Every time I get on the Green Line at Northeastern University, I think about Korea.
It sounds strange, considering that Seoul’s subway system is thousands of miles away from Huntington Avenue. However, during my Dialogue of Civilizations in South Korea, I spent countless hours riding Line 2, Seoul’s Green Line. At first, navigating it through NAVER Maps — Korea’s version of Google Maps — felt like a challenge. Eventually, it became second nature.
Somewhere during my month abroad, the transportation system stopped being something I was trying to figure out and became part of my daily life.
And that is how Korea gradually became a second home. It happened through the hum of the Myeongdong Night Market and the colorful shelves of makeup and skincare at Olive Young stores that were practically a street apart from each other. It happened over shared bowls of yogurt and bingsu with friends who started as strangers and eventually became family.
Before my Dialogue, I already loved Korean culture. I had learned some important phrases to help me get around and was familiar with many of the cultural norms. But knowing about a culture and actually living within its rhythm are two entirely different things.
I knew Korean food. Then, I developed a list of my favorite restaurants. I knew about the subway system. Then, I knew how to navigate it. I knew Seoul was a huge city. Then, I started recognizing pieces of it.
The things that made Korea special were the things I didn’t plan to see. They were the moments when the city stopped feeling like a destination and started feeling like somewhere I belonged.
A 10-minute walk from the tourist-filled Myeongdong area was a stretch lined with office buildings. At lunchtime, office workers poured out of their cubicles and into small restaurants, looking for a quick meal before returning to their desks. Some of these restaurants were the kinds of places that had been serving the same comforting dishes for years.
While tourists filled the streets of Myeongdong, snapping pictures, dining at the most popular restaurants and shopping for Korean goods, the office workers were simply living through another Thursday.
That distinction stayed with me. I was experiencing Korea as something new and exciting, but at the same time, I was catching little glimpses of ordinary life unfolding around me. People were commuting. Going to lunch. Meeting friends. Taking the subway home. I was sondering: realizing that everyone I passed was the main character of a story I’d probably never get to hear.
And slowly, I started doing these things too.
For the first week or two, everything demanded my attention. I was constantly figuring something out, whether it was a subway route, a new food, a Korean phrase or simply where to go next.
Eventually, I grew familiar with my surroundings and way of life. The same shift happened with the people around me.
At the beginning of the Dialogue, we were a group of Northeastern students who happened to be spending a month in Korea together. We were still getting to know one another, discovering each other’s personalities while learning to navigate a new country at the same time.
But a month is a funny amount of time. It’s long enough for strangers to become familiar, and for familiar faces to become the ones you instinctively look for. We started falling into our own routines. My friend group and I would grab food together, wander around Seoul, stop for yogurt or bingsu or stroll through Hongdae watching street performers. We laughed about things that probably weren’t nearly as funny to anyone else. We developed inside jokes that made less and less sense to everyone outside our group.
Eventually, I stopped thinking about what I was going to do in Korea and started thinking about what we were going to do.
We built a little life in Korea. It was temporary, but it was real.
That is something I really hadn’t considered before leaving for this Dialogue. A place doesn’t need to be permanent to become home. Home can be created.
It can be built through routines, favorite sweet-treat spots, shared meals and people who make you feel like you belong. It can exist even for just a few weeks.
Of course, there were still moments when I was reminded that I was a visitor. Sometimes our group was particularly easy to spot, especially when our tour guide announced, at full volume on the subway, “Northeastern! We will be getting off at the next stop!” Locals would look over, and we would just laugh. Moments like these reminded me that I wasn’t Korean and that Korea wasn’t suddenly my permanent home. But it didn’t need to be. I could be a visitor and still feel like I belonged.
So when I came back to America, I expected to miss Korea. I missed the food. I missed my friends. I missed the energy of Seoul. But I also missed the little things that had become ordinary.
And then, I’d get on the Green Line. Same color, completely different city. For weeks, the Green Line had carried me through Seoul. Now, Boston’s Green Line carried me back toward campus and back into the routines I had left behind.
Korea hadn’t replaced Boston. It had expanded my idea of what home could be. That’s what I hope other Northeastern students take away from a Dialogue of Civilizations.
Go because you want to travel, of course. Go because you want to eat incredible food and experience places you’ve only seen in pictures. But more importantly, go because you get the chance to stop being a tourist.
For a few weeks, you get to have a favorite restaurant. You get to learn the subway. You get to recognize streets. You get to settle into routines. You get to build a community with people who are experiencing something completely new alongside you. You get to live somewhere else.
And maybe, when you come home, you’ll realize that home isn’t limited to the place you started.
I know I did.
Now, every time I ride the Green Line at Northeastern, I think about Line 2 in Seoul.
A different city. A different life. The same Green Line.
And somehow, both feel like home.