Epiphany - Namjoon au

-1-

I don't know what I expected to feel after getting the small booklet placed in my hands. A little less nervous maybe, but ultimately I felt the exact same. I felt oblivious, none of this felt real. I swore if I pinched myself hard enough I'd be back in my room waking up to my mom's loud music. But I wasn't sleeping, I was sitting in my car looking at my newly received passport. My mom slipped into the passenger seat with a deep sigh, putting her hand on my forearm and squeezing it lightly.

"Mija, I thought you'd be more excited to get your passport. Everything okay?" She asked, and I nodded. My mom was my everything, she kept me grounded and she was the easiest to talk to out of my parents. My dad is very protective of me and my siblings, he barely let my sister go to a college in the same state as us. I don't know what my mom did to persuade him to let me travel to South Korea for a semester of high school.

"I'm just nervous." I sighed putting my passport in the glove department so I wouldn't lose it. "I mean what if my Korean is actually terrible and my teachers have just been lying to me to make me feel better? Or what if I hate it there? All my plans for my future would be ruined and I'd only have a semester of high school left in order to figure out what I want to do with my life." I began driving out of the parking lot and toward our house as my mom laughed at me. "Mama! I'm being serious!"

Her laughing seised as she put on her seat belt. She would always put her seat belt on once we had already started driving. "Nanni, I speak spanish and english so I can't say anything on whether or not your Korean is any good. But your teachers wouldn't lie to you!" She turns to look at me but I keep my eyes focused on the road in front of me. "You worked hard for 3 years to learn Korean for this very moment. Plus you'll have a Korean class at your new school there where you can perfect your pronunciation."

"I don't know mom." My hands were beginning to sweat thinking about my schedule for the year. All my classes except one would be in Korean, I'd have to take notes in Korean and read hangul; what if I suddenly just forget the entire language.

"Well you better figure it out. I didn't spend 5 hours talking to your dad just for you to chicken out." Her tone got serious and that's when I knew I should quit complaining or she'd start scolding me in spanish.

"Okay. I will be brave." I said with no enthusiasm at all. I could hear my mom groan in annoyance and I laughed under my breath.

I was going to miss Seattle, I've lived here my entire life and the first time I leave the state of Washington I'm flying across the world to a country with a whole new language and culture. I already had a culturally mixed home and family, learning and adapting to another culture could possibly be difficult. Plus I'm not white, I'm half white but my skin is still tanned and I still look more like my mom then my dad. I feel like if I was white maybe it wouldn't be so bad, there's racism everywhere. But the school I was going to had an entire foreign exchange program built into it. I had my own dorm, no roommate, that was a block away from the campus. The school paid for the dorm as long as I kept up on my grades, plus the dormitory had a canteen that served dinner every night for a small fee.

That just reminds me of another fear, a new currency. It took me a while to remember that difference between American dollars and pesos. Now I'd have to get used to won. Of course in my korean classes we were taught about won and the different bills and coins and how people refer to them. But actually having those bills and only using those bills would be a whole nother story.

Pulling into the driveway of my small yellow house I felt even worse. I couldn't escape time, I realized that now. I took my passport out of my car and walked through the front door with my mom following behind me. When I entered the entire place smelled like cinnamon and barbeque. I smiled as I made my way to the kitchen seeing my tia Bella pulling cookies out of the oven. When she noticed me her face softened and tears began to form in her gorgeous green eyes.