My Arrival: Early Days Part 1

I was sitting around just wondering what to write about now that I have all this extra time. Korean Food? Done that. Beautiful Korean Women? I can't stop writing about that. Traffic? Boring. What I'm doing today? Very boring.

Then I remembered: I didn't start this blog until I was here a few months. Sure, I sent out a couple emails before that, but there's a whole lot that I left out about my first few months in Korea, a whole lot.

So anyway, welcome to the first installment (of who knows how many) trying to remember back about when I first got here. Luckily, I took notes and have already written stories about what happened way back then, so it should be easy. Anyway here it goes:

Korean Ryan Arrives in Korea

It was about 12 when I stepped out into the hot, muggy Korean night. I had just spent 22 hours on a plane or in an airport. Then I spent another hour fighting for my luggage, getting my passport stamped, and trying to find my recruiter. I was exhausted.

CJ, the recruiter, had already flagged down a cab for me and paid for it. She helped me load my luggage and then said goodbye. I'd never see her again.

As soon as we pulled away, the cab driver tried to start a conversation. Cab drivers often do this. Now-a-days, I love cab drivers, because they give me a good way to try out my Korean. I'm stuck in a tight space with a guy who almost never knows any English for 15 minutes. I've probably spoken more Korean with cab drivers, store clerks, and waitresses than I have with anyone else in Korea...including co-workers and my Korean teachers (they all know English).

"Hang-gungmal hey-yo?" he said. All I knew how to say in Korean at that point was hello, and I wasn't very confident in saying that. I didn't learn how to say "I don't understand" in Korean for a few more days.

What is said was, "do you speak Korean?" Which was what I suspected at the time, so I shook my head no. What he literally said was "Korean language do?" That's how you ask it in Korean.

"Ah," he said in a distinctly Korean way. I doubt I could replicate the sound if I tried.

The cab driver tried to speak to me a bit more. He used a lot of hand gestures (something most Koreans don't do) even though he was driving. It is amazing how much you can communicate with hand gestures. I got very good at it in my first few months here.

"Se she," he said to me and held up three fingers. He said, "three hours," (or three in the morning--it means different things depending on context, but here it had both meanings), but I had no idea that that is what he said at the time. The drive from Incheon (where the airport is) to Daejon (where I live) is about three hours. I had no idea that is was so far at the time and only had a vague idea what the signs saying 200 km really meant time wise.

He only said one more thing to me for the next few hours.

"Seoul," he said and pointed out his window.

"Ah," I said in a distinctly American way. I assumed this meant that what I was seeing was Seoul. It was big. It seemed bigger than any city I'd been to. And it wasn't even Seoul.

Seoul was just in that general direction. What he was point to was downtown Incheon. But Korean cities are built up, not out, so it was still impressive to me at the time. And I can't even begin to explain what Korean cities look like at night. They look like how I imagine Las Vegas to look: neon everywhere. I wouldn't actually see Seoul for a little over a month.

One of the stangest things I saw that first night were the neon crosses. The churches almost always have them on the top and all of them light up at night. They come in three colors: Red, white, and blue. I have no idea what the colors mean, but I imagines it's something about the church.

I could see the mountains off in the distance, and I was in awe, but I hadn't seen anything yet.

After we got away from the city and on the highway, I realized exactly how tired I was. I had been awake for about three days at that point. I was too nervous to sleep before I left. I couldn't sleep on the plane. And I was having trouble sleeping in the cab. I couldn't sleep mostly because of the speed alarm.

The speed limit was 100 km/h. The driver kept going over it. Ever time he did, an alarm went off and said something in Korean that I still don't understand (although I never hear it in the city). Every time the alarm went off, I jerked back awake.

The driver noticed this. He gave me what I thought was a caffine pill.

"Here," he said. "Drink up." It was the only English I heard him speak.

I looked at the pill in my hand. It was big. Too big. What the hell, I though. It would probably be rude not to take it. I gulped it back without water and felt a little better. I shouldn't have. I later found out it was gum.

In any case, the placebo effect kept me awake the rest of the trip. I tried to figure out the signs. I couldn't read Korean yet, so I had no idea what they said. I'd see a sign with one word in English and about 15 in Korean. I doubt the translations were literal.

After about an hour of trying to read signs and trying to see scenary in the dark, I realized that I wasn't going to make it. I needed a rest stop before we hit Daejon. I didn't know how to say bathroom. I didn't know how to say stop. I didn't know how to say break, or toilet, or pee-pee, or potty. I was tried to figure this out for about 15 minutes before I gave up.

I waited for a rest stop sign to come up. "Can we stop, " I said. "I need to use the bathroom." Nothing. "Toilet," I said and pointed to my crotch. Then he got it. My first restroom in Korea was nice by Korean standards. It didn't stink or cause me to wretch a little, so it was fine.

It wasn't too much longer that we hit Daejon. The first thing I was struck by was the urbanness of Daejon. It was mountains, then bang, it was urban. The outskirts look like Chicago...or at least East Chicago. I probably could have imagined I was there had it not been for the funny letters on the signs.

I knew there was a problem when the driver kept circling the same stretch of road over and over. The store "Toy Toys" was funny the first time, but not nearly as funny the fifth. Eventually, the driver pulled into an alley and got out. I came with him.

I looked around. The small three story apartment buildings looked the same, exactly the same. We went into the first one. We went to 302. The driver rang the intercom (Korean apartments all have intercoms instead of doorbells). A Korean answered. The conversation I didn't understand at all. I can only imagine what it must have been.

"Hello."

"Hi, does a foreigner live here?"

"What? No. It's three in the morning."

By this time, it was raining. Raining hard (it would for another month). We went outside and the cab driver motioned me to stay inside. I tried to follow again and he pushed me back in. I waited in the doorway while he must have checked all the other 302s in the buildings around my apartment. Eventually he found it, not because he rang, but because he found a not in English. He took me to it.

"Hi Ryan," it said. "We waited up for you, but we still have to work tomorrow. When you get in, wake me up to say hi. Chris."