But it honestly all went pretty smoothly. There were a few things I couldn’t find (I’m looking at you, tortillas) and a few things that I wasn’t SURE if I grabbed the right thing (ie. heavy cream and sour cream – I have since learned that these aren’t really a common thing in Korean grocery stores), but it really all went very well. And then we just hopped on over to the Commissary to get the few things that I couldn’t find or get and we were on our way!
And you know what is exhausting? Managing your brain when you’re in a store where you don’t read or speak the language. I don’t know exactly why that is, but it was like my brain was just a little hyperactive trying to make sense of everything around me. And I think that’s one reason I’ve been so tired since we moved here – everything is new and it’s taken so much brain-juice just to manage my thoughts around it all. But that’s a whole different story.
All in all, I’m doing well. And knocking “grocery shopping by myself” off of my list of firsts is definitely putting a little extra pep in my step. Seriously, you guys, it’s the little things in life. This is just one more step to making South Korea feel like home. I can’t say I’m 100% comfortable here (and I don’t know that I ever will be), but things that used to phase me don’t anymore, so I think we are headed in the right direction.
This may not be the most exciting of posts and I promise I won’t post about EVERY grocery trip I make. But to me, this was a HUGE deal. And I know I’m not alone in that because shopping in a different country can be so overwhelming and yet totally necessary when you, ya know, LIVE in another country. Ha!
Maybe my next post will actually be documenting an adventure, rather than talking about the everyday boring stuff that we all experience. Or maybe I’ll just post a video of me meowing for 30 minutes straight. You never know.
’til next time…
Ash
