If you find yourself living in, say, China, and find yourself becoming acclimatized to how difficult day-to-day life can be, or the unavailability of fairly normal products of all kinds, you might want to consider moving to Seoul. I've pointed to the jug of maple syrup at the corner grocery down the road, because it shows that entrepreneurial impulse commonly seen in my old city - it's just that your reward for investing your income is a waffle topping, not dried silkworms/sea cucumbers/etc.
Purists, though, would say that you aren't scoring any 'traveller' points by living somewhere where you can usually get things done in a blend of English and the local parlance; they're right, but my desire to beat my head against pointless walls declined with each hundredth time I felt like jumping into the clearly radioactive river of Zibo. So to purists I say: enjoy your days brutally struggling to get drinkable water in your house - I'll be having an IPA as I head to a baseball game.
Seoul is westernized (and you'd see more of this if I hadn't forgotten my camera cable...off to the electronics market again for me I guess), but still plenty exotic for somebody from small-town Vancouver Island. I don't need to be constantly frustrated to do things outside of the apartment in Asia, it turns out...I just need a couple thousand Won to rub together. It's great.
The environment, both physical and emotional, is immeasurably better here than in my old city. Yesterday I hiked (pictures forthcoming) up a small mountain/big hill right in the middle of Seoul that was the equal of any fancy tourist mountain in China, in my estimation, and it cost nothing. No long bus ride, no waiting in lines, no jet fuel..just a desire to get out for a stroll to see the native plants and ACTUAL ANIMALS that exist right in the middle of a city of millions. Namsan isn't even considered to be the 'best' of the local 'guardian mountains' for walking around in, to say nothing of the mountainous country as a whole.
The school clearly has resources to burn, my classes are small, and I've been here for more than a week without any crippling GI issues. It could be worse - in fact, it has been wildly worse in every measurable way. At the start of this school year I'm happier than I was at any point in my two-year internship at Annoyance Inc.
I'm not going to save as much money, or score as many 'exotic points' amongst the hipster-travellers, but at least I can take the clean/punctual subway to any of the temples/palaces without seeing an old man shoot a snot rocket on the seat next to him. That's worth something.
