Korean Job Discussion Forums

lulu144 · Joined: 31 Aug 2006 Location: Gwangju!

So I've been here for 3 months... and I'm starting to find that emails and phone calls from friends back home
are becoming less frequent. I'm still writing and callin them the same amount. Am I asking too much if I want a response for an email from people who are my 'friends"? I think not. I know everyone's life goes on and such...... but it this some sort of message saying.... stop emailing me all together or until I get back? Should I just forget about them all together>??

hmmm.......

krats1976 · Joined: 14 May 2003

Dunno... everyone's different, I guess. I'm bad at keeping in touch, so my friends email me about as frequently as I email them... like every 2-4 months. Laughing

Guess it's sort of the "out of sight, out of mind" issue.

Of course, the longer I'm here, the less I have in common with folks back home, so that might also be part of the problem.

RACETRAITOR · Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul, South Korea

People lose interest in hearing about Korea every time they talk to you. Just write a weblog and give them an excuse to not always ask you questions about what's going on.

nobrand · Joined: 17 Jul 2006

It's something that will happen all your life if you move around. Select friends will keep up with you well, while others were good friends because your lives overlapped. There's really no excuse for the lack of communication when there is email. But I often get the "I don't know how to call Korea" excuse about the calling though. If someone isn't putting a lot of effort into a friendship, I adjust accordingly. Besides, you will meet friends here and they are also important for your life in Korea.

It is true that people back home really don't want to hear about Korea, it doesn't exist to them really. I avoid talking about it too much. I just think of this as an experience for me and those I meet here.

My advice is to just accept this as a new configuration for friendships back home! Smile

Lizara · Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Location: Seoul

First year I kept in pretty regular contact with my better friends back home. Since then... not so much. After I came back for Round Two they seem to have given up on me, and a lot of them have just moved on to other places and I'm sure they don't really ever think about me anymore. Most of the people I'm especially close to talk to me on MSN and read my livejournal.

Qinella · Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Location: the crib

Through all the years, I have only one friend now that I keep in regular contact with.

After college, I found that a lot of my 'friends' were just drug buddies. When I stopped doing ecstasy or whatever, I never heard from them. I think a lot of people have the same things, even if you never got amped up. Drinking buddies, movie buddies, eating out buddies, whatever.. buddies are not friends.

Maybe your friends aren't truly friends.

Satori · Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: Above it all

I had about 4 really close friends who just stopped contacting me after a while. I would email them once every two months, and they would reply, but never initiate. One day I decided to conduct an experiment, to not contact them and see how long it took them to notice I was not in thier life and for them to contact me. None of them ever did.

Yo!Chingo · Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Location: Seoul Korea

They've got their lives and you've got yours. Friends will never lose all importance, but when you move away it's kinda like outta sight, outta mind. They'll email once in a while, but they're not going to want to talk with you every day or even every week. Move on, have a good time, and make new friends, so then when you see them again, make them wish they'de kept in closer touch with you you party animal you! Wink

SeoulShakin · Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Location: Seoul

This is a pretty common event actually. The same thing happened to me and I was quite upset about it at first, because I was always sending emails home. I talked to a friend of mine who was in Poland for a year and she said the same thing happened to her.

Are you sending out individual emails, or mass ones to all of your friends at once?

This was my problem. I was sending out big mass emails to everyone at home, and only got a few replies.

When you send out a mass email, people DO read them, but since they are often busy and have their own lives, they assume other people will reply and you'll be ok. As soon as I started to send individual emails to people, the differences were amazing.

Try that and see if it helps Smile

candide · Joined: 03 Oct 2006

Yeah, besides my parents, I don't keep in touch with family or friends not in Korea. Welcome to being an adult I guess.

princess · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: soul of Asia

Yes, welcome to adult life. I met a Korean girl who said her best friend was sooooooo busy, they didn't see each other for 2 months...and they were both in Seoul.

Ody · Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Location: over here

Boodleheimer · Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 6:22 pm Post subject:

i've lived abroad since i graduated uni (about 5 1/2 years ago). some people i'll email once a month. some people less. i call more people now because of Skype and its free calls. or chat with gmail. but when i go back and visit, i schedule time for everyone-- seeing people is still the best.

Satori · Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: Above it all

flotsam · Joined: 28 Mar 2006

God I'm sick of people accusing others of being socks and trolls. Jeezus.

But I am glad someone finally announced to the world princess is a sock: there's one that had everybody fooled. We better keep on our toes, training for the day when we don't have such a piercing superhero watching over us.

Phew.