14

08/24/2022 Amsterdam

I just went through everything again. Phew, the translation from English to German back to English sure leaves something to be desired in a couple of places. The interim title so far had still been “Organized Chaos”, but it really didn’t sum everything up. When I finally figured out what was what concerning the whole thing, on my last flight, the answer to the title suddenly presented itself. The proof had been there all along. Wink wink.

I learned a hard lesson from my time in Jakarta about the nature and true intentions of some people. To this day, I have been able to make use of it in my everyday life. Sure, it scared away the childhood naivety in me, yet I don’t see it as a real loss. After all of this, I have not kept in contact with either Tom or Caleb. Only Aron had left a positive impression. He even visited me once in Seoul during my studies in Korea. He was living in Hong Kong at the time, so the trip was not too long. We spent a nice week together.

It’s not as if I haven’t experienced situations a few times again, where men turned out to be completely unfit to roam this earth, after my lesson in Jakarta. But the time spent there sort of prepared me for all of that. It was truly the first time I was really thrown out of my comfort zone and had to deal with the seriousness of life. The first time, I properly felt like a fool and promised myself to be more careful from here on out. That might sound kinda absurd, I have to admit, but at 18 you really don’t know very much. So I’m cutting myself some slack.

In other words, it was the first time I had to ask my inner child to sit down so that my adult self could take control. At that time, there was simply no room to judge the situation by a child’s perception. In a way, I had to lose myself to really be clear about whether Korea was the right choice for me. Now that I’ve been through it all, I can confidently say that it was absolutely the right choice for me. I have no regrets and have been able to take away an infinite amount of new things learned. Academic things and life things.

Of course, the whole ordeal was not without significant turbulence here and there. Nevertheless, I safely arrived at my final destination.

I somehow just about got my act together during those two weeks. Who knows what troubles I might’ve run into in Korea if I hadn’t learned what I did then. But it quickly became apparent that this would, of course, be just the beginning.

The End?