What it's like to leave everything I've ever known

Some of you might have received a text, others of you might have seen my post on Facebook, but one way or another the word is out. For those of you that might not have heard, last week I accepted a job at DYB Choisun Institute in Seoul, South Korea. I signed a year-long contract to work six hours a day, six days a week, teaching the English language to elementary and middle school children.

Initially, I was to begin employment on November 29 but since getting a visa takes roughly three weeks, and I will need a day or two at least to get moved into my new apartment, the school is being flexible with my starting date.

The job, however, is not what I intended to write about since I really have nothing to say about it yet. The purpose of this post is to express the mixture of emotions which I have trouble expressing in real life. For some reason, I can't fully show my family and friends the excitement, the fear, the relief, or the sadness I feel about leaving my home and moving to the other side of the world. These are the things I feel every night before bed but that can't be verbalized when someone asks me how I feel about moving.

It has been a dream of mine ever since I can remember but now that it is approaching, it doesn't feel like I thought it would. I have spent two decades in Kalamazoo and the longest that I have been away was the three months I lived in Los Angeles last summer. Kalamazoo is my family and friends, my favorite restaurant and coffeeshop, my childhood treehouse and the road I take to school. Nine out of ten memories are in Kalamazoo. It is all so familiar, which I love and hate at the same time.

I won't say that it is my time to get out of here, just that it is too late not to. And somehow that is what is comforting. Since I have no idea what to be excited for or afraid of, the only thing I can do now is go and see for myself. The only thing that I do know right now is that Kalamazoo is full of good people who will be missed.

Introductory note

Well here it is, my humble attempt to establish myself in the blogosphere. Although I have been toying with the idea of starting one for some time now, I admit that I have no clear intentions for it other than a medium for whatever insights I might think are worth sharing. In spite of this disclaimer, I imagine that many posts will revolve around my experiences teaching English in South Korea (an adventure which will hopefully begin within the next month or two), my qualms with modern society, and/or my fascination with history and philosophy. To anyone who might find interest in my opinions on these topics, I invite you to follow me on what I hope is a unique collection of one man's experiences.

As I mentioned above, creating a blog has been a goal of mine for the past few months. More than once, I sat down with the intention of starting one only to then get stuck on the first step: coming up with a name. Finally, I landed on "Disco Vivendo," which is Latin for "I learn by living." If you didn't study Latin in school, you might not care that "Vivendo" is in the ablative form and are probably more surprised that "Disco" predates the synthesizer by about two-thousand years; if you did study Latin, you might argue that I should have used the present participle "Vivens" instead. To this hypothetical, gerund-hating snob I would say get over yourself, no one cares about the foundations of grammar besides you and me... and you are hypothetical.

More to the point, and what I assume most readers will be concerned with, is the English translation: I learn by living. I finally decided on this because it is probably one of the most fundamental and tautological ideas I could come up with. To put it another way, it's impossible to learn if you aren't living.

To sum it all up, I learn by living and this blog will be a reflection on whatever real-life experiences I may have learned from.