{"id":1243,"date":"2019-03-21T02:14:14","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T02:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/?p=1243"},"modified":"2019-06-18T07:34:08","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T07:34:08","slug":"heart-and-seoul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/?p=1243","title":{"rendered":"Heart and Seoul"},"content":{"rendered":"

I won\u2019t lie. It\u2019s been a rough week. I totally underestimated the emotional impact of leaving my kids and those delicious grand babies. Expatriating has been much harder than I anticipated. No one is more surprised by this than I – except maybe (poor) Mack.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are the strongest person I know. What\u2019s going on?\u201d He questioned, when I refused to get out of bed on Friday (which, coincidentally, was my 64th birthday. That doesn\u2019t take a rocket scientist). He didn\u2019t understand the change, after 44 years of pretty stoic behavior in sometimes difficult situations. I didn\u2019t understand it either.<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s how every morning of Week #1 in Seoul went:
\nWake up.
\nCommence a crying jag.
\nThrow a hissy fit.
\nThreaten to call a taxi to take me to the airport to return to my Bandido-infested apartment in Midlothian.
\nRemember that I\u2019m the one who got this whole thing started.
\nStraighten up.
\nFly right.
\nGo exploring.
\nFeel better.
\nStart over with the sequence the next day.<\/p>\n

I am ashamed of this. I pride myself on being pretty even-keeled and emotionless (not a healthy thing, I know). I hesitated to write about my failings as an explorer\/adventurer, because really, who wants to read about a sniveling baby?<\/p>\n

But yesterday, when I was finally beginning to feel like myself again, I asked Mack what he thought about me coming clean. I thought he made a good point when he said that it was definitely more helpful to someone who might be considering a change, to know that it\u2019s not all fun and games; that there are emotional hills and valleys (what Mel has described as \u201cwaves\u201d as he commences his journey to NYC).<\/p>\n

Yesterday was a turning point for me. I know that there will be other \u201cvalley\u201d days, but I began to have fun and get excited about this opportunity again. Maybe it was jet lag. Maybe it was the birthday:( Or maybe that\u2019s just how it is when you pack up and leave your life (even if it was a choice).<\/p>\n

So, that\u2019s all the belly-aching. Onward and upward from now on. It really will be an adventure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I won\u2019t lie. It\u2019s been a rough week. I totally underestimated the emotional impact of leaving my kids and those delicious grand babies. Expatriating has been much harder than I anticipated. No one is more surprised by this than I – except maybe (poor) Mack. \u201cYou are the strongest person<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1695,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions\/1695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}