And Kate Finally Makes an Appearance

Nathan has informed me that it is about time that I got my act together and contributed to this blog. Trouble is, he's already told just about everything there is to know about our first week. At least, all the stuff I would want to write in this blog about. Generously, however, he is allowing me to make a redundant post. So here it is, email #1 to my folks from Korea (edited for length):

Dear Mom and Dad,

Flying Korean Air was lovely, roomy, and involved an unexpected seat upgrade. We moved from last row, middle seats apart, to front of the cabin window seats together. and it was a full plane. I have no idea why the generous gate attendant singled us out for this, but it made the flight, which might have been awful, quite easy and comfortable.

Things began to go downhill when we got off the airplane. mistake number one: we did not change money at the airport. There wasn't time. A man, waving and smiling, met us at the arrivals gate and hustled us, unspeaking, out to the curb. He, smiling, unspeaking, then handed us over to another man with a van. this new guy didn't speak English, so he just smiled and drove off across the mud flats and into the Seoul suburbs. Then on through the bleakest of highrise lands and into the even dingier and more remote suburbs. Twilight came on, the highway kept going and when we pulled off of it onto a access road, everything looked alot like a rest stop on the turnpike: empty and ugly.

We went down that road for a bit, he made a phone call to... someone. Pulled over for a while, and we had more time to sit and take in the full impact of our choice. Yoeju, from what we could tell, seemed to be the smallest county seat in Korea, the poorest, and the least developed. (as we learned later, this is mostly accurate. it only got Internet about 2 years ago, and still lacks many necessities. who said teaching in Korea wouldn't provide some developing world experience!?)

Now in total darkness, the driver took us around the city, over a broad, silted river, and into another wasteland of new highrises surrounded by construction sites. These were new, swank places with gatekeepers, underground parking, and the unlived-in, unloved atmosphere of new developments. It was almost entirely dark. We cautiously followed our still-silent driver into the dark concrete bowels of this complex, down a dark hallway, and began to prey we hadn't fallen victim to some illicit international organ-harvesting scheme. Codes were punched in at the door, disembodied voices squawked over intercoms, and then we were shuffled into a dark, cardboard coated and-- strangely-- graffiti-covered-- elevator. the guy stood back politely to let us on first, pushed all of the luggage in around us, and, as the door began to close, his arm snaked through the breach, and punched a floor number. Then the door closed. He was gone, and we were rattling up to floor 13 in a rickety, shaky, graffiti-ed elevator with no idea who we would meet or whether this half-world of concrete would be our new home or just some way-point on our way... where? At the time, i was pretty sure that when the door opened it would to a chloroform bath and a quick scalpel aimed at my kidneys.

Of course this did not happen, though a number of strange and awkward situations did ensue.

It's a cliff hanger you see. The questions: will Kate and Nathan like their new home? Who are these people they will be working with and for? Is Yoeju a terrible place, or just one not best seen by twilight?

For myself, it's a good thing I don't have more time to write this morning, because I'm still too much inside these cliffhanger questions to provide much narrative direction to events. I swing wildly from thinking this was a huge mistake to thinking it can't be so bad. Moment to moment. Things have gotten slightly better-- we are no longer entirely in crisis mode. As Nathan's more succinct emails mentioned, we have met some folks and have moved into better digs. Things are looking more palatable.