The Five-Stack That Stuck

Everyone needs a hobby. Something that they can do after work to de-stress and bring joy into days that would otherwise be bland and dull. For me, that hobby is Dota 2, a competitive online multiplayer game. My fondest memories of the game came from my first few years of play, between 2013 and 2015. I dipped my toe into a new gaming world, found new friends, deepened otherwise shallow relationships, and even grew closer to the person who would later become my wife. All throughout, we experienced the wonder of playing on the same team, trying to win our digital battles.

I had grown up as almost the stereotype of a young white male in South Africa. While my family was firmly middle-class, I had been fortunate enough to attend one of the top schools in the country. I had graduated with results that could get me into any university that I wanted. I even completed a year of A-levels to study in the UK, before realizing how ludicrously expensive that would be. So, in 2010, I enrolled at the most well-regarded university in my city in a Commerce degree, majoring in Law and Economics. I found solid friends through the university’s nerd society – even being elected their president for a year. In mid-2012, I met a young woman named Kristen, fell in love instantly, and we began to date soon afterwards. Everything was rosy, apart from my second-year Economics results. I had failed the course in 2011, and was on the road to doing so again. After looking around during a third-year class, I realized that I disliked everyone in the room, the lecturer included. I promptly changed my major from Economics to Psychology, and my degree from Commerce to Arts. The path that had been set before me was shifting, and my concept of who I was, was in flux. The entirety of my 2013 would be spent catching up on Psychology units and questioning whether I had made the right choice.

At the beginning of the year, I heard about Dota 2 for the first time. I saw people playing it at a gaming event at the university, and I was intrigued by it. Dota 2 is a game based on DotA, a popular mod to Blizzard’s Warcraft 3. Players are divided into two teams of five, with each player controlling one hero each. Players can choose from over 120 heroes, each with unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Players aim to get gold, which they use to buy items, and experience, which can make their character more powerful by levelling up. Teams work together to take the advantage in gold and experience from across the game map, with the final goal being to destroy the enemy Ancient, a towering building in the centre of their base. Once a team’s Ancient is destroyed, they lose the game. Games are generally between 30 and 60 minutes long, with shorter and longer games possible depending on the specific heroes that are chosen in the game. Dota 2 is a game of back-and-forth, trying to outwit your opponents. Your team needs to get more gold and experience than your opposition, and use your hero’s abilities to kill your enemies and destroy their Ancient.

As Dota 2 is a team game, the fact that I attempted to do all of this entirely by myself for my first few weeks of playing made my initial experiences much more confusing and challenging than they ever ought to have been. I had played the original DotA a decent amount in computer class in high school (yes, during the class – our poor computer class teacher was too nice to handle a room of 17-year-old boys), so I was familiar with the basic idea of the game, a good portion of the heroes, and some of the strategy. However, I was entirely new to the interface, and as someone who hadn’t played any team-based video games growing up, working together with strangers in a digital space was not a skill that I had yet acquired. Nevertheless, I persisted. The gameplay loop was immensely satisfying to me. Every game, I would start out weak and poor. I would then gradually build myself up. The game would go through tense periods where it could go either way, until one team won a definitive teamfight (where all members of the two teams clash, abilities fly, and one team generally ends up with fewer people dead than the other team). Then, the game would end with an Ancient blasting apart with a satisfying explosion. I was hooked.

I began to mention my appreciation for the game to anyone that I thought would have a vague interest in it, in the hope that we could play together. I raved about it to the members of my family of gaming age. I debated its merits at length with members of the university nerd club. I even got into a conversation about it with Sean, one of my opponents at a Magic: the Gathering tournament. I met Sean at a previous tournament. We’d had some polite banter then, so I struck up a conversation with him again. We talked about which video games we were currently playing, and I told him of my new obsession with Dota 2. He mentioned that he and a couple of his friends played occasionally. My eyes lit up, less in an endearing and hopeful way, and more in the manner of a man possessed by a mischievous imp. We exchanged our in-game information, and promised to meet up online in the following week. Thus, the seed for the stack was born.

In online gaming, a stack is the group of players that you queue together to play the game with. I had, up until this point, been playing in a stack entirely by myself. Not a very large or effective stack at all. The following week, Sean messaged me via Steam (the client that Dota 2 is launched through) and told me that his stack was getting together at his home that coming Friday to have an evening of Dota 2, and he asked if I’d like to join them. I tried my best to express my enthusiasm like a normal human being and not a feral animal. I’m not entirely sure that I succeeded, but Sean and the rest of the stack accepted me into their fold anyway.

