Departing an old life for the new one

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With your ticket in one hand passport in the other you are standing in line awaiting your ticket to be scanned and verified by the airline before you board the plane. You look around at the sea of faces for another westerner but you are alone. For the next nine and a half hours you will be solo flying over the pacific ocean. There is no turning back once you step onto the plane for pre-boarding. Your bags have been packed for weeks, you've double checked all the details about your new job on the other side of the planet, your new path awaits you in this life and tomorrow means you have joined an elite class of people known simply as global traveler.

Tens of thousands of people cannot fathom what it takes to earn the title "global traveler," it means selling everything you own and donating the rest. Your lifetime of collecting things to put in your house or your garage;

books, cars, cd's, chairs, couches, dvd's, furniture, household goods, pool table and those fancy washing machines! Because you have decided to cut back your entire being stuffing your most valuable possessions into one fifty-two-liter backpack! No more long lines at the car wash, no more late fees at the library, no more saturday nights with your poker buddies or your bridge circle. You have uprooted life in search of "whatever lies around that corner."
Nine and a half hours later you awake to the sound of screeching tires upon the asphalt ground beneath you. Your eyes are bloodshot from watching three in-flight movies, eating random egg look-a-like meals and gnawing down on those pieces of seaweed crisps. Your brow is furrowed but your alive as the plane stops next to the terminal, doors open, you grab your carry-on things heading incoherently towards baggage claim. Visually you are taking in information which makes little sense but at least there are pictures. The pictures and the herd move slowly through the airport hallways of florescent lights until you reach the baggage carousel room. You opt for the bathroom since nothing is happening but you just want to get on with it. There is still more travel to come. Unsure of it all you stumble back to the carousel noticing your bag lazily moving across the conveyor belt away from you. Chasing the bag seems idiotic, so you wait for it to return to where you
stand.

Lifting the luggage in a hazy gloss of waterless blinking you pull at yourself to move towards the exit gate, through the awaiting security knowing you are the only white man around. As you figure this out you start sizing up the people standing left, right and center. They are half your size, it's comical in many ways but you cannot see the humor in it as the two-hundred pairs of eyes gently stare in your direction. Handing over your declarations page you are waved through security without any words. You glance over your shoulder quickly but keep walking straight ahead thinking, "could it really have been that simple to get through immigration and security?" Blinking you see the exit doors open into another sea of faces, people awaiting other people to take them further on their journeys.
You stop for a moment as the large doors close automatically behind you. Adjusting your pack your eyes moving left and right taking in all the details your mind can in the pre-dawn hours. The moment is surreal to you but you have made it to this point. At this point you notice a man probably in his late-forties maybe fifties holding a white eight-by-ten card with your last name scrawled neatly across it. It's true, they sent a car for you. Smiling you want to remember this moment, you pull out your point and shoot digital camera taking a couple of inadvertent photographs in the man's direction. Not thinking you begin to move again in the direction of the man holding the sign with your name on it wondering, "does he speak English?" and "how will he know?" But at this point you don't care because you know your journey has just begun, you've finally made it to South Korea.

Nineteen-months of thinking about moving away from the safety of your community, family and friends, six months of emailing contacts, recruiters and processing applications, three months of agonizing through applications, background checks and documents to obtain a visa for you to leave your safety filters through your thoughts as you hurtled down an expressway at a hundred and thirty-three kilometers per hour. Your eyes watching the road, your brains trying to figure out just how fast you are traveling at and you suspect just how lost you are as you observe the GPS as it beeps, glows, and maps out the route ahead.

You are here. You have made it. You are the "wayward traveler" that Jack Kerouac always intended for you to become! Your success here is only based upon who you are and how you travel through the adventures which lie ahead of you. Then the endless questions begin to consume you; where will you sleep, what will you see, what can you partake in, what is there to eat, who will answer your questions then your eyes grow tired of the blurring scenery outside your window and the lids close pushing all those questions aside you drift asleep in the wee morning hours.

Beopheung-ri, Paju City, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea for the last hundred and seventy-eight days and counting... Your apartment overlooks a very special artist community called Heyri Art Valley. You are a thirty minute walk away from the Odusan Unification Observatory and a mesh fence with barb-wired entanglement resting on top of it which runs the length of the Han river. Your happy about why the fence is in place, you see it every time you go to Seoul along with the military outposts but you recently read an article about the discovery of a wall built by the South Koreans in the 1970's. It says this wall stretches more than 240 km (149 miles) from east to west, is 5-8 m (16-26 ft) high, 10-19 m (33-62 ft) thick at the bottom, and 3-7 m (10-23 ft) wide in the upper part. Amazed, you read the article twice and think about the stories you have been told by your new friends where you live. No one has ever mentioned this wall in casual conversation. No one really speaks about the Demilitarized Zone between the two countries, although it does exist.

Not only are you residing between the southern end of North Korea and the northern boarder of South Korea but you are legitimately enjoying your new life here on the outskirts of Seoul. Since your arrival you have traveled around the country by express bus, taken a couple of Korail trips to other provinces, learned a bit of Korean through reading "Survival Korean" by Stephen Revere, attended the "Nutcracker" ballet performed by the Oregon Ballet at Seoul Arts Center, visited Jogyesa buddhist temple in Insadong, and discovered the essential four food groups of Koreans through street food on a stick.

Over time, you have become appreciative towards learning how to play charades as a child. The game of charades has risen in the depths of your soul as a form of communication these days when you are outside your apartment. The chaos of living within another culture has delighted your senses, intrigued your sense of curiosity and heightened your willingness to try things you never thought possible back home!

With the Lunar New Year approaching quickly the country gets ready to spend time with their families and close up shop. But there is always something going on in Seoul even if it means exploring a neighborhood you haven't ventured into yet. However you feel your day moving its early afternoon and you need to get outside into the cloud covered day to enjoy the peacefulness surrounding the holiday. As you close your computer, donning on your jacket you think of a quote from Moslih Eddin Saadi, stuck inside your head; "A traveler without observation is a bird without wings."

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