Arrived in Korea

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Well, the first rule of studying abroad is: make sure your passport hasn't expired. The second rule of studying abroad is: make sure your passport hasn't expired. Why they expire I don't know, mine smelled just fine, but they do have expiration dates.
Of course I know that passports must be renewed, but in all these past few months of planning my summer study abroad in Korea, I never even once noticed that my passport expired April 27th, 2009. I copied my passport to mail a copy to the university in Korea, and didn't notice. I used my passport to go through security at Seatac on my way to Chicago, and they didn't notice. So on I went to Chicago to attend my mom's wedding before speeding off to Korea. The sunday after mom's wedding, I went to the airport, with the usual fear that I'd forgotten something, a fear I'm kinda used to cause it comes every time I fly abroad. But this time I really had. I scanned my passport into the machine to get my boarding pass, and it said, “check documents”. I wondered what that meant, looked at my passport, and thought, “oh”.
I also forgot my alarm clock. But I wouldn't realize that until much later, because of course United wouldn't let me fly to Korea with an expired passport, so I had to rebook my ticket and get an expedited renewal. I called dad first, to let him know what an a moron I am, and then went through the embarassing list of people I had to confess my own ineptitude to: mom, Sam & Jake, and... a sizeable chunk of my extended family on mom's side. Fortunately it only cost $250 to rebook for Friday the 10th, which meant instead of being only a date late for class because of mom's wedding, I was gonna be a week late because I'm a moron. However, I got my ticket, and went through the first hurdle on my way to clawing my way out of the embarassing pit I'd dug for myself.
I set off to rejoin my family at Millenium Park in downtown Chicago, along with all my luggage since thanks to the stupid terrorists there aren't any storage lockers at O'Hare International Airport anymore. So with Sam and Jake's help I dragged my stuff along Uncle Chris' architectural tour. That afternoon I called the State Department's automated number for appointments to get an expedited renewal. Everytime you call, it gives you this stupid long infomercial, including a notice regarding a class-action lawsuit against the state department over proper identification for people born with the assistance of midwives primarily in Texas!
Thank you State Department for knowing what information is important to everybody, and what information is important only to a select few. Then, to stress me out further, the state department's automated whatchamahavit said no appointments were available for July 14th! Aaagh. So, monday morning (the 6th) I went down to the Chicago office anyway, hoping maybe somebody else would not make their appointment, or something. I get up there, and its more or less like the DMV, only way more serious because they've got two state department military police guys guarding the entrance, who tell me I have to wait in a line outside the office. Meanwhile they remind us all to turn off our cell phones and any other electronic devices, or they will remove us from the building. So I stand in the line for a half hour, still not sure if I'll get anything out of this. Then I'm allowed into the office itself, and given the opportunity to stand in another line while I fill out a form that might perhaps be the one I need to fill out. Then I get to the head of the line, where the two clerks hand out numbered tickets, and you go sit down and wait for your name to be called. I start in on my spiel about I don't have an appt. till the 14th, but my flight is the 10th, yadda yadda. The guy says, yeah, we can help you, but you'll need new passport fotos, the ones you've brought have a blue background, and they have to have a white background. Okay. So I leave the line, go out the building, to the passport photo place and get 4 2x2 photos of me standing against a white background for $30.
Back into the federal building, to stand in the first two lines again, finally I get my ticket, and at this point I'm calmer, because I know things are gonna work out. Then finally my ticket is called, and they say they'll have it by wednesday afternoon at 3:00. What a relief. Especially because my backup plan if they couldn't help me was to take an overnight greyhound to Washington D.C., and get it done there. Thank goodness I checked with Chicago instead of just assuming the government gave me accurate information.
So apparently you don't really need an appointment, they just say that to discourage some people from utilizing expedited services. I went back in on wednesday . My receipt said to come in at 3:00 in the afternoon. I went in at 11:00 a.m. Just to see how things were going. The guard says to me, “why are you here if it says not until 3:00?” I try put on an air of politeness and cheerfulness in that, “sir, yes sir” kinda way, which as you can imagine is hard for me to do, and tell him I just wanted to check in and see if I could get out of their hair a bit faster. He says, okay, go to that office and stand in line. As I'm standing in line I notice my receipt says, “Do not come before the appointed time”.
So I meet the clerk, show him my receipt, and he says, wait just a moment and I'll call your name. Then he calls my name, and says, “well, this hardly ever happens, but here's your passport” “Wow, you typed out my personal information on a little blue booklet, affixed my photo to it and laminated it in a mere 48 hours instead of 52 hours?” I thought but didn't say.
So finally comes friday. Tom (mom's husband) was kind enough to get me a ride to the airport. I sit way in the back of the United Airlines plane, with hardly any legroom, between a fat white dude and his equally fat white/Asian son, and an Indonesian woman who turned out to be quite nice but who had big weird eyes and crazy looking hair that made me sure she was a witch-doctor (I kept expecting Guybrush Threepwood to sit down nearby), though she described her trip to Jakarta as business-related.
I slept fitfully, watched most of “Aliens vs. Monsters”, switching between the English and the German dubbing to keep it interesting, and then tried to watch “New in Town” with Rene Zellweger, available in English and Japanese, but eventually gave up on that cinematic turd. The little fat kid eventually squished himself onto the floor to get some decent rest, which I could understand, although I kinda worried I'd step on his head, and at one point his hand started crawling up my pants leg and I'm thinking, “do I know you?”
At one point they served us instant ramen noodles, which seemed cheap even for United. They also charged for alcoholic beverages, which is B.S., its supposed to be free on international flights. Finally we hit the ground in Tokyo Narita Airport; where they made us go through a security check even though we were only transiting, the morons.
