It was my friend's birthday yesterday. I haven't seen her in years but I remember June 15th is her birthday. I met my friend in Korea; she was a local university student and my co-teacher. Though we were limited in our language communication, she became someone I felt completely at ease with, and I consider her one of my closest friends.

Other foreigners had mentioned experiences of feeling left out of Korean culture, that they weren't a true part of their schools or communities.

I was lucky, my friend opened her entire world to me.

Being away from home during the holidays is a difficult time for most of us. The lunar new year is possibly the most celebrated day in Asia, and during this holiday, my friend invited me to her grandmother's, where their entire extended family was gathered. Nobody spoke English. But they welcomed me and though I barely said anything, I was enfolded into the family atmosphere. I was allowed to be part of those intimate moments that mark each family - eating meals, making kimchi, going for a seaside walk, sleeping on the floor with her cousins. There is something incredibly kind about opening up the private family life to an outsider.

We reached this comfort level not only through revealing conversations, of which we had many, but also by going through small life activities together - bus rides, ice creams, lunches, dinners, board games, language groups.

In recent years, it seems like we are perpetually catching up with friends, we see each other sporadically and infrequently. When we do meet up, we can feel compelled to fully fill the whole time, to squeeze the most out of the escaping time with this person. We forget what it's like to sometimes just be, to talk about mundane things, to spontaneously visit each other and lounge around, to have moments of nothing, with no aim, other than to be in each others' presence.