in Korea!

The story of our arrival is sort of a long one. I will try to briefly describe it, and then move on to more exciting things. We flew non-stop from Chicago to Seoul. We went through customs, and wandered aimlessly around searching for the subway. We found it and bought tickets from the airport into Seoul's main station. We waited patiently as many non-express trains went by, and met a nice English girl going to teach in Masan. We got on the train and started talking. We shared in a lot of confusion and a local Korean over heard us, and joined in the conversation. What friendly people! He had spent quite a bit of time working in Skokie (of all places!) and so was quite good at English. He gave us lots of advice and information. When we got off the train we met another couple look super confused and carrying lots of luggage. It turns out that the woman (Memuna) is also a new English teacher in Ulsan! So we all took the train together to Ulsan!

We arrived in Ulsan around 10pm. We had called Eric's director when we got on the train to Ulsan and were told that when we got to Ulsan "a man in a van would pick us up and take us to our hotel". He would be holding a sign that says "Mr. Eric". So we arrive and disembark the train. Immediately a random American man strikes up a conversation with the four of us. We are all disoriented and overwhelmed. We got quite distracted and mingled on the platform for too long, and very slowly made our way to the entrance of the station.

There a man holding a sign that says "Eric" grabs two of our luggage and starts dashing away at breakneck speed. As we rush our goodbyes and run after him, we see that he was parked sort of half on the sidewalk and half in the bus lane. He spoke no English and after shoveling us and our luggage into the van drove off into the night. After a while on some high volume roads, he took what looked like an off ramp. Eric, asleep with his head on my shoulder, missed the ultra sketchiness that ensued. We pulled up over a hill and as we reached the top the driver switched from brights to normal headlights, and plunged the car down the hill into darkness. We had suddenly gone from brightly lit interstates to dark residential roads. We drove around tight corners and back alley ways for maybe ten minutes. Every time I couldn't see the tiny alley next to us where we were about to turn I would look out the front at a tiny house falling apart with some trash in the front yard, and wonder "Did we just get kidnapped?" or "Is this what Korean hotels look like?" We reemerged into an area with neon signs and flashing lights. The driver pulled up outside of a building, got out and ran into a building. He came out and ran around the corner. When he returned he was on the phone shouting in Korean at someone. After a moment or two of this he hung up and started to drive again. We drove around some more and finally he brought us to our hotel. He checked us in and paid and helped us with our luggage to our room. He was able to signal to us that we should take our shoes off in the entrance way and then repeatedly signaled the number three at us. We had been told we would be picked up at 1pm the next day. He was so insistent we thought that we would be picked up at three the next day not one. This was not the case, but it appears I have other pressing matters to attend to at the moment. I shall continue this epic shortly and I thank you for your patience.