Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! Beginning today I will chronicle my year journey in South Korea. I have spent the past seven weeks adjusting to what will be an eventful, challenging and rewarding experience in one of the most fascinating countries I have ever visited. For the past few years when I pictured myself graduating from college and moving on to the step, I had a hard time seeing myself anywhere. I had an itch to travel and see the world before settling down, getting used to a earning a salary, gaining tenure, and as my brother Michael said, “before buying furniture.” I was very fortunate that my education and experiences at The University of Dayton were aligned with what the Fulbright Scholarship Board was looking for in a future English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Korea. In April, I gladly accepted their offer of a graduate fellowship and in May I graduated from UD. During May and June I spent some quality time my family and I departed for Korea on July 3^rd.

            The schedule that I was faced with during orientation was grueling and I was unable to start my blog at that time, although, I was able to share many of my experiences with my family through e-mail. I have decided that I will share some of the e-mails that I wrote throughout orientation to give the reader of this blog insight into my orientation to Korea. The next few regular blogs will be sharing my experiences from this past week, my first week living in the city of Cheonan. 

            The name of my blog “Cheonan jeong” refers to the place where I will be living and teaching for this next year, Cheonan, and the bond that Korean people form between them. I have included an excerpt from the publication, “Significance of “Jeong” in Korean Culture and Psychotherapy” by Christopher K. Chung, M.D. & Samson Cho, M.D. to better explain the concept.

Jeong is difficult to define. One Korean-English dictionary defines it as “feeling, love, sentiment, passion, human nature, sympathy, heart.” Although it is complicated to introduce a clear definition of jeong, it seems to include all of the above as well as more basic feelings, such as attachment, bond, affection, or even bondage. By introducing the characteristics of jeong, I may be able to better clarify the meanings of jeong. One of the important characteristics is its “location.” Jeong seems located not only inside of our hearts but also outside. In other words, the location of jeong is between individuals. It can be difficult to understand an emotion as being seated outside an individual’s heart, yet it may be related to the idea of collective emotion…In Korea, “we” often means “I, bonded by jeong, to you,” whereas in English, “we” just represents any multiple “I’s.”(http://www.prcp.org/publications/sig.pdf).

I have found that jeong has already become a large part of my Korean life and it will continue to guide my actions while also having a large impact on the relationships that I am forming.

Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope that you enjoy the stories that I will be sharing throughout my grant year in Korea.  : )