[Student Voices] Half Here, Half There
Published: 20 Oct. 2025, 08:55
Bella Doh, Greenhills School
by Bella Doh, Greenhills School
Outside the airplane window, Seoul was still there – familiar, comforting, mine. But inside that cabin, everything was already shifting. I glanced at my dad, sitting stiffly across the aisle, practicing his answers for the American immigration interview. “Yes sir, yes, we are here for our children’s education.” His eyes darted between the translation app on his phone and the blank monitor on the back of the airplane seat, which offered no clue about the world he was heading toward. My mom kept adjusting her bag, organizing the passports and the documents over and over again, as if this small action could give her a sense of control. My parents were leaving behind their careers, their friends – everything they knew – to give me and my brother a better life. I knew they were scared. I wondered, as they were surely wondering, how I would endure the process of becoming someone new without losing or forgetting who I was. The plane hadn’t even taken off yet, but I already felt like I had left something behind.
The day I said goodbye to my old life felt like cutting off a piece of my heart and hoping it would grow back someday. My best friend of eight years and I had stood under the clock tower of AK Plaza in Seohyeon, where we had grown up together, muttering with tear-filled eyes that we would never forget each other. I hugged my grandparents with everything I was, trying to memorize their scent and the safety of their presence. Most painfully, I was letting go of the past 15 years of myself. That girl was staying behind in Seoul. I wasn’t sure if she would ever follow me to the U.S.
After a 15-hour flight, we landed in Michigan. Three days later, I found myself standing at the DMV, translating complex legal documents I didn’t understand while my parents hovered behind me, their faces full of trust I didn’t deserve. I was a teenager. I was also a translator and a cultural interpreter. I was a bridge between my family and a strange world. We had rented a big, beautiful house – not because we could easily afford it, but because it was a safe community and close to my school. My parents tried to smile, even when they were exhausted in line at the DMV, so I wouldn’t feel the weight they were carrying. But I felt it anyway. I felt like the only way I could repay them was to be perfect – perfect grades, perfect English, perfect behavior. But is perfection possible when you’re still figuring out who you are?
One week later, I attended a summer camp at the University of Michigan. On the first day, someone glanced at a book I was reading during lunch and said, “Yo, that book is fire.” I smiled at the person, but inside, I was panicking. Fire? Is that a good thing? Did they mean it sincerely or sarcastically? I couldn’t tell.
I found myself frequently Googling, “what does (blank) mean?” I didn’t understand their humor. I laughed at the wrong times. I nodded too much. I stopped speaking Korean outside the house. I started to wear clothes that stuck to my body, like the other girls. I raised the tone of my voice and tried to be more outgoing and expressive, like the other girls.
Most nights, I lie in bed and wonder: Who am I becoming? Where did that girl I knew in Korea go?
I want to belong here. But not at the cost of losing myself.
Gradually, I’m starting to find small ways to bring back my old self. Singing the Korean parts of K-pop songs. Traveling for 30 minutes to buy ramyeon from the Asian market. Calling my friends back in Korea when I miss their laughter and my own. Maybe starting over doesn’t mean erasing who I was. Maybe it means learning how to carry both versions of me, side by side.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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