Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Grotto]

Just out of curiosity how many people that are in Korea feel somewhat abandoned by their friends and family back home?

Myself I personally send an email at least once a month to everyone, at least once a week to immediate family.

I get downright depressed when I dont hear from friends or family for months on end. Makes me so mad I stop sending the offenders email.

Any thoughts?

[VanIslander]

Some people I have written three times before I get a reply, and that's disappointing, especially with family. Only my father writes me enough, I think.

Living so far away makes it feel greater than it was when I went away to college, but really it isn't.

People are busy, busy, busy in the rat race back home while I have plenty of extra time around here.

Maybe we should start telling them spicier stories about Korea, eh?

[wylde]

i sent my first email back home in 2 years today...

my friend calls every 6 months and my mum & dad call every month..


bit of a sad story it is but... i don't have many good friends.. well, i do but not in the one place..

we were a tight knit crew of 8, had dozens more but there were 8 in the gang...

not 1 person lives in the town where we grew up.. they are all over the world now.

marriage, kids and work are good things to scatter friends..

[katydid]

I don't know. I guess I can well understand out of sight, out of mind. My life is going on when my friends and family are sleeping and vice versa.
I would love to get a phone call from a friend or a family member, and even though I have spelled it out to them, how to ring me on my cell here, I don't think they have gotten it quite right. It's frustrating when I call them, and while they sound really happy to hear from me, when they say they will give me a call, they never do. Again, maybe the international dialing thing is a problem for them.

[VanIslander]

[Grotto]

[sadsac]

Vanislander, the cheapest card I have seen and my wife and I use is from Kangnam Travel. Their link is on the Pusan web at www.pusanweb.com.

[ryleeys]

My family is really good about emails. I send several to my mother and father every week. My sister gets one every two weeks or so. My grandparents get a phone call every month. I have five friends that I speak to via IM.

All the rest, including my three best friends from 4 years of college I haven't spoken to since I made the decision to come here. I asked them if they wanted to hang out sometime before I came to Korea (I told them in August and left at the end of October) and they all said they were "too busy." I figure if you're too busy to have one dinner over the course of nearly 3 months, then you're too busy to be considered a friend anymore. So, after 22 years in America, there are 10 people that I care about and that care about me (even the majority of my family, especially on my father's side was apathetic to my departure).

So far in 6 months I feel as though I've met five people in Korea that are genuinely interested in being involved in eachother's lives no matter where we live.

[peppermint]

I talk to my family once a week or so, and strangely have become closer to my cousin who's in high school, and also a net addict. She tells me all the goss from home, and I tell her about life here, and my students etc.

[oneiros]

I knew I was drifting away from my family the day my mom put me on hold to answer the other line. Sure..I don't mind waiting. Just calling long distance from Korea.

I used to call home every week. Now it's every month or so. I have a sister who emails me two or three times a week, and my mom emails a couple times a month, but that's about it for people back in Canada. It has been a few years since I've lived there, though.

[lawyertood]

I've been here almost eight years and am still waiting for someone in my family or a friend to come and visit.

I use e-mails and Messenger to communicate with the folks back home.

[PatrickSiheung]

I keep in touch with my parents almost daily. My mom is an email addict. I've gotten closer to my brother since moving here too.

After my first year in Korea though I felt I had changed a lot. I experienced many new things and I generally felt as though I had out grown a lot of my friends back home that were still doing the same-old things. None kept in touch with me very well while I was away. I had sent emails every month or so with photos, but I would only get a short reply.

When I went back to Canada for a bit I hooked up with an old friend and things just weren't the same. Our personalities didn't match anymore =\ Oh well... I still email with a couple of friends every few months but for the most part, coming to Korea has wiped the slate clean for me.

Not bad starting over though.

[Danielos]

I use internet telephony so it is extremely cheap to phone my parents in Canada. I think it costs me 2 US cents a minute. I phone them twice a week. It is nice to keep in close contact with them.

[Imbroglio]

There's no place like home....There's no place like home.

----Dorothy (The Wizard of Oz)

[TommyPickles]

I find that because I'm always on MSN these days, I don't have the patience to send proper emails anymore. I too caught the bug of no longer writing to notorious non-repliers, in particular my lazy Korean friends who I met when they were on exchange back at my uni in Australia.

I found that after about one month when they went back to their home country of Korea, they couldn't give a rats ass about sending an email, probably because of the effort it requires to write in English. I thought MSN was my saviour, but now I get the 'oh I have an appointment, gtg' five minutes into every conversation. Maybe trying to chat with them everyday was excessive but it was my attempt to keep up the friendship. It's too easy to be complacent but alas, such is life.