The Arrival

Upon arrival in Korea we were greeted by our designated chauffer, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Choo. Despite his obvious oriental appearance the fact we’d arrived in Korea for our new life had not quite sunk in as we got into his leather clad, glass darkened Hyundai. Instead minds were whirring from 48 hours without any meaningful sleep. Mr Choo did his best to distract us though with his random swerving between lanes whilst playing with various digital gadgets. Seemingly he had not been taught the concept of looking at the road whilst in charge of a vehicle. A look at the cars around us confirmed that part of the car driving syllabus seems to have been missed off all together in Korea. There isn’t really a lane for overtaking; or rather there isn’t really a lane that isn’t for overtaking in. This coupled with roadsigns in a whole new script left me feeling rather out of sorts. Still his walnut finish dash board was pleasingly familiar in its westernisation, and with that thought I drifted off to a short sleep.
I awoke to a hot and muggy country that seemed to flit endlessly and rapidly between easy on the eye lush country side, industrial eyesores and golf courses. Golf course after golf course we passed as Mr Choo sat in the middle lane, open to being overtaken from any angle, including the hard shoulder.
One thing that struck me going through the country to Chuncheon was that this was to be the first time in my life that I would be an ethnic minority. As we pulled up to a traffic lights an old white man waiting to cross nodded at me knowingly, as if we shared a secret; both in the loop that Roman script and forks are plainly far superior methods.