I had commented to Sam and/or Jacob that I felt so stupid about my passport thing that I wasn't going to be able to be judgmental of anybody for several months at least. They helped out with a kind promise to help me find my helmet. As it turned out though, after finding out that renewing your passport isn't such a big deal even if you're a dumbass like me, I was back in judgmental mode after only a few days.
The flight from Tokyo to Seoul was better, I was seated in the emergency exit row, the holy grail of economy class. The leg room was great, too bad it was only a two hour flight to Seoul, instead of the 12 hours I endured from Chicago. I slept almost the whole way, though I briefly chatted in Chinese with the Taiwanese stewardess, and tried to read the “Yomiuri Shimbun” Newspaper in Japanese, with its ridiculously boring description of how quickly ballots were counted in municipal elections, and the budget deficit projections for the national health insurance program. Uggh.
We arrived in Seoul, and I was instantly assaulted by the heat and humidity. It was miserable, even at 8:00 p.m. I exchanged some of my old Chinese currency for Korean money, and my friend Chae-hui met me at the airport, and I crashed at his apartment where he lives with his wife and 17-month-year-old. The next morning I got up super early, because my body's internal clock thought it was mid-afternoon, showered, and waited for Chae-hui to wake up. Then we ate breakfast and played with his son, mostly picking him up by his legs upside down, looking at him weird, putting on shoes that don't fit, and opening and closing doors unnecessarily, the usual.
Chae-hui's mother-in-law lives quite near Korea University, where I would be studying, so Chae-hui and his family drove me there, and Chae-hui and I looked for places for me to live. In Korea, they have little apartment buildings called “Goshiwon”, which are essentially privately run dormitories, only better because they're cheaper, not segregated by gender, and don't have a curfew. It was pouring rain like crazy the whole time, so we rushed from car to building quickly, and after looking at three settled on “Myongmun Goshiwon” which is right across the street from campus.
My room is about 35 square feet, has a bed and a desk overlapping the bed, a chair, and a door. I think the claustrophobia may eventually get to me, but it only costs 175 dollars a month. Technically we only occupy one floor of this building, and we've got a little kitchen, and a disgusting bathroom with water all over the floor because of the shower. I know its not pee, just shower water, but still, eww (and you're talking to a guy who used his brother's toothbrush).
After picking out my coffin, we went back to Chae-hui's mother-in-law's house, where she was kind enough to cook lunch. Chae-hui's son invented a game of butting his forehead against mine, which I thought was cute, although after the fifth time I started to worry he'd give himself brain damage and grow up to be a guy who doesn't renew his passport on time.
I took a fitful afternoon nap; it's so hot and humid here, I kind of don't think I'll sleep well until I get back to Seattle in September; also my mattress is rock-hard. After my “rest” I got back up, walked around for about an hour looking for an electronics store that had a converter for my laptop's power cable; my computer can handle 220 volts, but the physical shape of the Korean plug is different, so needed a converter. After two stores I returned to the university, got on the subway to East Gate station, and found a bigger department store with a guy that had one. Whilst in the area I stopped by a Chuck Taylor/ Converse All-Star store, and met my first high-pressure salesperson in Korea.
I returned home, slept, sort of, and awoke, sort of, the next morning, in time to wait outside the Korean Language Education office for two hours while I waited for it to open at 9:00 a.m. At around 8:15 or so I was joined by a Chinese girl who had also arrived late for the start of classes, which was a relief, nice not to be the only one in my situation. We chatted for a while in Chinese, she was from Nanjing, but studied in Shenyang, which is not terribly far from Harbin (where I studied when I lived in China). Around 8:30 a Korean fellow, probably a teacher, passed by, and mentioned to us that the office didn't open until 9:00 (thank you Captain Obvious), but I had learned from the past week not to pay attention to officially posted times or estimates. Sure enough, at 8:50 someone opened the office up, and let us in, and allowed us the privilege of waiting for someone else to arrive that could help us. In the office they have three secretaries who specifically specialize as the English, Japanese, and Chinese consultants. As luck would have it, the Chinese consultant arrived first, so we explained our respective problems to her (which was nice because I preferred not to describe in English what a moron I was). She gave us a piece of paper to write a self-introduction in Korean, and then a teacher interviewed us briefly to assess our language abilities, and assigned us a class, and that was that. She gave me a map, my own little Koryo University neckerchief, and told me where my classroom was. I walked across campus, popped my head in, and explained my situation, and sat down.
There are approximately 12 of us; two Japanese, one American (that's me), and 9 or so Chinese. After a brief flurry of excitement about the fact that I also spoke Japanese and Chinese, we got back to work. Part of time I understood what was going on, and part of the time I didn't, so I think I was assigned to the right class level. During break I bought my textbooks, and after class I took a nap, ate some of the free rice and kimchee my apartment offers, and that was that. Just a few minutes ago it passed 9:00 p.m., and I thought, “ooh, futurama is on” - but then I remembered I was in Korea.
Its kind of a weird feeling being here. Relatively I did very little preparation for this trip: I'm only going to be here 74 days so I don't need a visa, I didn't reserve a place to live till I got here, I had no real idea what the curriculum was going to be like, and I spent most of the day bumming around. So far that's Korea.

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Photos

quizno's in Seoul
They've got Quiznos

Comments

[risa]

thanks for giving me the link,interesting
Well, that could happen when you do something together at the same time. So next time try to make a space for everything. That will be a lot easier although you have to wait, but better pay a price later. :D Now I continued reading... oh and put some pictures would be nice ;)

[Mary]

Hopefully, they will teach you to use paragraphs in Korea.