When Friday came, I was nervous. I had played about two hundred games in my two months of experience with the game, but looking at the profiles of the people I would be joining, my achievements weren’t very impressive at all. Sean had played more than double the number of games, and he hadn’t even played the most. I pulled up to his driveway, was let through the gate, and I sat in the driveway for a moment, gathering my courage. I had met everyone before at Magic: the Gathering events, but I felt like this was a different arena, one where I was much less knowledgeable. I stepped out, laptop bag hanging over my left shoulder, and went into Sean’s house with the weight of nerves more than equalling that of the bag.

I was greeted by Sean. He is a large and gentle man with a warm smile. He talks in bursts, building up his confidence to express his opinions as fast and clearly as he can. Next I saw Richard. I had known him the longest. At the time, he was dating a good friend of mine, and we’d had a couple of prior conversations. Richard was even quieter than Sean, and equally as warm-hearted. His lanky build and unassuming demeanour helped ease me into the group. The final member was Duncan, who came in from the back porch after having a smoke. Duncan’s deep voice seemed at odds with his thin frame, but suited his philosophical nature perfectly. He greeted me with a chuckle and a firm handshake. I set up my laptop at the end of the long table. We all logged in and started queueing for a game. The next thing we knew, it was three in the morning, we had played five games together, and had the first of many nights of Dota 2 as a group. Too tired to drive home, Duncan, Richard, and I spent that night at Sean’s. We discussed the games we’d played and the most hilarious moments therein, and bid each other goodnight. We enjoyed the time so much, we played two more games the next day, even though we all had university deadlines pressing.

After that first meeting of our stack, our midweek games of Dota 2 would almost always involve at least two of us. Sean and I played together most often, with the others joining us when they could. We bonded over the sheer hours we would spend in contact, forming a friendship through text messages. We would give each other shit for stupid things we did in-game, share the latest strategies from the professional scene, and bask in victories that we definitely earned (and were not based in luck at all). When game talk was exhausted, we’d talk about life, our anxieties, and learn more about each other. Occasionally, we’d all get together for another evening of the Dotes (as we called it), have some drinks, and have even more fun.

During this time, my girlfriend Kristen grew increasingly frustrated with Dota 2. We lived about twenty minutes away from each other, and we saw each other every day. While I never started a game of Dotes while she was visiting, she would sometimes arrive at my house and I was in the middle of a game I had to finish. It never took more than twenty minutes or so, but claims of “Sorry love, I’m almost done!” happened enough to irk her. After one such claim, she sat down and decreed:

“Alright. I know that you really enjoy Dota. I understand that. I’ve tried to make sense of it while watching you as you’re playing. I know, I know, it’s hard to explain while you’re playing, that’s fine. Now. Here is what’s going to happen: I want to try learn Dota. I’d like you to teach me. If I end up liking it, then we can play together, which is much better than me waiting around for you to finish a game. If I don’t, you stop playing for good. I just can’t take it anymore, I’m sorry.”

I sat stunned for a moment. I loved Kristen, and had done from the moment I first met her. She was definitely way out of my league. She was far more beautiful and an infinitely better person than I deserved (she still is). As such, I agreed to her terms. I would be her coach as she learned the game. It is said that Dota 2 has one of the biggest learning curves in all of gaming, and I would be the one to show her the easiest path upward. I started by going through all of the heroes, telling her a bit about their backstory, and giving her a basic idea of what they could do. From there, she picked a handful that she wanted to use to learn, and I would sit behind her as she played, encouraging her and explaining the game mechanics. I could see the spark beginning to glint in her eyes. Soon, we were playing side-by-side, winning and losing together. Through her determination to try something I loved, we had gained a hobby that we could share, and we were both overjoyed. She liked playing strong female characters and styling on all the men, and I just loved doing anything with her, including playing Dotes.

In Kris’ training period, she had met the rest of the stack, now affectionately known as ‘the lads’, in-game. She had played a good deal with Sean and I, and with Richard and Duncan a handful of times. In order to improve relations, Sean decided to host another evening at his house, with Kris filling the as-yet-empty fifth slot in our stack. She was even more nervous than I was at my first evening. She perceived our gatherings as guy’s nights, where no women were allowed. She imagined us gathered round a fireplace smoking pipes and indulging in some jolly old digital escapism. Meeting everyone in person helped alleviate the tension. She saw that we all wanted her to be there, and we tried our best to make her feel like a true part of the stack, one of the lads. While she did not immediately take to the rest of the group like I had, within a couple of weeks playing together, we were a tight-knit group. She was soon yelling, throwing shade, and bantering with the best of us.

