ARRIVING

Our flights to Korea are over. The most stressful part was the lineup to clear security in Toronto, the longest I’ve ever seen it. “Just a standard Monday morning” the woman at security told me. The first leg, to Vancouver, went by in a flash, as I sank into the manuscript of a fabulous novel by my friend Kelley Aitken—hope it finds a publisher soon so you others can read it. We were off the plane for about an hour and a half in Vancouver, then back on for the long leg—which was long, but astonishingly smooth, T less than an hour of bumpy ride (that I noticed between dozes and reading) and the bumps were small. My, they do feed you a lot on long flights—two hot meals, plus a snack and then a “noodle service”—which we skipped.

It seemed as if the sun was shining for the whole trip. As we descended I put up the blind to glimpse a landscape of what looked like treed hills with cleared areas between them. Small buildings were scattered about. A couple of hills looked as if they might be terraced. I saw a quarry or gravel pit and a couple of other stretches of land that had been “worked” in a major way, but couldn’t tell by what. The soil was sandy-coloured. We flew low over the sea—the Yellow Sea I think—as we neared the airport at Incheon. I love the look of small islands seen from the air, floating like magical kingdoms. (Is this a hangover from South Pacific?) A haze hung over them. The shores we flew over looked like mudflats, perhaps it was low tide.

Once off the plane we caught an automated shuttle to the passenger terminal and immigration. The lineup for foreign passport holders was very short and we were through quickly, then had the usual long walk to baggage, followed by the usual wait as suitcase after suitcase trundled past. Ours turned up eventually, quite close together, and we exited the sliding doors, wondering how we’d be found. A ring of Korean men holding placards with names confronted us, and a sign saying Peter Harris answered our question. The man bowed and took command of the luggage cart, wheeled it over to some benches, and said he had two more arrivals to wait for. They turned up within the hour—a student from Pittsburg here for some summer law courses, and a professor from Cornell College in Ohio who will be teaching something to do with gender studies.

On the taxi ride into Seoul—over an hour long—I was struck by several things: a big sloppy stick nest on a double lamp standard; large square green areas near the sea that I finally realized must be rice growing; climbing red roses draping white metal fences at the toll plaza; many good-sized trees with a framework of supports around them—new plantings perhaps; stretches of bare sandy or pale red soil; some conifers, perhaps pines, a gray-green in colour; the Han River coming into view, its far bank a long stretch of high rise buildings, many bridges leading over it; a complex of apartments with DREAM RIVERVIEW in a column along the edge of one building; another complex of handsome apartments called “Brown Stone”.

In the city our driver pulled over to set his gps and we plunged into traffic, and eventually through gates at the University. Jake, the student, was dropped at an enormous building, its front stairs framed by bronze statues of women wearing veil-like robes. Then we entered a warren of narrow hilly streets, where it seemed impossible a car could get through, the driver checking the locator again and again … and finally we were dropped at International House 1, where we were taken to room 309, our home for the coming month.