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Published: March 2nd 2010
Well hello everyone and welcome back to my travel blog! New adventures have begun and I am very excited to share them with you all!
So to start off, it was a blistery, cold Tuesday morning when I headed off to Detroit Metro with Nana, Mom and Dad. We'd gotten about 6 inches of snow the night before, which helped with the whole leaving Michigan thing. But on the other side of things, I was already blubbering by the time we walked out the door and I had to say goodbye to my little cat Oreo. I pulled myself together for the ride to the airport, but before long, the rest of the goodbyes came and it was very tough. I guess every other time I've traveled I've known my return date, where this go around is very up in the air. I handed my passport and boarding pass to the guy at the security checkpoint. He looked at my passport, looked and me and said, "You're gonna do alright, kid." So, I felt like this was a pretty good start to my journey.
I ended up sitting next to a Chinese-born, American named Chris, who was on his way to China. We had the stewardess sneaking us Sapporos (Japanese beers) from Business Class and the first 5 hours flew by! It was the next 8 1/2 hours of trying to sleep that were a bit rough, but we made it through. We landed in Tokyo and I had a little over an hour to spare before my next flight. I wandered around a bit, but mostly just kicked back and watched some businessmen who were laying on those automatic massage chairs, putting money in, then giggling and taking photos of themselves on their phones.
Before too long, we were boarded and on our way to Busan. This time, I sat next to a Korean man, named Young Hwan, who has lived in California for the past 10 years. I really enjoyed talking to him. He was teaching me words and he gave me all his info in case I need anything while in Korea. He is a University Professor both in California and in Korea and he travels back and forth. He was a nice flight companion.
A couple hours later we landed in Busan! Yay! I was so happy to have arrived on Korean soil and know I was just a couple hour car ride away from sleep. After immigration, I loaded my massive bags onto a cart and pushed them out through the sliding doors to find my contact, Leon, and my school director, Laney, standing there holding a sign with my name on it!! I so wish I could've taken a photo, but unfortunately I did not. They recognized me from my application photos and the fact that I was the only white girl walking off the plane may have been another giveaway. Oh well, photo or not, it was just so cool to have someone holding a sign with my name on it!
Leon took over my bags and Laney explained to me that the other foreign teacher was flying in from his connection in Seoul, so we had to head over to the Domestic Arrivals to pick him up. Once we got there, she then explained that his flight had been delayed and we'd have to wait about an hour or so for him. Though I was looking forward to meeting my fellow English teacher, this was not the news I wanted to hear. I was exhausted and knew we had a long drive ahead of us as well. Laney bought me a coffee, which really helped, and it turned out to be really nice, because I got to sit and talk and joke with Laney and Leon for a while. Leon has pretty limited English (although I think it's better than he let's on), and Laney's English is great.
What seemed like forever later, we saw Tim come through the gate with a giant box on top of his luggage. I had been feeling a bit self-concious because I felt that I had grossly over-packed, but when I saw his stuff I felt much better! He is 6'5'' and brought his bike with him, because he knew he wouldn't be able to find one for his size here...so although we probably have close to the same amount of luggage, his giant bike box made me feel a lot better about my big bags! We quickly loaded his stuff into the van and before long we were off to Tongyeong.
Tongyeong is a city directly across the bridge from Geoje Island (or Koje Island) where I now live. Tongyeong also has the closest branch of our school and so this is where we were headed for the next two days to do classroom observations. After a long drive down winding roads that my stomach was not much appreciating, Tim and I were dropped off at the motel. I was so grateful for Leon, because he took care of our bags, which was super helpful. We got into our rooms and believe it or not, instead of passing out, I decided that I needed to wash the travel dirt off of me. I took a quick shower, then went and knocked on Tim's door to see if he wanted to get food. This was around 12:30am Wednesday night/Thursday morning Korea time.
