A New Stamp in My Passport

The first bit of Korea that I could see two days ago was a patch of mountains on my right as I sat cocooned safely in my 747 and a purple blanket. They reached up out of a hazy mist, the crinkled edges of their peaks distinguishing them one from another. As we got lower I could see the tall skinny apartment buildings, common to every city town and hamlet in the country. They stood like pale upright dominoes placed in rows and at right angles, daring some giant finger to start them falling. Lower and lower, bridges, roads, cars, and people, all came into view, and the wheels touched down. A flight that had started many hours and many thousands of miles before on a different continent, on the other side of a vast ocean, was finally done but for the taxiing. My anxious airplane neighbor could finally rest easy – we had come to the ground on purpose and without any cause for tears or flotation devices.

Ramps, escalators, lines, customs, baggage – I followed the person in front of me with my passport and immigration form at the ready until I found my bags, wheeled them through one more door and found my name scrawled on a sign held by a very nice young man who spoke very little English. But together Seong-Min and I made it to a van and he started driving us and four suitcases (three big, one little) to Korea Nazarene University.

As we crossed the bridge that connects the island where Incheon International Airport sits to Seoul proper – more than thirteen miles of bridge-y goodness and ten minutes of driving – the evening fog was rolling in off the water, obscuring everything that hugged the ground. The taller buildings rose up out of the mist, a floating city built precariously on a cloud.

Seong-Min and I soon exhausted most of what we had to say to each other. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to offer much in the way of interesting conversation. Between the lack of common language and the jetlag I couldn’t think of much to talk about. But on the two-ish hour drive south I had the time and alertness to notice two things: first, most places look strikingly similar in the dark; second, I was exhausted. That second one came to me as I teetered back and forth on the knife-edge of consciousness.

But I was just alert enough to know when we turned off the highway into Cheonan, and, as I leaned forward to catch my first impressions of this strange and foreign city at nighttime, the very first thing I caught sight of was a Bridgestone tire store. We came to a stop light and Seong-Min hummed a Kelly Clarkson song while he waited for green. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting from Cheonan, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it. Though I suppose Koreans need good tires and Kelly Clarkson just like the rest of the world does.

After that, however, much less was familiar. The city shone like a cross between a mini Korean version of Las Vegas and Bedford Falls when old man Potter was running the joint. Flashing lights and colors attacked the senses from all directions, drivers blatantly ignored red lights, pedestrians, other drivers, and sidewalks, and more tall skinny buildings connected to each other by low skinny roads.

I was greeted in front of my new building by Tenny and shown to my new room, furnished with a mishmash of left-behind bits and pieces and standards that are common to all foreign professors’ rooms. A desk, a bookcase, a wardrobe, a couch, a chair. Cracked walls covered in old blue sticky tack circles, wood-patterned veneer peeling off the door, construction paper taped to the transom area to keep out the hallway light. A new rice cooker on the counter, a new stripey comforter for the bed, a new bottle for water and a charge not to drink anything from the tap.

Tenny and Seong-Min took me to a nearby Italian (in a Korean way) restaurant and we had dinner. I was more tired than hungry at that point, though, so after Seong-Min finished his own meal and Tenny’s leftovers, he polished mine off as well. He really seemed quite pleased that I wasn’t all that hungry.

And after that, back to my room and to work on unpacking. Just enough to feel like I had accomplished something. Then to bed on the hardest mattress on which I’ve ever had the misfortune to rest my hipbone. But I think I could have slept on the cement floor just as easily – sometimes a person is just too tired to care about anything but eyelids and pillows.