Changing Tables

Well, here we are. After 268 days of waiting, after I made my next flight reservation to Korea last year, I made it, not just once to Detroit, not just once to Seoul but a third time to Jeju-do. If I do the math right, and I was never good in math, it calculates to…a long time of many hours in three separate airports. It was only my final destination that there was a delay of any kind; 45 minutes in departure time to the island. In the 4 trips here, I have never encountered any major snags. I attribute it to my Korean guardian angel somewhere in the heavenlies.

Airports are fascinating places to me. In a slip of time, you are sharing space with people you will never see again, but what if you do and you don’t know it? What if there were an airport video somewhere showing two people walking past one another in the same airport 5 years apart? The making of a movie of intrigue. People watching is, indeed, at its finest in the airport world. And when I’m not searching for the family bathroom, where I can have a room the size of my kitchen all to myself to make faces in the mirror and talk out loud to me, I watch people with the eye of an artist ready to draw their portrait. Who are they? What have they experienced in this life? What advice would they give me if I asked (my favorite thing to ask lately, by the way).

I pulled down the baby changing table in my bathroom “living room” to put my purse on and there was a sticker. “Here for the changes”. I smiled to myself. Yes we are, changing table! These past four trips to Korea have changed me. I found out so much I didn’t know. Most of all, I found I could do what I didn’t think I could, like eat squid and oyster stew and find my way around a subway station. I lost the ability to let fear be my tourist guide. The first time I smell hesitation on my breath, I make myself do it. I may do it dipping one toe in at a time but eventually the whole foot will follow and I will dance like no one is watching! I learned that different is not wrong or right; just … different. And slowly the different becomes familiar and I am one more step towards …ahhh, yes, this is how we do it here. I high fived the changing table as I walked out the door to find my gate. Thanks for the change, table!

The biggest dawning of the mind sun has been how I landed in Korea and forgot to feel like I was in a foreign country. I knew to turn left at the end of the hallway coming out of the plane. I knew what documents to have at the ready. I breezed through immigration feeling confident and turned right to go down the escalator to grab my baggage, just like always. But the thing that made me look around with surprise, and say…”well, whatdoyaknow” to myself….was that nothing looked or sounded unfamiliar. The language from the intercom, from the people around me, from the signs pointing this way or that, only sometimes with English translation, the beautiful black hair, pants, shirts, jackets…with a splash of white or gray….it felt like I was among friends. It felt like home. I was comfortable.

The flight from Cincinnati to Detroit is short. The flight from Detroit to Seoul……is not. It used to be “only” 12 hours, until flying over Russia became not a thing we do. That change in traffic pattern gave us 2 more glorious hours in the air, more time to shift and shift and shift again in our seats trying to find a way to sleep without laying down. I found 10 minute increments….three times. I read that book I brought….for a total of ten minutes. I don’t like to read when I feel like it’s my only choice. So, I settled on screen time and watched Harriet and cried through thoughts of people persecuted for different reasons through history and how absolutely lost we can become. I took a picture of one of our meals because the young Korean lady beside me did and it reminded me that Korean people really like to take pictures of what they’re eating and I love that about them.

After landing, immigration and baggage claim I headed for the bathrooms, found my stall of choice and walked in. Ah, it’s you, I thought to myself. We meet again. The first time I found myself in this situation….I had to take a picture of the panel of choices and put it through a translator app to try and figure out what in the actual world I was supposed to do…..only to figure out after a panicked 5 minutes stifling laughter (Korean bathrooms are very politely SILENT), that the flush button (with English translation) was behind the lid that I had not put down yet. Not this time, though. I smiled at myself as I knew just what to do (flushing, at least). I don’t dare push the other buttons. I did that once. Still traumatized by what happened. 😀

Having already navigated 3 airports, finding my way to the loading station for my T card money, the subway and the terminal after the subway dumped us out in a maze of signs, sounds and decisions, I found my gate and sat to think. There’s where the exhaustion fairy found me. I sat on the floor and dug through my little purple rollaway friend and pulled out my special adapter to plug in my phone and make sure connection to the world at large wasn’t lost. The intercom sounded and everyone stood up. I take cues from body language to know what to do so I stood up and boarded the last frontier before Island life became my new home. It was a short flight, an hour and a few minutes. I looked out below me. Korea. I made it, God. I thought back to my inward low level anxiousness before I left. Would all the connections be ok? Would I make it everywhere on time? One snag could have left me sleeping on an airport floor, which, now that I think about it, might have been wonderful. But here I was and I can’t believe I am.

My friend introduced me to the so very kind Korean friends who insisted on driving the hour to and from the airport and providing us both with accommodations, a house that they have a dream to turn into a prayer house and cafe. We drug my world in a suitcase into the house and said “감사합니다” to our hosts before they drove away to their own apartment. Big sigh. “Home.” The day, which consisted of two days, was finished. My friend showed me the lay of the land and I sat with my rice and rice bread snack and curled up surprisingly cozy on my heated stone mattress and fell asleep fast. I was in Korea. <3

The day here had dawned balmy and Florida-like. I woke at 7 a.m. feeling just like the motto of Korea…Land of the Morning Calm. There was no sound coming from outside, my friend was still sleeping and coffee beckoned. I made myself some Maxim; a common instant coffee here that I order from Amazon when I’m at home. And then….it was time for the shower. All the….ahhhh yesses came flooding back. I had to figure out my strategy. It’s like walking to the shower at camp.

Our friends will be here soon to “take care of us” for today. I will see my first glimpse of Jeju in the daylight. Looking towards the mountain we will climb in two days’ time. As if I haven’t already climbed mountains to get here.

Ready for changes.