BACKSTORY OF JAMEZ

A lot of people find this blog and wonder — who is this dude, where did he come from, and why is he out here living like this? Fair question. This is the origin story.

Where it all started, how I ended up where I am, and why I genuinely cannot go back to the life most people just accept as the only option.

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THE ARMY SENDS ME WHETHER I LIKE IT OR NOT

I grew up in a small town just over the Georgia-Florida line. And I mean small. The kind of place where everybody knows everybody, nobody really leaves, and the idea of living in another country wasn't even a conversation people had. You graduated, you got a job, you stayed. That was the script.

I joined the Army. And while I was at AIT — Advanced Individual Training — I got my first set of orders. Korea. At the time I was newly married with a newborn, so Korea was not the plan. I knew a Lt. Colonel from back home and got those orders switched. Just like that. Somebody else went to Korea. I went to Kansas.

About a month after I arrived in Kansas, my section head pulled me aside and said: "Hey, you've got orders to Korea but you just got here, don't worry about it." I told him I knew, I'd just changed another set two months earlier at AIT. We both shrugged it off.

About four months after that — same thing. New orders. Korea. Dated one full year from when I arrived in Kansas. Somebody at the Department of the Army wanted me in Korea and was not taking no for an answer.

I won't get into the personal details, but those orders triggered a divorce, and just like that I was headed to Korea. Solo.

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THE FIRST FEW WEEKS — I HATED IT

I landed in Korea in December of 1998. And I want to be straight with you — I hated it those first couple of weeks. I'm from a small town. This wasn't just a different city, this was a completely different world. 

Different language, different food, different everything. I couldn't communicate with locals. It was cold. The holidays came and went and I was far from home for the first time in my life.

But then something shifted.

Once we got past the holidays and I settled in, I fell in love with that place. And I don't just mean the nightlife — though Seoul on a weekend is something I'll get into in another post. I mean the culture. The food. Learning how to properly drink soju, how to toast, how to sit at a table with people and just be present in a different way than I was used to back home. The Korean people were some of the warmest, most welcoming people I've ever been around. And I say that having now lived in multiple countries.

But honestly the thing that changed me most wasn't even Korea itself — it was the Americans I met over there. When you're stationed overseas, you meet people from every corner of the United States. Different backgrounds, different upbringings, different ways of seeing the world, but there's this shared American thread that ties you together. I met people I never would have crossed paths with back home. Hearing how differently they thought, what they valued, how they lived — that cracked something open in me that I didn't even know was closed.

I was supposed to be there for about eleven months. I stayed fifteen. Voluntarily. I was seriously considering extending even longer, but my grandma got sick back home. So I came back.

But I came back different.

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WHAT KOREA ACTUALLY DID TO ME

Here's what fifteen months in Korea did to me that I didn't fully understand until years later: it ruined normal life. Not in a bad way — in the best possible way.

Once you've lived somewhere else, really lived there — not visited as a tourist — once you've learned a few words of another language, navigated a foreign city on your own, made friends across cultural lines, eaten food you can't even pronounce — you can't unsee that. You can't go back to thinking that the way you knew is the only way things can be.

I knew from that point on that I had to keep traveling. That wasn't a vacation mindset. That was just who I was now.

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BACK HOME — THE LONG CHAPTER

I came back to the States, finished out my Army time, and lived life. Got remarried. Ended up raising my son as a single dad for most of his childhood.

I got a job with the legislature and was there for nineteen years. The first three years were in the legislative property management office — Senate districts, House districts, local offices all over Florida. Top to bottom, east to west, all while living across the state line in Georgia. If you think you know Florida, try hitting every district office from Pensacola to Key West. That's a different education.

The next sixteen years I worked in the office that edited and produced the statutes. Every bill that became law in Tallahassee, I read it at least three times. Editing, analyzing, incorporating it into the codified statutes. Sometimes more, especially when we were short-staffed — which happened a lot during COVID.

And that right there — sitting at home working during a pandemic for twelve months, proofing documents that other people wrote, all day, every day — that's what finally did it. Not Korea, not the travel bug, not some dramatic moment. It was proofing documents during COVID that made me say: I am done. I have been sitting on this dream long enough.

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THE JUMP — SELLING EVERYTHING AND LEAVING

My son graduated high school and a year later we sold everything and left. He was nineteen. Think about that for a second — nineteen years old, his dad says we're selling everything and moving abroad, and he was down. That's my boy.

The original plan was Vietnam. Visas lined up for both of us. Then COVID restrictions shut that down completely, so we pivoted. Best options at that point were Mexico or Colombia. I had a friend in Medellín, so that made the decision easy. Last minute, we went to Medellín.

Medellín deserves its own post — and it'll get one. The short version: beautiful city, incredible people, and it got very popular very fast with a crowd that wasn't really my crowd. When it was time to move on, I moved on.

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VIETNAM, TEACHING, AND WHERE WE ARE NOW

Eventually I made it to Vietnam. Lived in Ho Chi Minh City and Vung Tau for about five months, visited Thailand, came back to the States in April 2025. Picked up substitute teaching to keep income moving, and this past school year I had my own classroom for the first time. Just finished my first year on June 2nd.

And now I'm sitting here on summer break, planning my next move back to Vietnam. Because that's where the next chapter is.

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SO THAT'S THE BACKSTORY

Small town kid near the Georgia-Florida line. Army sends me to Korea twice because apparently the universe had a plan I didn't know about yet. Fifteen months over there cracked open something in me that nineteen years behind a desk couldn't close. Raised my son, built a career, did the responsible thing — and then did the thing I actually wanted to do.

I'm not here to tell you what to do with your life. I'm a travel enthusiast, not an expert. But I am here to show you what's possible when you stop waiting for the right time — because the right time doesn't show up on its own. At some point, you just have to go.

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TAGS: Korea, Backstory, Military, Expat Life, Vietnam, Camp Edwards, Camp Edwards Korea,