In South Korea, it’s common for people of all ages to hang out on the floors, which are usually heated.
The people don’t hug each other unless they’re extremely close; most times, they bow.
And you never address someone older than you by their first name.
English teacher Daniel Dubois should know- he lived in the beautiful country for eight years.
“I was kind of in a rut after college. I was at a point in my life where I was
remarkably bored living in Massachusetts,” Dubois said. “I was open to anything. I would eat anything, go anywhere, try anything.”
Dubois had never really considered traveling internationally for himself until his sister spent six months in Uganda, and came back with lots of pictures and stories.
“After she did it, the gates were open and I had to give it a shot. I didn’t even know you could travel internationally,” Dubois said. “I knew, logically, that it was a thing that you could get on a plane and go somewhere, but it took
knowing someone who actually did it to give me permission to do it. There’s a difference between knowing something and really knowing something.”
With a graduate degree in literature and no idea what do with it, Dubois found himself in a dead-end job he didn’t like. Eventually, he heard about someone whose daughter was teaching English overseas, which sparked Dubois’ interest.
“I did some research and eventually settled on Prague and the Czech Republic. I lived and taught in Prague for a little under a year, and barely made ends meet,” Dubois said. “It’s cheap living in Prague and it’s beautiful, but I wasn’t really saving or anything like that. A fellow colleague told me, ‘Hey, if you want to make good money, give Asia a try.’”
Countries like China, South Korea and Taiwan pay a lot better than European teaching jobs, so Dubois moved again, this time to Korea. He planned to stay for a year and teach in the public school system, and he loved the people, the culture and the scenery.
“I feel like a lot of people kind of neglect it. They visit China and they visit Japan, but people don’t really give a second thought to Korea a lot of the time. That’s changing with K-pop and Korean dramas and stuff, though,” Dubois said. “It’s a remarkably beautiful country with amazing food and amazing people.”
Dubois hardly did any research before the move, because he liked the mystery. He went over there not knowing anything, and let the country organically reveal itself to him.
“One of the best responses I got from someone who traveled internationally
was my cousin Lindsay. I asked why she likes traveling and she said, ‘I like being uncomfortable,’” Dubois said. “It’s a strange answer, but it is kind of cool being out of your element, especially when you’re so safe and everything’s so predictable. To travel, you need to be okay with being uncomfortable sometimes.”
A few months after moving to Korea, some fellow colleagues and Dubois had planned to take an end-of-year trip to Jeju, often called the “Hawaii” of Korea. The trip ended up being canceled due to a typhoon, so Dubois went back by himself a few months later.
“I went down to Busan, the second largest city in Korea, and I took a 12-hour ferry ride over to Jeju,” Dubois said. “It was weird, because I was looking for a guesthouse and there was only one on my travel website, and it was called the Spring Flower guesthouse. The woman who ran the place was named Spring Flower. “
Spring Flower liked to have nightly gatherings of all the guesthouse residents, and one night, Dubois was playing Jenga with strangers when somebody sat down at the table.
“I didn’t really know Hyekyung that well, but I was fascinated by her when I first met her, though she didn’t like me originally,” Dubois said. “She had these big eyes; she always seemed so interested in whatever anybody was saying to her. She was such a curious person, and remarkably intelligent. We got married in 2013.”
Unlike Dubois, his wife’s travel website had displayed hundreds of available
guesthouses. She chose the Spring Flower because the cover picture of Spring Flower and her husband made it seem safe. Dubois often thinks about the circumstances that brought them together.
“Had that typhoon not happened, I would have gone with the teachers on that trip, I would have marked it off my list of places to visit, and I probably would not have gone back,” Dubois said. “I think about all these variables; I think about the typhoon, the website where I found my guesthouse- if any of these things had been different, I would never have met Hyekyung.”
Luckily, Hyekyung’s English is good, which lessened the language barrier between them. Dubois eventually achieved his goal of traveling through Europe, Hyekyung by his side.
“We traveled for 10 weeks through Europe via train, about a year after meeting,” Dubois said. “My plan had just been to finance the trip through Europe, but because of her, I stayed another seven years. It just goes to show that life has different plans.”
In 2015, they welcomed their son, Jonas. In his marriage, Dubois has had to learn the struggles of an international relationship.
“I’m all about diversity, but international relationships are really tough, especially when there’s a kid involved. Somebody’s getting jilted,” Dubois said. “Either her parents or mine are not going to get to see the grandkid as much, because you have a pick a country, and South Korea’s on the other side of the world. She misses her mom a lot.”
By the end of his time in Korea, Dubois wasn’t feeling fulfilled career-wise. As much as he loved the country, he was ready to put his literature degree to use.
“I always wanted to talk to students about books and writing and stuff like that, and that’s not what I was teaching in Korea,” Dubois said. “There was a need for language proficiency, so people wanted to learn how to speak English. That was fun too, but ultimately I’d much rather do literary studies and stuff like that.”
Instead of moving back to Massachusetts, Dubois went straight to Texas, where he stayed in Dallas with distant relatives for six months, while he saved money and house-hunted. Like when he first went to Korea, he adapted quickly to being back in America.
“People told me everything would be so weird going back to America, and
it really wasn’t. People are people, no matter where you go,” Dubois said. “Yeah, we do things differently, but houses are houses, and there are certain staples that you see everywhere. The hardest part was being away from my wife and son.”
Recalling a sign in the window of a Korean restaurant that read, “The wise man can find adventure where he stands,” Dubois knows that there is beauty to be found no matter where you are.
“If you’ve got the right mind, you can find beauty anywhere you go. Ultimately, travel isn’t about going anywhere; it’s about perception,” Dubois said. “It’s an illusion to believe that beauty is out there somewhere, like Norway or India. It’s right between your two ears, all the time.”