I think living here may be giving me a bit of an identity crisis.

At the very least, it is forcing me to reevaluate how I determine who I think I am.  Back at home, I’m a teacher, a brain, a thinker.  I’m supremely competent, maybe a little arrogant.  I’m the teacher kids want.  I’m a mentor. A writer.  A daughter.  A friend.  An aunt.  A mother figure.

Here, those things are stripped from me.  I’m not pretty or charming or clever by Korean standards.  I’m too big for the space I’m meant to occupy. Not just tall, freakishly big, as in the stores don’t carry clothes in my size, which, in the States is a perfectly average size to wear.  

Here, I’m just a mediocre teacher at best because I only have command of one of the languages spoken in my classroom, and it’s not the dominant one.  It takes dual fluency to inspire students to learn around here, that or some kind of physical comedy routine I just can’t muster up the energy to invent.  

Life is hard here because I’m so used to being the best and defining myself by my competence.  All that is reversed in Korea.  Here, I’m the star baker in an apartment without an oven.  I’m the AP English teacher in a classroom full of eight year olds.  I’m the old lady at the back of the hapkido class, struggling to keep up and trying not to look completely foolish. I’m the girl with feet so big the stores don’t carry her shoe size.  I have been abruptly, rudely, and unceremoniously ejected from my comfort zone.  I am an alien.  

My Genius English class has been reading Charlotte’s Web, and a couple of weeks ago something dawned on me.  The last word Charlotte writes in Wilbur’s web is HUMBLE.  Not stuck up, puffed up, or proud.  Not THE BEST.  Not PERFECT. Humble.  And I think maybe this is my lesson for my time here–humility.  In this country, I do not own real estate or a car.  I can’t wow my students by baking triple chocolate cookies or making clever remarks.  Some days I struggle to get them all to sit down.  

Most of the time I don’t understand what is being said around me or about me.  I am a stranger in a foreign country, completely disconnected from almost everything that ever formed the basis for my identity, and this makes me wonder sometimes what exactly I base my sense of self on.  While I know without a doubt who I am in the States, sometimes I feel a little lost about who I am here. 

So my lesson for this year is humility.  The girl who has always been the absolute best has to learn how to be OK with being average, even bizarre.  It’s a learning process, an uphill struggle.  It’s expecting a steak dinner and getting instead a big ol’ slice of humble pie.  

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