I have been so lucky to live out COVID 2020 from the comfort and safe haven that is South Korea. Sadly, while I get to live my day to day life comfortably and with minimal interruptions to my life before COVID, there is one huge inconvenience for me. I cannot travel to the United States to visit my family. Well, I could, but with the two week quarantine in place upon arriving back to Korea, I would be asking for about a month off. It’s too long to go without working. I am so family-oriented though! Still, I love my life and teaching job in Korea, so I can’t just up and move back due to missing family. Thus, I have found that these three ways of staying connected to family have really helped me feel a lot better. I’m happy to share these ideas with you.
Simply Calling Often
Perhaps this seems so underwhelming, but even prior to COVID, I would call my family once a day! The call durations would range from a quick five minute voice call, to check in and hear how everyone is doing, to a three hour video call of my sister and I putting on a cooking show for each other. I had the habit prior and I have valued those calls now more than ever.
Sending Care-Packages/Gifts
Sending snacks and other goodies back and forth is a lot of fun. Actually, prior to COVID, I didn’t do this. I would visit the United States and just take things then. Now, I find it exciting to receive random goods from my family and they feel the same way about receiving things from me, too. For some non-Korean product, then I just go on Amazon and buy gifts for special occasions.
Never Missing A Movie Night
Prior to moving to Korea, my family had a little tradition of spending one day of the weekend together. Either we would go out to eat or eat at home together, but the night would always end with a movie. Now, I make the time to have Zoom movie nights with my family. They pick the movie, we start a Zoom meeting, share-screen, share computer audio and ta-da movie nights have been revived! I just love that I can do this.
We live in a technology and fast-shipping era that we need to utilize to our advantage to stay connected! It allows us to be adventurous and live full lives exploring the world, without sacrificing the connection we have with our loved ones.
Giselle Moreno is from California, USA where she attended the University of California, Riverside. While a student, she always worked with international students and she decided to teach English abroad upon graduating during her third year of university. It was through the experiences of being an English tutor for international students that she felt really fulfilled. She found it particularly easy to get along with Korean students which is why she decided to pursue a teaching opportunity in Korea. She even attended Yonsei University in Seoul for a semester as a study abroad student and fell in love with the city. She is currently working at ChungDahm Learning’s April Daechi branch located in Gangnam, Seoul.