We revelled in each other’s company for over a year. We would get together once every few months, but meet up online at least once a week. Sean, Kris and I played together most often. We branched our friendship beyond Dotes, into board games and braais (a South African pastime similar to the American barbecue but superior in almost every way). The members of the stack were among the friends that I interacted with the most during that time of my life, all because of the hours we spent together trying to best the other team.

As inevitable as the fact that we couldn’t win every game was the realization that life would eventually pull us apart. In the beginning of 2015, Kris and I moved to South Korea for a year of teaching that turned into four years and counting. Rich moved to Australia, and Sean and Duncan graduated university and found jobs in their respective fields. The delay in the game between South Korea and South Africa proved unplayable, even with South Korea’s gloriously fast internet. We may not play together anymore, but I hold our times together as some of the fondest memories from those years. When Kris and I got married in 2017, we invited our stack, as they had invited us years before. Kris and I still play the Dotes almost every weeknight. We have had other, smaller stacks since, but nothing comparable to the one we had with Sean, Duncan, and Rich. There is yet to be a stack greater than the lads and the lady.

Someone once told me that friendships from a person’s school and university years are distinctly different from those formed in the years following, for the simple reason that the person spends significantly more time with school and university friends. Early friendships grow based on sheer masses of hours and days spent interacting with a person or group of people. When you have a job, you find fast friends all around, connecting and declaring friendship in moments rather than months. Time with friends has to be stolen from afternoons and evenings where you aren’t working, sleeping, eating, or working overtime.

It is this need for extra time with friends that I feel games like Dota 2 have helped with. It is mind-bogglingly difficult to arrange to meet up with a friend, particularly if they live in a different city or even on the other side of your own city. Many adult anxieties revolve around making plans with people. However, it is far easier to simply see that your friend is online in a game’s launcher, shoot them a simple ‘hey, wanna play a game or two?’, connect on voice chat, and catch up while destroying the enemy or being destroyed by them.

I have continued to use games as a means of connecting with people ever since I saw the potential through playing Dota 2. I use board games as my medium of choice these days, mostly because they are easier to teach than Dota 2, and are currently more in vogue. When I do find the rare people who either know the Dotes or are willing to learn it, I latch on to them quickly and fervently, and play together as often as possible. Living as an expat in South Korea means getting used to a cycle of people coming and going, and playing games together is one of the best ways that I’ve found to maximize connection in the often short period of time that we spend in the same country.

I’ve found Dota 2 the easiest and most effective way to build up time with a person. The game provides conversation starters, as you can talk about what’s happening in each game, their favourite heroes, or, if they are particularly interested, the professional matches going on at the time. There is ample time during the game to chat, as there are natural downtimes where both teams are simply acquiring gold or experience, and not teamfighting. There are also action-packed moments to fill what would otherwise be dead, awkward air between people who are getting to know each other. Even though Kris and I haven’t had a reliable stack of five people since we left South Africa, we have had many evenings making new friends or catching up with old ones over a few games of Dota 2.

Forging and maintaining friendships as an adult is a struggle shared by many people in the modern world. As a more introverted person, it is even more difficult for me, as activities like going out to a random bar and talking to strangers sounds like the opposite of how I would like to spend my time. I was fortunate to find Dota 2, an online gaming means to bond with others. It has helped me blossom relationships that would otherwise have wilted into awkwardness and disconnection. It has become a pastime that my wife and I have shared for thousands of hours at this point. It has been an escape for me when I needed one. Some might say that I am addicted, and they might be right, but when I reminisce about the moments I’ve shared with those I’ve been lucky enough to game with, I can’t help but feel love for the game.

Bonding and Re-bonding

I sit at Incheon airport, a place that has become strangely familiar to me over my time in Korea. Even though I normally only spend a few hours here with each visit, I find that there is far less change here than the rest of Korea. Restaurants and shops have largely remained in their same places. The procedures are generally the same. The process of arrive, check in the bags, go through security, go through immigration, find the gate, wait for the plane, then leave gives me some small comfort in the otherwise moderately stressful act of travelling.

