Despite having been born and raised in Canada, I have never called this country home. Home is my mother’s laugh, it is my father singing the lyrics to a song I don’t know as if his voice, off beat and out of tune, will somehow jar my memory. It is my inheritance; a large Italian nose and a penchant for classic rock and roll. I only need to look in the mirror or turn on the radio, and I am there. I am home, even when home is technically 6,583 miles away.

Which, in two months time, it will be.

See, four years ago I came to the realization that my life would not be lived here in Canada but in South Korea. A country whose history embodies what it means to be resilient, whose people have been bent but never broken, and whose culture is built on the notion that every individual is connected, as if we are all branches belonging to the same family tree. But when you are eighteen every dream is dubbed a phase, a passing fancy that no one believes will amount to anything more than an idea.

This is more than an idea.

This is reality, and it is scary and nerve-racking, and potentially a huge mistake. But if it is it will be the best one that I have ever made, because you cannot live bubble-wrapped in guarantees, and I refuse to be confined to something as mundane as a comfort zone.

This is my life…and it starts in

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