Il Hyung (Kevin) Jung
2012-10-17
Monolog for FRO
I like adventures. Since I was young, I liked to go to new places, meet new people and even play adventurous games. Lol
My adventurous life starts at the age of 6. I flew from Korea to America by myself to come and stayed at my cousin’s house at Texas. The main reason of going to my cousin’s house was to study English and familiarize with English speaking people. I don’t remember much from what I did at 6, but one thing I remember is that I made a girlfriend within 2 months.
After short trip to America, I came back to Korea and stayed with my parents. But because both of them worked until late night, only thing left for me to do was to hang out with friends, and things like all the young kids do. Except, that I started playing computer game at the age of 7.
At the age of 10, I came back to America for a year, because of my dad’s work. During the one year period, my family traveled all the states in America except for 4; that’s a lot of travelling. Also, we went to few cities in Canada and Mexico. I’ve seen and experienced a lot of things, things like 6 feet high snow at Rockies, Universal Studio at Florida, Summer on December at Texas, Grand Canyon at Arizona, Yellowstone at Wyoming, delicious seafood restaurant at New Orleans and of course Manhattan at New York. Basically, for every holidays, vacations and even on some weekends, we would travel to places. Also, at that time, there were no fancy thing like navigator; we used triple A’s maps to travel.
When I came back to Korea after dad’s one year term, I couldn’t get used to Korean education. It was harsh, exhausting and pointless. I was not the type of person who learns from computer input-like education, if you know what that means.
3 years later, I decided to go to New Zealand to study more English, get out of Korean Education and enjoy my life. However, going to New Zealand wasn’t an easy transition because I went to New Zealand by myself without knowing anyone. It felt like starting a new game without having any knowledge of it. But by the end of 3 years, I knew everyone in school and almost every Korean in my city, Tauranga.
After 3 years in New Zealand, my family had to move to America, again, for my dad’s work. Since there was no point in me staying at New Zealand, I had to come with them.
School in America was so much more fucking hard, compared to New Zealand. It’s because in New Zealand, almost half of the high school students wanted to own a farm and become a farmer when they graduate. Not the same story in America. As soon as I came, grades were harder to get, and it mattered. SAT… itself was not that bad, but the tutoring I had to get, to get a good score…
It wasn’t that bad through high school though. Since I had already experienced something like starting a new game without knowing what it is, I adopted pretty well. Within first 4 months, I made friends with almost every Korean and lots of kids in my classes. At around 4 months, I even made my own rock band.
As of now, I am a Baruch student and I don’t know much about it. But until now, I like where I am, except for the fact that I have 1 and half hour commute from Bergan County, New Jersey.
The personality that I formed, over the years of travelling and meeting new people, is that I can adopt to any environment very fast, but that itself would not be good without enjoying where I am at the moment of wherever I am. I enjoy every part of my life, along with not fearing anything around me. At times of hardness, I think of things that make me happy. For example, I hate the 1 and half our commute, but I enjoy the 3 day weekend.
I also tend to forget when and how others harm me? In another words, I tend to forgive things really easy. It is because I know nothing’s going to be done and/or help me in the future, if I scream or be angry at someone.
What is life? Job? Making lots of money? Family? Popularity?
I truly believe that life is enjoying what you are doing at the moment you are at.