For this visit, Kris and I will be returning to South Africa, mostly for her best friend’s wedding. I say mostly so as not to offend all of the South African-based friends and family that we will see while we are there. It’s also to see all of you, I swear!

This will be the second time that we’ve visited South Africa since we left for Korea and I started this blog. Last time was for our own wedding, and for a much longer period of time. With this visit, we will be staying for less than two weeks, and trying to cram in as many lunches, brunches, dinners, board games, Ultimate games, family meetups, and general socializing as we possibly can in that time. In our last visit, we had a much more relaxed social timetable, because we could afford it. We also were lucky enough to see a large portion of the significant people in our lives at the wedding.

While things might not have changed too much at Incheon airport, a great deal has changed in our family and friend situation back in South Africa. My entire immediate family will be working outside of South Africa before the end of this year. Kris’ mom has moved out of their long-time family home. Over our time in Korea, we have lost contact with many of our friends back in South Africa, with each year causing more friendships to fade from vivid experiences to sepia-toned memories. This is the nature of life. Situations change, and you have to adapt to your new environment.

However, we are excited to return and get in touch with everyone that we might have neglected to video chat or message in the past few months, or even years. We will undoubtedly have many a story to share with each other. There will also be those that we cannot meet up with, whether that be because of scheduling problems, distance, or even just sheer forgetfulness. Maybe this will cause a few more friendships to lose their luster, or maybe agonizing over the missed opportunity will be the splash of colour that livens a bond that was dulling.

Kris and I are both excited to be returning to the place that was once the only place we called home. Our lives are more diverse now, and we will be leaving our Korean home for a while to nestle back into our South African one. Oh, and eat our body weight in biltong, Cadbury’s and Gino’s.

Nanji Braai 2017: A Taste of SA in the ROK

Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend the Nanji Braai, an event hosted by the owners of the fantastic South African restaurant Braai Republic, at the Nanji camping grounds in Seoul. For those amongst you who are not aware, braai is the South African version of what Americans would call a barbecue or grill. While I did do some braaing on my recent trip to Geoje island, the Nanji braai was the most authentic braai experience I’ve had in Korea so far. For an afternoon, I felt as if I were spending an afternoon back in South Africa, and all it took was a tent, a fire, some raw meat, and some of my best friends in Korea.

A braai is not a complicated event. There are not a lot of airs and graces, and the food that is prepared is not elegant or complex. It is in its simplicity that the bonding power of the braai lies. For my group at the Nanji Braai, all we brought with us were drinks. The Nanji camping grounds rented us some tents, chairs, and a braai. The camping grounds also had a convenience store, where we could buy necessaries like charcoal, ice, and snacks, without having to cart them with us around Seoul. The most important aspect of any braai is the meat, which we pre-ordered and was given to us upon arrival. Within an hour of arriving at the camping grounds, we had a fire going, music playing, and memories in the making.

Tending to the meat in the early stages of the braai.

The braai that we had been supplied with was large and sturdy, but the same could not be said for the metal grills that covered it. The two pieces of grill were only just large enough to cover the braai, and they were prone to slipping off the edge if they were nudged too hard. This made flipping the meat difficult. More than once, we had to save a rough piece of boerewors (brown sausage) or lamb chop that had slipped through a gap in the grill and onto the coals. However, apart from meat falling into the fire, the actual cooking went smoothly. The ease of preparation allowed everyone to simply kick back and enjoy the sunny afternoon and good company.

More meat meant more hands needed on deck.

I have missed the experience of a braai during my time in Korea. The unique combination of a gathering of friends around a fire with music blaring over light-hearted conversation followed by everyone stuffing their faces full of well-cooked meat is something that happened so often when I was in South Africa. Going out for Korean barbecue should be similar, as most of the ingredients are there, but it’s just not quite the same. I thoroughly enjoyed the Nanji Braai, and Kris and I are eagerly awaiting the next installment.

