To be content in Seoul, ‘get involved’

Joyce Doran

Being married to someone who must travel for their job is often difficult for spouses, who are left struggling to find ways to fill their days in a new country.
“He goes to work, the kids go to school and wives end up getting bored,” said Joyce Doran, president of the British Association of Seoul, or BASS. But Doran, an English teacher, has had no trouble finding work as she accompanies her civil engineer husband on assignments around the world.
Still, Seoul was different. “I decided to stop and smell the roses for a while,” Doran said.
BASS, an organization that supports expatriate women, was the first such organization Doran has been involved in, and she quickly got swept up. “Here I was organizing tours and I didn’t know my way around the block. I took to it like a duck to water.”
BASS encourages members “to forge links with the community and not just hang around with other Brits,” Doran said. “When people come here we do congregate among our own, but working as a group makes it easier for us to branch out and make connections with the community.”
The key to life in Seoul? “You’ve got to get involved,” Doran said. “There are lots of opportunities to help those less fortunate than us.” By Richard Scott-Ashe