Oh yes...Miss H is here. She had a hell of a ride across the ocean. Our little black cat, Charlie, was quite a trooper during the whole affair. Thanks to some directions I had a coworker translate, Miss H found herself a cab from Incheon Airport to my apartment building (for 70,000 won!) and installed herself there forthwith. The two of us have spent our time getting reacquainted, purchasing needful things for this bachelor pad, and exploring greater Seoul.
(The name of my apartment building, by the way, is Estima Officetel. I shall refer to it simply as "Estima" from here on out. I'm getting sick of typing "my apartment building.")
Speaking for myself, it's taken a remarkably short time for me to fit back into the expatriate lifestyle. I go to work in the afternoons and evenings; get home and cook something non-Korean for dinner; read a book, pen a blog post or add something to the novel; go to sleep at some obscenely late hour; wake up late and do errands; nod to my fellow round-eyes in the street, as though we're members of some secret society; and observe the oddities and idiosyncrasies of this foreign nation with bemused eyes.
What oddities and idiosyncrasies, you ask?
I'll tell you.
Korea is the only country I've been in where you have to ask the street vendor not to put sugar on your corn dog...
...where wailing ambulances stop for red lights and city buses routinely blow them...
...where you'll find old folks in the city park at midnight using the free exercise equipment...
...where scooter-riders can't seem to decide whether they're pedestrians or vehicles...
...where things like turkey, limes, and clothes-drying machines are needless fripperies...
...where trucks mounted with loudspeakers drive slowly through urban neighborhoods blasting ads for various products at annoying decibel levels...
...where political candidates hire people off the street to dress up in flamboyant colors and dance the boogie outside subway stations to drum up support for their campaigns...
...and oodles more.
I'd really like to be able to show you this stuff instead of tell you, but I gotta get a better camera. My small, cherry-red Canon PowerShot A480 just doesn't have the aperture or the F-stops to capture the essence of Korea.
Ah, how do I explain it? How do I delineate the charm, the wonderment, the magic of being back? Being abroad once more? Being in a new town, a new(ish) country once again? How can I describe what even pictures cannot capture, like the party we expatriates (and a few lucky Koreans) had on the roof of Estima for Cinco de Mayo?
The infinite majesty of King Sejong's statue at Gwanghwamun (the largest gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace...yes, that's me in the picture)?
The breathtaking beauty of the Cheonggyecheon, the murmuring stream that runs through central Seoul, glowing at night with colored lights?
Dining at Gwangjang Market, a smorgasbord of the most delectable Korean street food?
The endless glittering labyrinth of the COEX Mall in Jamsil, the largest underground mall in Asia?
Watching shifty Korean guys play cards on a makeshift table on the streets of Itaewon (when they saw me, they hid their faces)?
The mind-blowing view from the observation deck of N'Seoul Tower?
The enormity, variety and diversity of the Nakwon Music Mall in Insadong?
I suppose the whole experience is encapsulated in the walks I take every evening. Some nights are so cool and moist, and the stars so obscured, and the distant silhouettes of apartment buildings so dim, and the streetlights so bright, it's almost as though I'm walking along the bottom of the ocean. The depth, the scope, the full import of the fact that I'm here, in East Asia once more, living and working in a foreign country, breathing foreign air and eating foreign food, existing day-to-day in a place that's incontestably alien and yet somehow not so—it all hits me then.
Someday I'll post a picture. A good picture.
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