ROK-U Spring 2017 Season Wrap-Up

This past weekend saw the end of another season of the recreational Ultimate in Korea. Spring 2017 was an interesting season for me, as I began to take Ultimate more seriously than I have in the past. I saw great growth in myself and the team I play for, the Wonju Knights, even if the playoffs didn’t quite go as planned. We may not have won the league or even the consolation bracket, but we certainly had a good time and looked damn good doing it.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, my wife Kris has been in recovery from a torn ACL that she unfortunately picked up earlier this year. Despite this, she stoically remained captain of our team for the season. She didn’t miss a weekend, and gave the team encouragement and hearty cheers from the sideline. Her presence was inimitable, and boosted our morale immeasurably. Sadly, she could not add that fire onto the playing field itself. This left a gap in our handlers (essentially the playmakers of Ultimate) which I had to step up and fill. While I had played handler for the past few seasons, I was now required to play it for every point that I was on the field, and I was needed on the field far more than I was in previous seasons. I felt a lot of pressure at first, but the more I played, the more confident I became in my own play. The increased need for my mediocre skill helped me push past my previous skill ceilings. I am by no means anywhere near a good player, but I am on the road to getting there. My skills are no longer the weak point of my game – that is now my fitness, which I will work on in the coming months of downtime.

Beyond my own improvements, I saw great progress from every single person on our team. Newer players began to throw throws that they would not have done last season, and gained a greater understanding of how Ultimate works. Even experienced players on the team threw fewer risky, flashy throws. Off of the field, most of the players on the team were already friends before the season, and we tried our best to include the new players to the team into our fold. After play concluded on Saturday, we held a fines and awards evening to acknowledge everyone’s contribution to the team, and to have a few drinks together. Everyone received an award from the team, reflecting on some aspect of their play, attitude, or pretty much anything. Mine was the following:

Even though I improved this season, I had a tendency to get a tad grumpy at myself whenever I made a clear error on the field. This may have involved outbursts on the sideline at no-one other than me. Over and above this, my defense style is quite passionate. Hence, the Super Saiyan award.

Don’t mind me. I just missed an easy catch. I’m fine, I swear.

This weekend may have been a great final bonding moment for the team, but it was not our most successful. We finished league play in the middle of the table, landing a solid seed for the playoffs. However, our team cohesion just wasn’t quite there this weekend. We all missed easy catches (there may have been a couple of Super Saiyan moments from me), our throws went to nowhere more often than any other time this season, and we just weren’t gelling. We didn’t manage to win a single game in the playoffs, losing to teams that we’d beaten during the season. Our heads were a little down after our first loss, but by the end of the day, most people had realized that it was the last chance for this iteration of the Knights to be together, and we just had some fun.

With spring season of 2017 over, all that lies ahead for the next few months is the off-season. There is a club tournament coming up, but I didn’t make the cut for that one. For Kris and I, we have a couple of months to decide whether we will play again in the autumn. Kris may still be too injured to play, and I will need to decide whether I’d rather spend time with her or play Ultimate. Judging my how quickly this year has flown by, we will need to decide before we know it. Until then, we’ll just keep on enjoying our life here in Korea, and seeing what the future holds for us.

 

We’re Going…Home?

When my fiancee Kris and I first started planning our holiday to South Africa, we were extremely excited to be going ‘home’. We would be returning to the friends and family that we’d left behind all those months ago, and it would be a momentous, happy occasion. Sitting here in Incheon airport, waiting to start the first of two flights that we need to take to return to Johannesburg, I feel strangely different.

Over the past few days, we have been frantically trying to scramble together all of the things that we need for our wedding (the main reason that we’re heading to South Africa in the first place). We took our cat, Catsby, to the home of friends where he will be staying for the month. We collected my suit and received Kris’ wedding dress back after modifications. We bought Christmas presents for the close family that will be there when we return. As the date of departure drew closer, I began to feel like we were actually leaving home, and not heading towards it.

The more I thought about it, the more conflicted I became. Surely South Africa was my home? It was where I was born. It was where I went to school and university. It was where I met and fell in love with Kris. I had spent the vast majority of my life there. Surely that was my home? I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt otherwise until I mentioned my feelings to Kris this very evening, and she hit me with wisdom that I simply couldn’t see.

You see, home isn’t about where things happen, or where you have property. It isn’t about how many experiences you have in a place. It isn’t about how long you’ve spent there. Home is about people. The people around you are what make a place a home. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros accurately expressed this feeling in their song ‘Home‘, which Kris just happened to be whistling for most of the day.

Sure, we have friends and family in South Africa. We have many people that we frankly can’t wait to see, people that we haven’t seen for months or even years. But, now that we have spent many months living in Korea, we are also leaving a host of friends behind. These friendships, like those in South Africa, were forged through board games, Ultimate, food, or late-night deep conversations. And they are why Korea has felt like home – the amazing community that we have built around us.

