Best worst week of my life

by Matt Dela Peña

Where I'm writing this post.

Things don't always go as planned, but rarely are these things ever a big deal when they happen. Other things, however—like things that require months in advance of meticulous planning and sunk costs of up to several hundred dollars—these things are a totally different story. When these plans go unrealized, all hell breaks loose and life changing lessons subsequently come into play.

And I seriously hate when they happen—especially those preventable things that could have easily been avoided had I just taken one meager action. It's funny how one simple alteration, like had I just requested a multiple entry visa, can easily affect one hundred thousand completely different... things.

But, oh well. It doesn't matter now. I'm stuck here... in Seoul... so I should probably make the best of it.

All of this was racing through my head last Monday just as a woman at the Seoul Immigration Office was telling me "You can't go to Japan."

Almost a week has gone by since then and two days from now, everything will be back to the way it was supposed to be. Two days from now, my friend Kelli will arrive from Hawaii, and we will start going to school together, in Konkuk, where we should be, just like we planned.

But looking back, I would not have spent my week any other way. It's funny how these things happen sometimes, blessings in disguise that is. Had I gone to Japan, I would have missed out on so many other things.

Like had I gone to Japan, I would not have realized how friendly Korean people are. Had I gone to Japan, I would not have consumed a million cups of delicious green tea lattes—now my favorite beverage—during my never-ending quests to find cafes with wifi.

Had I gone to Japan, I would not have met the awesome people of this past week, most of whom I now consider good friends. Had I gone to Japan, my Seoul experience would not have been the same, and my passion for this city would not nearly be as great as it is now.

But most importantly, had I gone to Japan, I would not have experienced what it's like to be helplessly lost; lost in a country that speaks a language so completely different from my own. And had I gone elsewhere, I would not have learned how to survive in this country to become the person that I am right now; a person so utterly dissimilar from the one from just last week that it boggles my mind.

I can think of a million more other things that I am grateful for from having missed my flight to Osaka last Friday, but sometimes I can't help but wonder what I also missed out on from just across the East Sea. Oh well. All I know is, I'm never connecting through San Francisco ever again.