July 1, 2019
Amidst the crowd of jostling passengers in the narrow aisle of the airplane, I managed to squeeze into my seat: 39J. It was the avoided middle seat… in the middle of the airplane. And it was a seat that I would have to get uncomfortably familiar with during the 13-hour flight that was ahead of me.
I was en route to Incheon International Airport, returning after seven years to the country of my birth. The very idea of “Korea” in my head had always conjured up mixed emotions. While it was the country of my heritage, where all of my extended family lived, I couldn’t deny the culture shock that I was sure to have. After all, I had been raised almost exclusively in the United States… and it was my first time going back without my family. My travel companion was my college roommate who, while wonderful, had a near-identical degree of travel experience as me: close to nothing. She was also not Korean, which left the issue of communication squarely on my shoulders. While I considered my musings about the drastically changed Seoul that I was sure to see, I binged through the Marvel movies offered on the plane, tried my hand at airplane Tetris, and tried my best to keep my loudly snoring neighbor from using my shoulder as his pillow.
When the intercom announced that the plane was soon to land, I was absolutely ecstatic. We were finally almost there!
Before we landed, the stewardesses went around with the customary card where we had to describe why we were entering the country. In a rather hilarious moment of confusion, the stewardess came to our row, spoke in English to my friend, began asking me a question in English then, looking quite perplexed, hesitantly switched to Korean. In an effort to ward off the awkward situation of having to explain my entire personal history, I smiled and told her that I was comfortable with either language, but that I was an American citizen. She nodded and smiled at me, relieved that I had answered her question. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was only the first of many episodes in which my bilingual speaking skills thoroughly confused local Koreans.
After a great deal of effort exerted in 1) claiming our baggage and 2) figuring out which sim card/plan I needed, we tiredly made our way to the subway station located within the airport. We had to make our way to our Airbnb, located in Hongdae (a university town) on public transportation. For whatever reason, our questions to the staff members were met with blank stares and in the end, it was through a frantic Kakao call (Kakao is a popular Korean communication app) to my old high school friend that we finally arrived – a good four hours after landing – at our Airbnb.
Although the dark alley-looking road where our Airbnb was did not feel very inviting at 11 p.m., we trudged ahead. After a rather strenuous three flights of stairs – with our suitcases – we made it to the apartment. I allowed myself a small triumphant smile and punched in the passcode. The door flared up red – the code was wrong. I looked in disbelief at my friend and tried again. Red. Trying my best to control my exhaustion, I tried one more time and, I remembered something. In Korea, the door passcodes always finish with the asterisk sign. Right. The only reason I knew that? It was the same reason I probably knew 95% of the Korean culture and history that I knew: Korean Dramas. The universe was laughing at me.
After hurriedly putting down our luggage, we quickly grabbed our wallets to head out to find a very late dinner… only to find the door locked once more… from the inside. I’m still not sure how it had been possible, but the left 15 minutes consisted of muffled swearing from my friend, and my pleading texts to our host. We made it out, but not before I was questioning why on earth I had decided that going halfway across the world to have to deal with such nonsense from a door twice in the same night.
The street food we found was, by far, the highlight of our night. I got tteobukki (Korean spicy rice cakes) with gimmali (glass noodles wrapped in deep-fried seaweed) from a grandma’s food cart. Such a generous serving size! And for only 5,000 won! (approximately $5)! It was absolutely fantastic – it almost made the entire struggle of the day worth it.
After figuring out the strange shared bathroom where the showerhead was just… in the same room as the toilet, with no curtain or anything to separate the two, we called it a night, hoping the bad luck of our first day did not define the rest of the trip.