In the end, my home will always be where Kris and I are together. For the next month, that will be South Africa, and we will relish our time catching up with those that we haven’t been able to hang out with due to the inconvenience of being on the other side of the world. After that, our home will once again be in Korea, where we will share our stories with our newer friends. Wherever Kris and I are together, we are home. And that is a pretty amazing feeling.

 

Board Games: The Universal Unifier

Gaming is a pastime that permeates almost every aspect of who I am as a person. I play games to relax. I play games to challenge my reaction times, logic, and emotions. I play games to tell stories. I play games to have stories told to me. The most social way that I play games is to have some fun with others. These games most often take the form of card or board games. Whether I play with my family, my friends, or my students, I find that games are a way to bring people together, regardless of circumstances.

Everyone has to start their gaming life somewhere. For most, this was playing simple games like Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, or Bingo with their family. I am no different. I remember many weekends spent at my grandmother’s house trying to outwit my cousin and brother in order to win Monopoly. A board game or two were always present on family holidays, and a pack of cards was always at the ready. Anecdotes of hotly-contested games formed part of family banter – “Yeah, but you still couldn’t beat me at Monopoly!” was an oft-used retort to expressions of superiority. And yes, we played Monopoly to death.

As I grew older, particularly when I entered university, the door into the true world of board games was opened to me. All around me, dozens of games that I had never even heard of before were played and enjoyed. I took one last mental look at Monopoly and dove in. I played games of all sizes, lengths, complexities, and themes. I hunted for Thunderstones and Munchkinned my way to level 10. I became a successful, profitable bean farmer and laid train tracks throughout Europe. I planeswalked and fought giant monsters. I even fended off cannibals in a little house on a hill. I did all of this whilst bonding with friends that I keep in touch with to this day (although not as much as I should!).

When I landed in Korea, I thought that the attitude towards board and card games would be different. In the land where League of Legends and Minecraft reign supreme, I held little hope that my students would even want to open a game that wasn’t an app on a phone or computer. I should have rather remembered the experiences that I’ve been lucky enough to have throughout my life. When I first showed my students one of my board games, their eyes lit up, and I saw my young self in them. Now, board game lessons are a highly effective reward for good behaviour and work ethic.

Life without board and card games would be a lot less interesting. They bring people together like nothing else. Just this week, I have already had one board game night, with the potential to have two more before the week is over. Every time I pick up a game, I think of all of the memories that I have made with that game. If it’s a new game, I am filled with the giddy anticipation of what is to come. In my next post, I will list the games that I couldn’t live without (it will be out this week, I swear!). Until then, play more games!

New Home, New Challenges

So, Kris and I successfully moved to Wonju. I sit now in our new house, mooching off of our lovely neighbours’ Internet, trying my best not to procrastinate writing this. The moving process was more onerous than we expected, but we got here in the end! Our time in Dongtan is officially over. But, with being in a new place comes new obstacles to overcome. I have to find a job. We  have to make the largely empty space that is our house into a home. We have to try and still save money. We even have to run the local Ultimate team. However, we knew that these challenges would come with the territory. Tackling them will be more than worth it, because we are now in a place where we have a friend base, and Kris and I both think that we will be even happier here than we were in Dongtan.

Moving here was a special kind of mission. Sure, we didn’t exactly have to rent a truck to haul all of our stuff over, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t require logistial planning. We chose instead to pack all of our things into every available bag in our house and bring them with us on the bus to Wonju. As it turned out, we have accumulated so many things in the past year (or we are simply so bad at packing) that this required two separate trips in order for us to physically be able to move all of our things.

What made the move even harder was the need to move Catsby, our one remaining foster cat. We were incredibly worried that he would be like his foster brother Kichu and yell his little furry head off throughout the trip. Luckily, he was superbly behaved, only loosing a mew when the bus ride was particularly bumpy. So, after attempts at shifting luggage, we got our stuff all moved into our new place.

The most pressing issue on my mind currently is my need for a part-time job. I have elected to forgo full-time employment in order to have more time to write and create Dota 2 content such as YouTube videos, streams, and articles. In order to stay in Korea, I still need to maintain a visa. The easiest way to do this is to procure a visa through employment. Sadly, the pool of part-time jobs in Wonju that are willing to sponsor an E-2 visa is not a very deep pool. It resembles an incipient puddle left in a pothole after a short rain. I do have a couple of promising leads though, and I hope to have successfully chased one of these down in the next week or so.

