Finding Friendship in a Strange Land

By Yumin Kim

This book is mainly about communication between others and me. Each chapter consists of one or more types of communication - spoken, written, or even unspoken, through my art - that influenced me or made me curious to learn about in more depth. Some of them include moments when I doubted myself or memories of cherished times gone by.  Some chapters include research I did about things that I love, such as art and food. One of the chapters contains my view of the person I love and one concerns the regret I have about a certain person. Many of the relationships that I have had with my family and friends are also shown in this book, since they directly concern how we communicated with each other.
I hope you will agree that communication makes us fully human.  Being alive is a great privilege and a gift, made all the more precious by the ability to convey the most meaningful things in my life, that which touches me deeply, to my family, my friends and teachers, and to anyone else I might meet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667801155

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 by YUMIN KIM

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-66780-115-5

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Home is Where the Feet Are:

Finding Friendship in a Strange Land

2. Appearance and Reality

3. Communicating Beyond Words:

The Healing Power of Art

4. Bridging the Gap, East and West:

Communication Styles in Korea and the U.S.

5. Walking a Mile in Another’s Shoes:

My Mom’s Communication Style

6. BTS:

Communicating Cultural Change Worldwide with Music

7. A Reward You Can Never Expect

8. In theSilence of Visual Communication,

Great Things are Said

9. Unpleasant Joy:

A Korean Food Odyssey

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

After coming to the US, I suddenly discovered I had more than enough time available to do whatever I liked. I was still adjusting to the environment and the culture. At first, I didn’t have the courage to meet new people and make new friendships. I stayed in my room, thinking about all kinds of things, by myself. During that time, I also watched a lot of YouTube videos and read articles about people’s experiences all over the world. I thought that one day I could make a blog about my time here or write diary-like articles and upload them online. But although I had many good ideas, I lacked the motivation to put effort into actually making them happen. 

One day, one of the teachers I know suggested I should write a book about myself. At first I thought that there was no way I was going to do that, but somehow the idea stuck with me and started to appeal to me.  I began to imagine the finished product, with my name on the cover, and I must admit it delighted me. At the time my teacher brought up this subject, I knew I wanted to keep some kind of record about what I was experiencing. I had read somewhere and heard it said that being a teenager is unique for its challenges and opportunities, a time in life that never comes again.  I began to think I should embrace my teenage years in a new way, revealing more about what it was like to go to school and be a student.

Now I am 19.  It’s a really strange age.  Am I a child or an adult?  Being a high school student makes it harder to think of myself in one category or the other. I feel as if I am             between two worlds. I’m still a student, but I’m on the cusp of being an independent person, ready to be a member of the society at large. No one sees me quite as a child anymore, but at the same time, few would consider me a fully-fledged adult. I am still dependent upon others in a way that a child normally is, yet I am ready to take the next step into independence and adulthood.  Some students my age have already embarked on a new phase of their lives at universities.  But I’m still in high school. Because of that, I wanted to express who I am now. The chance to write a book would also give me the opportunity to clarify my thinking as I wrote. 

My goal in writing this book was to reveal who I was and who I am as a teenager, as accurately as possible. I didn’t want to write a book of fiction.  I was willing to write about things that weren’t flattering, because it seemed pointless to make things up.  I was determined to paint a true picture of myself, without hiding anything. I would take the opportunity to be honest, with no need to cover up my feelings for any reason. I wanted to show exactly what I felt and went through during a singular time of self-discovery, in the hope that it would resonate with a reader’s own experience and be useful. I also knew that my writing would allow people who knew me to understand me better, while those who didn’t would still learn new things, as I did, from my stories, things that might make them think about life in a different way. The main point I always kept in mind was to be honest about what I wrote. 

          As an ordinary teenager who was born and raised in South Korea, I engaged in many activities requiring me to communicate with others. I played violin for three years, and although it seems as if playing violin is a one-person task, I had to talk to the teacher and other students constantly as we all practiced for a yearly school presentation. After quitting violin, I joined an afterschool sports club, where elementary school children get together and play different games every week. In that club, I struggled to make friends with a number of different children at once. I was uncomfortable being there. Later, I went to an art studio, where children could draw or make whatever they wanted. Even though I had to communicate with the teachers, creating artwork was easier than joining a sports club.  As I was the only one working on my project and the teachers were just there to help me, I didn’t feel the same pressure to relate to other students and make a lot of friends at the same time. I felt much better getting to know just a few of them slowly, showing them aspects of my personality through my art that they wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I realized that forming close relationships was hard for me, even though I was young, when you are supposed to be able to do that more easily. 

          Ever since I realized that getting to know someone slowly felt better than trying to make friends with a lot of different students quickly, I felt more at ease with my surroundings. I was always shy about meeting and talking with new people. Revealing my feelings and thoughts was hard.  I was usually nervous when I got the opportunity to express myself.

          Communicating with people required a lot of effort and courage, but once I began doing it, it got easier, and by making the effort, I managed to gain some of my best friends.  I thought I could continue with my way of making connections without any real problem, until I decided to study abroad. Until then, I never felt overwhelmed by any big challenges in my life. I was raised in the same town and went to the same schools as other students with whom I was familiar.

          However, after deciding to come to the United States, which is on the other side of the world, everything changed. I was in a new environment with new people. Communication became even more important.  While I struggled at first, as anybody in a new country would, my communication skills and confidence grew.  Of course, I’m not a perfect speaker or writer of English, but compared with what I knew when I first arrived, I’ve learned a lot.  I made communication a priority for me. That is why I wanted to write about it for this book. As I made more of an effort to put into words my many observations about myself and my past, other people, and my artwork, I gained great insight into my own mind and heart, my own strengths and weaknesses.  I found that the weaknesses always seemed to concern the fear of not doing something well enough (such as not being able to make friends easily) and being judged too harshly for my faults.  If I could forgive myself more and just accept that all the difficulties I had were really learning experiences in disguise, then I felt more at peace.  That wasn’t always easy to do, but it became a good habit for me.

This book is mainly about communication between others and me. Each chapter consists of one or more types of communication - spoken, written, or even unspoken, through my art - that influenced me or made me curious to learn about in more depth. Some of them include moments when I doubted myself or memories of cherished times gone by.  Some chapters include research I did about things that I love, such as art and food. One of the chapters contains my view of the person I love and one concerns the regret I have about a certain person. Many of the relationships that I have had with my family and friends are also shown in this book, since they directly concern how we communicated with each other.

I hope you will agree that communication makes us fully human.  Being alive is a great privilege and a gift, made all the more precious by