Busan Journal, Day 2

Chicago-Incheon-Seoul

We arrived four hours early at the deserted Asiana Airlines gate for our 1 AM flight from O’Hare to Incheon/Seoul.  It is hard to imagine any part of O’Hare nearly shut down, but there we were.  We lined up our carryon bags eight or ten rows away from the ticket counter and settled in.  The flight from Rochester, delayed though it was, had still arrived way ahead of our connection.

It is genuinely hard to kill time.  We read, walked around, ate snacks, watched.  Gradually, the waiting area began to fill up.  I remember looking up once to discover that a nearly empty room had suddenly filled.

Not surprisingly for a flight to Seoul, the passangers were mostly Asian. Families with small children, old couples, college and high school age kids traveling by themselves, women and men in business suits – just lots of folks. 

Had we been able to understand any language but English we might easily have listened in on dozen of conversations.  Without knowing the languages, I can often distinguish Chinese from Korean or from something else.  

Still, it all seemed normal somehow.  After years of exposure to international students, the rapid exchanges of conversation, incomprehensible though it all remains, was somehow comforting to me. I credit my many Asian daughters and sons with making me feel at ease both there in the waiting area at O’Hare and on the Asiana flight to Korea.

The flight was as free of trauma as a fourteen hour flight can be.  The real troopers on board were the parents with small children, of whom there were many. One poor woman, seated near the bulkhead in front of us, was on her feet for hours on end while her children sprawled across her seat to sleep.

When we arrived at Incheon, we began to feel the need for English more acutely, if only because we were tired and wanted to move more quickly than our incomprehension allowed.  We were nearly the last people off the plane and we were nearly the last ones from our flight in line through immigration.   

By the time we arrived at baggage claim, our suitcases were circling around nearly by themselves.

We were not sure what we would find once we cleared customs and walked out into the arrival area.  But before we even located the driver who had been sent to drive us into Seoul, Ahn Mi-Sook appeared out of the crowd and gave Donna a big hug.  

 She does not speak much English and we speak no Korean, but we know her from her trip to Houghton last June for her son’s graduation.  Now she is family.

She had come to the airport to welcome us to Korea.  We will learn what it means to be in the minority in the next four months, a first lesson in cultural adjustment.   But at the moment it does not seem so bad; Mi-Sook got us started off on the right note.  She has given our experience a loving face. And that has made a world of difference.