While we may have brought a fair number of belongings with us, our apartment is still rather barren. The only furniture that has been provided to us by Kristen’s employers is a single bed, complete with base. Compared to our last apartment, where we received a table, some chairs, a couch, and a bed, this is slightly underwhelming. What amplifies the sense of emptiness is the sheer size of our apartment. It is easily double the size of our place in Dongtan. There are three bedrooms, a living area, a bathroom, and a small laundry area. We do have plans to outfit each room to fulfill a specific purpose, but for now, they are mostly empty.

Something that will make the transformation from house to home harder is our desire to save money. This was a simple task in Dongtan. We were both earning full-time employment money. Our cost of living was low. We only rarely ate out or left our home to see friends. All of these factors have been altered by our move to Wonju. We will have more expenses because of the bigger house. I’m not likely to earn as much as I was. We have a bigger friend base, so we will undoubtedly go out more often than we did in Dongtan. This all adds up.

Despite all of this, Kris and I are both happy in Wonju. I will get to pursue my dreams. Kris gets a nicer job. We have a bigger house. We are closer to our friends. These are things that we wanted last year, and we’ve managed to get them. Sure, there are things we need to take care of to make sure that we can make a living, and not simply exist. But it will definitely be worth the effort. I think we’re going to love it here.

7 Weeks, 7 Lessons

On the 29th of February, Kris and I will finish our first year-long teaching contract in Korea. I cannot believe that time has flown by so fast. It seems like only a few weeks ago when we stepped off of the plane and were swept into an ominous black taxicab. We feel like we’ve known some of our friends here for many years already. And yet, it still feels like we are incredibly new to both teaching and Korea in general. With only seven weeks remaining until we leave Dongtan and start the next chapter of our adventure, here are seven things I have learned in my time in Korea so far.

1.) No matter how far away from each other you are, family and friends stay together. Whether we have brief discussions and catch-up sessions via Skype, post meaningless links to each other on Facebook, or get together on grand trips to Australia, it is very easy to keep in touch with one’s family and friends.

2.) Moving away teaches you who your true friends are. It is very easy to maintain friendships when those who you feel are close to you are within close proximity. When you are on the other side of the world, with a time difference of seven hours, and plans need to be made to communicate, it reveals who is willing to take the effort to do so. Some people you chat to on a constant basis. Others you don’t even need to do that much.

3.) Non-verbal communication is extremely powerful. You are trying to buy an incredibly necessary item. The shopkeeper and yourself do not share a common language. You awkwardly flail your hands in what you hope is close enough to an accurate depiction of your necessity. The shopkeeper smiles eagerly. They take you to something completely opposite to what you intended. You wince, smile nervously, and try again until you get it correct. Moments like that help you observe that communication goes so much further than words.

4.) Cleaning cat litter on a daily basis is far cleaner and easier than doing so on a weekly basis. Not to mention cleaner, quicker, and far less smelly.

5.) Coming home and trying to write (or otherwise pursue ones hobbies) is tiring, but rewarding. After nine hours of herding small children in the general direction of education, the idea of performing actions that require further effort is not a pleasant one in the slightest. However, I have produced some of my best work (including the majority of these blog posts) in the evenings after teaching. Sometimes, you just have to do what has to be done. It is worth it in the end.

6.) Cats like nothing more than destroying things. In the time that we have played housekeeper to our two lovely furry babies, our apartment has taken a bit of a beating. They have clawed much of the upholstery. They have removed a panel from underneath the sink. They have scratched the side of our wooden cupboard in their constant jumping atop of it. And they have looked adorable throughout all of it. Annoyingly so.

7.) Things that would be impossible alone are within your reach if you have good support. Neither Kristen nor myself would be here without each other. I would never have gathered the motivation to complete all of the admin necessary to reach Korea. Kristen would have left within the first month without my moral support. I would not have had the courage to move to part-time employment (to focus on my writing and Dota-related endeavours) without Kristen’s reassurances. Together, we are far stronger than we are alone.

I have grown more in this year than I have in a long while. It has not been easy, but with Kristen’s help, I have managed to try and follow my dreams. In the coming months, my pursuit of Internet notoriety will intensify. For now, I am trying to savour the last few days with my current children. They aren’t making it easy – they’re being particularly rowdy and disruptive – but time is passing faster than ever. I can’t wait to see what the future will hold.