Landing Abroad

Started off the day in Timmins, Ontario, waking up at 4 AM to catch the red-eye flight at 6 AM to Toronto's Pearson International Airport. We didn't have any hitches, here--we'd been worried our bags would get lost in the shuffle or something would get confiscated, somehow. We'd been careful not to pack anything like razor blades or gels, but you never know. Especially since Jen decided we should paint our bags with what we belatedly realized was some sort of rust paint to ensure that our bags were identifiable. A long story, but in short, a friend of Jen's mom had actually hand painted (with fabric paints, not the other stuff) some really cute designs to help distinguish two of our bags and ensure we didn't lose them in the airport, so we wanted to make sure the other ones that didn't have the designs to be semi-recognizeable.

Let's get something out of the way: the flight is 13 hours long. That's right, 13 hours from Toronto to Seoul-Incheon International Airport. That's not including the wait between flights, since we arrived at Pearson at 8 AM, and our flight left Pearson at 10AM. There's also customs, but believe it or not, Korean customs is rather pleasantly painless and quick compared to some places we've been to (Gatwick is by far the worst organized airport customs I've ever seen, by comparison). So we were in transit for almost 18 hours, give or take a bit.

We were rewarded with some gorgeous views of Alaska and the Bering Strait, since the flight took us over that route. Nothing but mountains and cool green land below, and then the dizzying blue-on-blue of the Pacific when we started angling south towards Mongolia, Japan, and Korea.

We approached Korea from the eastern coast, from what we call the Sea of Japan but what is referred to here as the East Sea. From above, Korea is... different. It's mostly green, with one or two areas that look like sand or mining from above, but is probably homes and small-ish cities in reality. It looks almost uninhabited in places--something we've learned is not exactly accurate once we landed!--and it's hard to understand why until you get to ground level and realize that Korea is almost entirely mountainous. What little land is flat and closer to sea level is heavily urbanized and developed to within an inch of its life. Such as, for example, Seoul and Incheon. Seoul looks like a combination of what thinks of in a regular city from above, combined with an urban sprawl that goes on for several dozen if not a hundred kilometres, and massive, box-like buildings that are visible from the air above it like cigarette cartons sticking up from the ground.

Seoul is composed of 10 million souls plus, and it looks it. Incheon, Suwon, and several other cities, once undoubtedly more isolated, are now connected to the capital of South Korea by a very well-designed series of highways, bus routes, subways, and railroads. The roads cut through the mountains, literally, via a series of tunnels that connect districts of Seoul and Incheon to other burroughs and to the other cities surrounding the megapolis. Incheon is out near the coast, a gorgeous series of beaches, atolls, and small islands stretching into the South China Sea. After collecting our bags and breezing through customs (I kid you not, it took all of 20 minutes), we were greeted by a young Korean man who directed us to a cab, told it where to go (evidently it was pre-arranged by the company since we didn't have to pay for it) and sent us off with a wave before turning back to the terminal to await the next flight of ESL teachers inbound, from New York City, I gather from the folks we met at orientation today.

Driving in Korea is much like driving in any other country, except that there are many more people here then there are in anyplace in Canada, proportionally. Even Toronto is not so densely populated--you could, apparently, fit all of Greater Seoul into the GTA area a couple of times over, but have almost four or five times more people. The mountains (baby mountains, our colleague Jin calls them) jut up around the highway. It's unlike anything else I've ever seen, save for, maybe, the Appalachians. These mountains are much smaller than the Appalachians or the Rockies, but the density of the hills is astonishing. Especially given that the Koreans appear to have built around and below the hills in the valleys of the country, rather than trying to build up onto them like San Francisco or Rome. It's a neat change, and gives one the impression of a society trying to live in some form of harmony with its surroundings as much as imposing the human presence on the environment it inhabits.

We arrived in Suwon after about 2 hours of travel by taxi (have I mentioned I'm glad we didn't have to pay for the trip yet?) due to the traffic. Suwon is, by comparison to Seoul, not overly huge. It's connected to the megapolis by highway and is on the tail end of the 1 Subway line, so it feels like they're almost one city. Suwon is, still, smaller, and less dense as a result. We were dropped off outside our school's building, and dragged our bags up inside and into an elevator to the 6th Floor. We met Jin, our supervisor, along with BJ, the manager of the Youngdong campus where we work, and a few other coworkers: Naomi; Jin's boyfriend Aki; and two women named Sarah, one Korean, and one a Westerner.

BJ, Jin, Sarah (Sarah "2," as she calls herself, the Westerner), and Aki helped us load up BJ's SUV, and Jin drove us, along with Aki and Sarah to our apartment, about a five-minute walk from the school building itself.

We unpacked, and Sarah and Jin showed us how to make use of the amenities--the heat in Korean apartments comes up from pipes inserted just below the floorboards, which makes for an interesting experience, apparently. One can, in winter, freeze glass next to an open window if one's not careful, while the occupant of the apartment sleeps warm and snug in bed on a mattress on the floor.

The bathroom's one area where the difference sinks in: one showers in the same "section" of the bathroom as the toilet and the sink. Water drains down through a grille in the floor, and one squeegees the remaining water into the drain after one finishes.

Overall, our room is quite nice. It's not huge, but it's hardly as tiny as one might think it would be. Apparently, the room we're in is a bachelor, but it's comfortable enough for two, and we haven't even moved into the bigger flat where we'll be staying in October once the other couple currently working here leaves.

A neat experience. The jetlag is rough, but we managed to trick our bodies enough by not sleeping until 10 PM Korean time (we landed at 12 noon, or 11 PM the previous day EST), and by not eating food on the plane until it was appropriate to do so for Korean time (i.e., no dinner EST, but breakfast at 6 AM on the plane KST).

Speaking of jetlag--it's definitely setting in, now, so I think I'm going to crawl into bed. We start at 1PM tomorrow for more training, so I'm going to try and get some rest.

Best regards,

Chris