I think that in coming home, I might experience a bit of reverse culture shock. I feel that I have grown a lot as a person and as a teacher. One thing that will be interesting to readjust to will be eating all of my meals with a fork instead chopsticks and a spoon. I’m not overly concerned about reverse culture shock as I have maintained connections with my family and friends back home but I will have to wait and see how or if reverse culture shock will really affect me and to what degree. I’m hoping that this blog as well as the reflections that I kept during my teaching will support me in both sharing my experiences and transitioning back into my home culture. I also took many pictures to document my daily life so that I can share this experience with both my family and my friends.
In order to keep my study abroad experience as a key factor in my life, I hope to continue to foster the relationships that I have developed here both in professional relationships I have made in the school and the more personal relationships that I have maintained with family of my friends in the United States. I also hope that in the next 5-10 years I can return to Korea and teach again. There are many programs to facilitate this within Korea. I think that it would be a great way to continue to grow as both an educator and as a person. I also hope to continue to develop my Korean language skill. I am able to read Hangul (written Korean) and I can understand a small amount of what I read. I can also understand more that is said to me particularly in regards to food but I am not particularly skilled at speaking or writing Korean. My productive skills are lacking but I would hope that by the time that I might return to Korea my skills would improve a bit! I also plan to find ways to incorporate what I have learned particularly about English language learners in my school into my own future classroom and to use that knowledge to better my skill as a teacher.