About Me
Hi, my name is Loren. I was born in the bustling city of Houston, Texas in the year 1982. My father’s family lives there still, but my parents moved me and my brother to a tiny little town called Greenwood (South Carolina) when I was just 2 years old. My childhood is a collage of memories really…I always found something creative to do with my time, and enjoyed teaching my “imaginary class” in my room while I was growing up.
We relocated to Pensacola, Florida when I was about 11 years old. Funny how I thought it was a big city back then, but coming from Greenwood I guess it really is. One could say that the rest of my years in Pensacola were….difficult for me. I was ready to leave, to venture out on my own. I had dreams of packing a small bag and catching a bus up to New York City the day after my high school graduation. That was the person I wanted to be, the free spirited traveler. Family pressures led me to a slightly less glamorous reality though, at a community college in Orlando, Florida.
I spent four years in that city, and I’m still not sure if I miss it or just miss the people I had in my life at the time. I followed my creative side by getting into fashion design for a bit. It was quite an experience; headlining shows at the House of Blues, people calling me Mr. Zabcik. Unfortunately though, the superficiality wasn’t for me….and with added pressure to finish college, combined with my complete lack of interest in school and having no idea where I was going in life, I realized I needed to get away. Alone. I went to Europe.
The original plan was to backpack around Italy for 3 months, but Italy quickly turned into the rest of Europe, and 3 months turned into almost a year and a half. I moved to Prague where I became TEFL certified and began teaching Business English to adults. It wasn’t my cup of tea, teaching adults the mundaine business jargon and phrasology, but I did love Prague and the family of friends I had come to know so well. After Prague, I hopped over to Greece where I worked for a summer on the island of Mykonos. Words can’t express what an amazing time Europe was for me, and how much it changed me.
I came back with a determination to finish school and a strength that I’d never had before. I came back to Pensacola, Florida of all places (which should speak to my determination by the fact that I was willing to spend the next 2 and a half years of my life there, haha) to be with family and enroll in undergraduate school again. I studied International Relations with a focus on Security and Diplomacy and finished in almost half the estimated time with a very high GPA (not bragging here, just showing how traveling and seeing part of the world had motivated me to do well and get back abroad ASAP).
And so after graduation, finally the time had come. I had been waiting to move to Seoul, Korea for 2 or 3 years prior….every timeline I had projected for myself in the future was framed around coming here, to this place that I am exactly now. I am so happy to say that it did not dissapoint. The more I learn about this country the more I am fascinated, endeared, and I’ll be honest at times perplexed by it. It is precisely what I had hoped it would be….which makes me wonder when I will leave this place. For now though, I am learning, taking pictures, doing a good deal of ’soaking it in’…..and I am blogging.
If you’d like to contact me for specific questions about living in Korea, or for any other reason, you may do so at:
lorenchristopher@gmail.com