Tim was up for some food, so we headed around the block and found a place selling street food. I was happy to be able to just point at what I wanted and not have to attempt to figure out a menu. We ordered a ton of food and a couple of beers and went to town on it. It was delicious! We had kim chi, chicken satay and the rest I cannot name, but can only tell you it was all very tasty! Now despite Tim's size and my usually high tolerance for alcohol, I think we were both tipsy after that beer, due to the 24 hours of traveling and running solely on airplane food. So, we decided to go down the street and find another place to have a few more beers. We walked out onto the street and were about ten steps away from the last restaurant when three drunk guys came stumbling past us. Two of them were somewhat successfully holding the other one up and as they passed us, the drunkest of them shouted, "Ahh Godzilla!!" Tim and I laughed and figured that may be the first of many times that Tim gets called that!
We sat down a few doors down the street where this little Korean lady had ushered us in while speaking a million miles a minute. We had no idea what she was saying as she sat us down and brought us menus. I had, fortunately, learned the Korean word for beer (makjew) so we ordered a beer each and she brought us three! She then brought out some stale popcorn, peanuts and another dish of something we didn't know, but snacked on anyway. We began to drink our beers when this little lady comes back over and starts pointing from the beers to the menu and saying, "makjew! makjew!" Now neither of us wanted anymore food, but Tim said he could eat it if he had to, and the lady seemed to be getting kind of mad at us for only ordering beers. So, we just said okay to whatever she'd been pointing at and waited for what was to come.
Before too long, she returned with a dish that had a handful of glimmering, silver sardines on one side and a giant dried squid on the other side. She set down two dipping sauces, then began to rip the dried squid into strips, explaining what she was doing to us the entire time...which we of course could not understand a word of. As soon as she finished ripping up the squid, she dipped a strip into what turned out to be mayonnaise and shoved it directly into my mouth. Now one thing I did not expect on this journey was to be hand-fed by a tiny little Korean woman within my first few hours in country! Before Tim could stop laughing, a mayonnaise-dipped strip was coming his way. Dried squid takes quite a while to chew and does not have the most appetizing flavor. This lady had nowhere important to be though, so she waiting anxiously for our reactions. We gave her forced smiles and thumbs up. With her squid demonstration complete, she moved onto the sardines. She picked up one of the little guys, ripped its head off, then just as Tim said, "I hope she doesn't shove that thing in my..." he was eating it. Since she'd started with me last time, I thought maybe I'd dogged a bullet this go around, but no such luck. This time, before I could quit laughing at Tim, a headless sardine dipped in ketchup was coming my way. It was pretty salty and I minded it far less than the squid.
Very pleased with herself, the lady skipped away while we took some large gulps of beer to cleanse our pallets. We were about done basking in the shock of the situation and laughing quite a bit when our new friend made her way back over. She sat down next to me and began touching my hands and face. Wanting to be culturally sound and not leave anyone out, I promptly dipped a squid strip in the mayonnaise and hand-fed this lady back. I think Tim was a bit shocked, cause he dropped his hand on the table and stale popcorn went flying everywhere. At this point, she was chewing and giggling and Tim and I were cracking up at the complete absurdity of the situation. She then continued to rub my hands and face, then rub her own hands, then back to mine. We believe she was pantomiming that her hands are rough from washing many dishes while mine are still young and soft. But that was just a guess.
After a 5 or so minute conversation, she left us to our beers and snacks. By this time we were feeling pretty great and began to convince each other to eat the sardines whole...why rip the heads off at this point anyway? So we ate some more until we were so full we couldn't stand another bite. We paid for our meal (she totally ripped us off, but we knew it at the time and figured the experience was worth the extra few bucks), then we headed back to the motel. It was 2:30am by this time and we were getting picked up at 9:20 the next morning to spend the day at school observing the foreign teachers classrooms in Tongyeong. I don't believe I've ever fallen asleep so fast.
All I can say is that moving to Korea has been a longtime coming and my first day did not disappoint!
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Mama
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Mmmmm, Tasty!
What a great first blog Kailie! I can't wait to read about your next adventure, which quite possibly could be the second day in country.