My First 1.5 Days As a Foreigner

My flight out of Seattle left on Sunday morning. About ten and a half hours later, I saw Japan for the first time. For hours and hours and hours there'd been nothing to see but clouds and some in-flight movie about trains that I'm pretty sure they played twice (I think it was "Unstoppable,") and sometimes you could pretend you were seeing the ocean down there, but really there wasn't much to look at. Actually, at first, Japan looked like more clouds.

Can you spot the continent?

 Then it didn't.

Just that morning, I'd been in the US. Now, I was over another continent, another country - and not just another country, but one with a culture so different it was fascinating. The US borrows so much from, is based on, European culture, but Asian culture seems so far removed from everything I know. I was in awe. That was Japan down there.

We landed. It was just a two-hour layover, and I was crammed into a tiny room with like 100 other people. I didn't really care because I had entertainment and because I was prepared to be relatively uncomfortable for the duration of my travel.

This airport was where I first saw other languages dominating English words.

Eventually, we got back on the plane. By the time we landed in South Korea, I'd been traveling for over 65 hours with 4 hours of sleep and had gone close to 70 hours without a shower. I was exhausted and gross.

I dragged my heavy carry-ons through a long line and filled out customs forms and then I had to figure out how to move my 2 heavy carry-ons and 2 heavy suitcases without a luggage cart...but then I finally saw Joe. He really did look different in real life than he does on my laptop's screen.

With two people, moving the luggage was a little easier. We dragged it maybe a quarter of a mile to a bus stop and waited a couple of hours for the bus. The bus stop smelled like rotting onions. It was furnished with stained seats that I wasn't going to sit on, so I sat on top of my suitcase. There were people at the bus stop who had been on the plane with me all day. Joe bought me some Skittles. Then I laid down on top of my suitcase. At my head, Joe was sitting in one of the gross chairs. He closed my eyes and told me to rest and petted my face. I fell asleep. Then the bus came and we stuffed my luggage underneath it and got on it.

The bus was an hour-long trip to take us from the airport to Yongsan. The sky was overcast and gray. I looked out the window as the bus drove past fields, and gardens by the side of the road, and billboards with Korean writing on them. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up, we were somewhere else (though I've completely forgotten where,) and we took a taxi to our hotel.

"NO FORGET THEM! Your Personal Belongings!"

I think it was about 7:30 PM by the time we got checked in and got the suitcases upstairs. I took a shower and cared way more about going to sleep than eating, but Joe coaxed me into putting on something other than pajamas so we could go downstairs and eat. Dinner was at the Mexican restaurant he'd been "saving for us" so had never visited.

We were so happy to be together. It seemed unreal. We shared a seat in a booth and ate each other's dinners while the Korean waitresses cleaned the tables around us and prepared the restaurant to close for the night. In a tank top, I was freezing. I was also pretty glad we'd eaten instead of slept.

But then we did sleep, and that was nice, too.

The view from our room, with a playground, and a mountain that you can't really see 'cause the clouds

The next day started around 7:00 AM when Joe had to wake for work. He got ready for work while I stayed in bed, then I put on jeans and a turtleneck because I was tired of being cold in air-conditioned buildings, and I had no jacket. We walked to breakfast at an American restaurant at the PX food court, probably half a mile away. There was a Taco Bell, a Subway, a Burger King, a Baskin Robbins, a Popeyes, all run by Korean employees. 

We had bacon, egg & cheese biscuits with home fries. Then Joe and I kissed good-bye - but just a peck because he was in uniform - and he went to work. I went to the PX to buy a jacket but they were still closed. So I walked back to the hotel. My jeans were sticking to my legs from the heat and humidity and half-mile walk, and the turtleneck also had been a bad idea. I took a shower and went back to sleep. (Being in an actual bed after sleeping on the floor of my apartment for three months is pretty darn nice, but not as much of a change as I thought it would be. Apparently, as long as I have blankets and a pillow, I'm happy.)

I woke up when Joe came back to the hotel room so we could have lunch together. We went downstairs and ordered Pizza Hut. While we were waiting for our food, I watched a TV hanging on a wall. The channel was turned to a Korean cooking show. All the writing on the screen was in Korean. I watched two men and a woman putting together some food. Then it was time for the unveiling of the dish. And VOILA! Steam billowed out of the pot when the lid was removed, revealing a bed of some green vegetable which was cradling...four whole fish. Mmmm. Their eyes stared out of the steam.

We took our pizza outside and ate at a picnic table. The sky was overcast and gray. We went on a short walk. The grounds of the hotel are very nicely manicured.

I kinda expected there to be at least a few buildings in the style of this gazebo - you know, Asian-looking buildings - in Korea. So far, this is the only Asian-looking building I've seen in this country...and it's in an American area.

After lunch, I still needed a jacket, so we walked to the PX again. I didn't have a ration card, so I couldn't even go in there. Bummer. So we left. We were right next to Joe's temporary workplace, so that's where we walked to next.

One fascinating thing about Korea is that there are gardens everywhere. (Well, I guess I can't say "everywhere" because I haven't been everywhere, but before I fell asleep on the bus, I saw quite a few roadside gardens out the window.) There was one right next to Joe's work building, on a curbed corner of a parking lot.

"Do not eat Tomatoes. One should not do what troubles one's conscience. - Tomatoes Farmers"

I went back to the hotel, did some ration card paperwork, probably fell asleep again, I don't remember.

Joe was released from work a bit early. He took me to a war museum he'd been to. I think it was about 3/4ths of a mile away. I began to realize why Joe thought nothing of dragging the suitcases a quarter of a mile the day I got here; here, he walks everywhere.

"Pedestian Prohibited"

My camera couldn't capture the size of the museum building.

In the top picture, in the background on the mountain, you can see Seoul Tower.

One eye-catching exhibit was the teardrop made from the dog tags of men who died fighting in the Korean War.

Also at the museum:

Some kind of Tropicana sparkling apple-flavored drink I would've tried had I had Won to put into the vending machine.

After the museum, we walked to the PX for dinner. It was raining. Joe had bought an umbrella for me before I arrived in Korea, and we spent most of the walk both trying to fit under it. (Well, that's what I was trying for, but he didn't really care and ended up soaked.) Dinner was Americanized Chinese food served by Koreans. We walked back to the hotel in the rain and bought dessert from the hotel's small bakery, then watched TV and went to sleep.

The end.