Home...again.

I walked through the door of my apartment less than an hour ago. After putting my bags down, making myself some dinner and watching CNN I suddenly felt like I had never left. Here I am... again. At the moment only the weariness I feel and my bags by the door bare witness to my travels.

I am suddenly overwhelmed by a thoughtful melancholy about the nature of life and time.... Hopeful future birthed into the reality of the present only to die as a memory of the past. My last two weeks seems like a vapor. I have already begun to wonder if any of it happened at all...

In a total change of mood, I think I'll tell you a story I never got around to writing.

I need to preface this story by saying that Koreans are wonderful people and I love the fact that they take it upon themselves to help foreigners who are visiting their country. Their generous concern has helped me out of many potentially frightening situations. I owe them much.

My story begins a few months ago as I was concluding a short trip to Japan. I arrived at Incheon airport in the evening and had to find a motel to spend the night. The information desk proved its worth and provided me with the phone number of a motel near the domestic airport, an hours bus ride away. I was to call the motel when I arrived and they would pick me up and drive me to the motel.

When I got on the bus for the domestic airport, the bus driver grew concerned that I didn't know that there were no more domestic flights departing that evening. When he told me so, I replied that I was going to a motel near the airport and would catch a flight the next day. A light blinked on in the bus drivers eyes and he nodded. An hour later, we arrived at the terminal and I stood up to get off. The driver looked at me and shook his head, telling me I couldn't get off. When I didn't sit back down he stood up and barred my way. I told him I was going to a motel but he still wouldn't let me off. I was confused. Speaking very slowly (which is the only way I speak Korean) I repeated that I was going to motel and wanted off. He nodded and said that he was going to drop me off at a motel on the way back to the airport. I said thank-you-very-much but I had a motel lined up and would be fine.

The way I'm writing this conversation is a great deal more fluid than it actually was. The actually conversation, translated as far as I understood, went something like this.

Me: I... Motel... uh... know.

Driver: (KoreanKoreanKorean) motel (Korean) go (KoreanKorean).

Me: ???

Driver: (repeat previous statement about 5 times)

Me: Motel...car...airport come.

Driver: Generally expressing disbelief (KoreanKoreanKoreanKorean!!!)

Me: More persistently MOTEL KNOW!

Driver: Motel (KoreanKorean) bus take. Points in the direction of the city.

Me: No, No! Motel car come, I KNOW.

Driver: (KoreanKoreanKorean!) Conveyed in the tones of yeah right.

Me: Cell phone number have. See! Showing driver the number the info desk gave me.

Driver: (KoreanKorean) Takes the paper, gets out his phone and dials the number.

Me: Rolling eyes in anticipation of more confusion to come.

Driver: On phone. Hello?(KoreanKoreanKorean). Begins to yell.
(KOREANKOREAN!!) foreigner (KOREANKOREANKOREANKOREAN!!) motel (KoreanKorean). Oh, really? (KOREANKOREAN!!KoreanKorean) Okay. Hangs up.

At which point I was finally allowed to get off the bus. The driver made it clear, however, that whatever motel he was going to drop me off at would have been much better than the one I was going to. By the way, I condensed this conversation for easy reading. You have to multiply the confusion by a power of 10 to get a more accurate idea of what transpired.

This was not the first time I have been helped by over eager Koreans. Usually, a greater percentage of these experiences revolve around the airport. I think airport employees are continuously lectured that it is their duty to help confused and ignorant foreigners--even when they are neither confused nor ignorant. Seriously, the bus driver was not going to let me off the bus until he was absolutely confident that some other Korean was going to take care of me. I did appreciate his concern but he was a little overboard. What would have happened if I didn't have the motel's number with me??

Can you think of another country in the world where people (especially airport employees) have the tendency to be too helpful, or even forcefully helpful? Can you imagine a bus driver in the States forcing a foreigner to stay on the bus until he was completely sure they knew what they were doing even though they insisted they did?? It's a strange thing.