We Arrive

Sunday, February 19th to Monday, February 20th
We arrive:

When our alarm went off at a nauseating 3:30 AM in Salt Lake City, it actually took me a few seconds to remember what was going on. Then, something like a bowling ball dropping on my chest, the sleepy stupor shook itself off, and I remembered.
Oh God, it's actually happening. Melly and I are actually moving to South Korea.
Right. Now.
It was really a blessing that we had to be at the airport so God-awfully early. The terror and excitement that might've reduced me to a blubbering mess at any other time of the day was instead dulled to bleary-eyed resignation. My parents drove us on slushy snowy Utah freeways to the terminal. We didn't ride in complete silence, but it was close. After so many months and months of waiting and speculating, the moment of goodbye itself was surreal, almost anticlimactic. I couldn't emotionally access what was happening, so I just let it roll on by.
Man our luggage is heavy. We were ridiculously bogged down standing in the baggage check line, but thankfully we quickly dropped the bulk of it off and began a 24 hour process of waiting and flying. I was expecting the day to be pretty horrible, but actually, once we started walking around without giant horrible backpacks and luggage, finding our gates, going through security, making our transfers, sipping airport coffee and eating airport sandwiches was actually pretty fun. It felt good to be responsible for our own decisions, to not be able to defer to someone else's experience or expertise. And it felt good to be successful with that responsibility.
The flight across the Pacific (well, we actually flew over the continental coasts and across the Bering Strait--probably a better idea) was surprisingly pleasant. We flew with Asiana airlines, and the experience was GREAT. Delicious, high quality food, free wine, friendly staff. We had OCTOPUS on the plane, for crying out loud. And BIBIMBAP. And STEAK. And SALMON. And it was GOOD. I mean, seriously. Awesome. Fly with them if you can.
The relativity of time in that aircraft was interesting. I can't sleep well in planes, so I took a Benadryl to knock myself out. Maybe I got three hours of sleep, maybe I got six. In retrospect, I find it impossible to tell. Being on that plane was like being in a womb. Small, compact, comfortable. My needs were met before I had to think about them, and the world outside was just some vague suggestion on a screen in the seat-back in front of me. The birth that awaited us seemed impossibly distant, irrelevant. More wine, please.
The Seoul airport was a breeze. We didn't even have to stop walking to go through customs. Sweet.
Then we waited for about 2 hours for our buddy James to get off work and meet us. James was our saving grace (or saving Gracey, heh heh). He helped us with our luggage, walked us to the airport subway station that looked like some galactic space port, and helped us find the way to the hostel. We probably could've done it on our own with much effort and a lot of wasted time, but man oh man am I glad James Gracey lived in Seoul that night.
The walk to the hostel was not easy. For the first time since the airport that morning (24 hours earlier), we had to bear the full brunt of our luggage, navigate through crowded subway stations, walk up a staircase to the street that will forever live in infamy in my brain, and out into the strange and wonderful world of Seoul. A city block later, it was practically a miracle that we saw the small sign tucked down a side alley--"Mr. Kim's Friend's Guest House." Oh thank God, get these backpacks off of us.
We plopped the luggage down in our cramped little hostel room and headed back out into the streets. My jaw was completely dropped the next couple of hours as James led us down narrow streets clustered with small shops, restaurants, flashing lights, never-ending tunnels of blinking lights in Hangeul characters that may as well have been hieroglyphics or alien code, James pointing out little gems of clubs, bars, and restaurants stacked three, four, seven or eight on top of each other. We wound our way through a couple of corners, and I realized, not five minutes after we left the hostel, that if we suddenly got separated from James, I would have NO CLUE how to get back, that we would wander forever through the neon signs and stacks of restaurants until the sun rose, and maybe an English speaking somebody might take mercy on us, sleeping in a gutter somewhere, and also happen to know the way back to Mr. Kim's Friend's Guesthouse. Luckily, that didn't happen.
Instead, James took us to a charming little restaurant called "Jawsfood," with only 4 items on the menu, all of them completely unintelligible to me. James ordered for us, and soon we were laughing over a bowl of a delicious fish broth, a plate of perfectly fried tempura, and a bowl of little chewy rice cakes in a FANTASTICALLY spicy sauce. Our first Korean food, and it was amazing.
James led us through the streets for an hour and a half after that, pointing out Hongdae Park, shopping districts, bars and clubs, delicious hole-in-the-wall restaurants. We wound in and out of narrow alleys and wide city streets. I had no idea where we were, even relatively where the hostel might be, and my brain was operating basically as well as a bowl of bean noodles. It was too much. Just too much to take anything in.
So we made it back to the hostel. I would later realize that we never left a tiny little rectangle of streets in our immediate vicinity, even though it seemed we walked miles into a impenetrable labyrinth. It wasn't long before we collapsed into bed, completely overwhelmed and perfectly drained. We slept.
I woke up four hours later, at 5:30 AM Seoul time. My body was positive, it told me, that it was mid-afternoon and I'd better be getting up. I tried to explain the situation to it, but it wouldn't have it. My mind had joined the game and was trying to do the impossible--make sense of what was going on--so I was completely screwed.
I woke up and read a book until the sun came up.