Beginning Thoughts

I’m a long-winded individual which may be a forgivable trait if I thought I possessed any talent for writing anymore. It’s been a long time since I’ve kept any type of journal and the diary I bought for the occasion of keeping together my thoughts and memories of these travels abroad sits on my dresser untouched by ink. I’m a reformed introvert of sorts. The odd characteristics of my person that in one environment left me with little friends, odd stares, massive amounts of time for journaling, and discovering my inner-self were actually considered interesting and (who would of thunk?) charming in another setting. I’ve been riding on a high tide of having friends to do things with. However, that has also left me more open to peer-pressure. And my friends on my travels abroad have assured me the in vogue thing to do now is blog.
So, here I go.

I call it running away.
Running away from home and denying the responsibilities inherent in leaving school for the first time in one’s life. The idea that I’m not a student anymore is still a bit overwhelming to me. Even months after finishing my Masters degree at the University of New Brunswick I hung around the library. Mostly for the free internet I was still entitled to as alumni but in part for the socializing, academic, and creative atmosphere found there.
The idea of going to South Korea to teach had been a distance thought in my head since starting my one year Masters degree in History. What does one do with a Master of Arts if having no desire to be a Professor? (Seriously, isn’t the title of ‘Master’ so much cooler than ‘Dr.’?) Well, why not travel and pay off my student loan all in one go until I have myself sorted in terms of life goals or other such grown up things?
It was hard to go for sure and that’s why I followed through with every step of the process as unemotionally as possible. My philosophy being that there are times I have to push myself out of my comfort zone to achieve lasting experiences and at the point when I ask myself “What the bloody f***ing hell am I doing?” I want it to be too late to turn back, and it was.
I could have settled in New Brunswick, a quite little nook of Eastern Canada, that I had moved to from another Maritime province- Nova Scotia. Fredericton, N.B, was a clean, well-kept capital city community with a religious core and an ever revolving liberal minded set of university students to populate the streets and keep the shops running. Just the right amount of conflict. I loved it. I was getting nervous about moving away, and then I remember questioning one of the friends I made over the summer about why he makes Halifax, Nova Scotia his home. He said something near this… “because I made it my home. It wasn’t like here where I grew up with all the same people and we became friends because we were near each other. I loved the idea of going to a completely new place and starting afresh and making whole new friends of my own.”
The words comforted me because they were in many ways my own in regards to Fredericton and there was no reason I couldn’t try to do it again half a world away.