things do change
on this day six years ago, i was at my old home - the one that before arriving there was just a distant memory, still unused to the fact that i was now surrounded by actual koreans who speak korean. a few days ago it had been a normal day at my international school, learning english and math and chinese, dreading chinese studies - where me, a CAL student, would be sitting around CFL students in a class done in chinese - as well as that one bully, and other very normal year 3 stuff. and now i was about to start a new life and soon move to a new home to enroll in first grade of a korean public school. i was delighted to get my new phone and was messing around with its features, i played with my brother using super wings toys, and i was disappointed at how easy english workbooks in korea were. i did not know how to take a shower, just learned how to brush my teeth, and liked to recite a certain chinese poem at night.1
fast forward six years, covid comes and goes, well tbh that was such a major event that i do not have anything else to top that. it was fun as a third grader nerding out on covid policies in korea. our place has been completely remodeled, and my room has changed three times, all thanks to my dad's hard work. now i am sitting on a desk that i have had since moving into this place but has changed a lot. i am now familar with devices compared to my 2020 self, i know what facebook and instagram are and choose not to use them. (well my mom would not let me in the first place) devices are a huge part of my life, i am typing on a bluetooth keyboard and looking at my words on a eink screen right now, which shows how i use devices both for studying and hobbying (sometimes i am more dependent on devices for studying, but now i use my notebook mainly and use devices for researching things i don't know. also yes i know 'hobby' is not a verb and should not get a '-ing' but who cares, 'studying' and 'hobbying' rhymes) and also care about my health when using devices. i have understood that exercise is important and photosynthesize every weekend. i have gone through being trained by my friends to be good at 지탈 in the playground and have had ramen together with my friends. i now have experience with spending my own money, and most programs i sign up for or forms i have to fill in are done by me and not my mom. i try to put my future into consideration, i have a high school i want to go, and i have experienced what 2020 ava has always dreaded: staying in hakwon after 10pm. sometimes i study past 11pm, i still sleep before 11:30pm cuz i do not want to be sleepy during the day, but i study because i feel like it, not cuz i'm forced. and i feel like those days are my favorite. 2020 ava had passion in math and learning things in general, i had lost my passion in math and have been regaining it. i have started to record my thoughts and share them with people, even talk to internet beings. i have lost the ability to speak chinese, but i have learned a new useless language. my accent, vocabulary, grammar, and code switching has all changed. in korean, i still speak somewhere between my parents' regional dialect and the standard variety, except i have picked up more dialects and loanwords. my english accent has changed from british to american, and in 2025 i have incorporated what i think is called northern cities vowel shift and canadian raising. but idk about those.
i thought while all this time has passed, i was just being lazy and didn't really change. but i did.
it always sounds like i'm a foreigner who moved to korea, but nope i was born in korea, my family has totally korean blood, my mother tongue is korean, my family is like an average korean family except i moved to china at a very young age therefore i barely remembered korea↩