Initiate Quest for Wanderlust

by Rachael Kinch (Canada)

A leap into the unknown Korea South

As my eyes and knees began twitching, my brain tried to catch up to my extremities that were instantly sprung on high alert. Wrapped with a blanket that began to feel like an asylum, the darkened piece of cotton left me with little to no comfort as I spun in my seat in attempts to turn off the world. Beautiful Korean murmurs enveloped and confused me in my haste. The decision to move to Gwangju was not taken lightly, however it had evolved rapidly into fantasies of a whimsical fairy tale that would unravel over the course of a year. Sudden panic of family warnings of passport predators open the floodgates for vivid images of becoming stuck in a foreign land and given no identity and crumbs for food. My mind was hurried as I anxiously swiped around my neck to perform my usual passport check. The aircraft, finally on its long descent from Nova Scotia, was dropping me into my new unknown. In this cloudy haze I began to idealize many others who surely would have been excited and nervous at this new endeavor, just as I had been during the planning process. However, to my ignorant surprise, my unavoidable logic settled on, “What have I done? Please, dear please, can I just go to sleep and wake up back in my calm, warm, familiar haven.” In my stupor, the only thing that prevailed was an inordinate bulk of questions. Upon landing, we were greeted by a woman with a soft face and friendly smile, and a man that seemed stern and distant speaking in Korean that I could not understand, while piquing my curiosity as to his true self. The thirty hour span from my home was now just a recent memory as the woman translated messages that were given to us. My mind was a mass of cognitive disengagement, and I just wanted some time to take in all of the new sights and smells that surrounded me. To my surprise, we were then taken over to tour the school where we would be teaching. All of this a blur before finally being able to close the door to the new apartment. Unknowingly, this experience would be the first to ignite my internal travel bug. Jet lag and I now became heavily acquainted and by the time the sun had risen, I would be well on my way to seek out any little nooks and crannies I could find. Without even a thought of a cell phone, or the ability to fluently speak the native language, all I knew was that if I became lost I wouldn’t be able to explain, nor comprehend, where I was even meant to be. The nervousness of this glued me to an edgy feeling as I kept my head up and legs moving. My blonde hair bouncing off of my shoulders caught the attention of people in the area who began pointing and giggling. Anna Kournikova, they would repeat with a heightened tail spin on the end of her name. In my own self-evaluation, I would not even bear a slight resemblance to the tennis star, and began to realize that everyone had just noticed that there was a sole blonde individual rummaging through the bustling streets. With this fresh puzzle piece to add to the maze, it would never have occurred to me that that person was me. This city of 1.4 million people, draped in beautiful mountains and chaos, injected me with a new sensation and an overwhelming feeling that my quaint hometown of 3, 500 could have fit into over and over again. The year of 2005 was the bearer of the bug that infected me with an undeniable desire to seek, explore, appreciate, and be thrust into diverse cultures and experiences.This feeling, known as wanderlust, soon became my addiction, an addiction that begged to be fueled regularly in as many fashions as ones creative mind can undertake.