Being an adult is hard. Like, really hard. And though I’ve only been away from home for 3 weeks, I can already feel the pressure every day.
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Just yesterday, Stef and I were talking about destination weddings. I asked her if she wanted one, and if she did where would she have it? She asked me back and my response was, “No, I don’t really want one because it’s expensive.. as if a wedding isn’t expensive enough already.”
“You’re so rational!”
“Yeah, that’s why I’ve been eating at home instead of going out every day…”
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The decisions that you have to make when you’re alone are so much more different. When you’re at home you don’t have to worry about money, or eating healthy or anything because you can depend on other people to take care of that for you (ie. your parents). Or at least, that’s what happens for me. But now that I’m out here in Seoul taking care of myself (and sometimes my friends too), it’s a lot harder for me to make a choice.
Here’s the choice: should I go out and have fun, or should I stay home and save money?
My friends go out every day to eat dinner. It’s really cheap to eat here in Seoul (a meal can easily be less than 6 000KRW, and I usually eat lunch for around 1 500KRW (because I just eat kimbap. But something that could make you fuller is around 4 000KRW at the school cafeteria.), but the thing is that Koreans consume double the sodium intake they’re supposed to. Daily. Plus, they add lots of sugar and corn syrup into their food (their bulgogi is so sweet I don’t even want to eat it anymore… not to mention their Sweet and Sour Pork). Back in Canada, when our relatives are over to visit we literally eat out every day and I got sick of eating out. I was really craving a home cooked meal.
So, I’ve started cooking at home. I’m not really sure what the costs are at the moment (going to do some grocery budgeting after this) , but after the base costs of cooking equipment/utensils, and the weekly cost of groceries, I’m hoping that it’ll be cheaper than eating out for dinner every day. Plus I get to control what goes into my food (the sodium content specifically and I don’t add sugar to my food), so even though it might not be the most nutritious food, at least I know what’s going into it.
But, when my friends go out and I’m the only one left at dorms, I feel like I’m missing out on a lot. They’re trying a lot more food than I am (but there are still 4 months left here…), and they’re going to a lot more places than I am (like that arcade place in Sinchon). Stef is nice and tells me about how fun it was, and how they’re going to take me there too to eat the yummy food too. But I feel like I’m missing out on the experience, you know?
But if I’m at home, I get to really live life as a college student. Since when do college students eat out every day? I mean, I’m eventually going to have to cook too.
So TL;DR: my heart wants to eat out but my head wants to stay home. I know that staying home more is better, and I’m trying to balance it right now by cooking at home on weekdays while going out on weekends. I’m hoping that this will fall into a regular pattern for me (kind of like what happens at home), and my FOMO won’t be so prevalent.
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