Memory has no doubt distorted this. It’s also disturbing to realize this was almost ten years ago.

I went to Korea for 13 months with two suitcases that were 15 year years old then. They would be a quarter of a century old now if they had survived. But of course they didn’t. As it was, they both of them had to be duct-taped on my way there. And twice. The second time was at the Newark airport where the powder blue pleather one exploded and a year’s worth of my undies littered the well-traveled floor.

The flight to Daegu, something not quite like 24 hours, was the first time I was ever on an airplane. It was magical already. I had never seen the earth from above. And we chased the sun, or the sun chased us. And that just twisted my brain. In Deagu, I collected my shaming luggage and headed outside. As it turns out, seniority among the teachers was granted based on the order in which we emerged from the airport. Six of us, strangers, arrived that night. I was demoted one level, as it turns out, because I held the door open for an Alabama girl who was to be a teacher at my school, my hog-wan, as well. Oh well.

It was humid. And it was dusk. And I remember the sky was a beautiful blush color. And everything seemed magical. Everything was in words I didn’t understand. Even the air felt different. Heightened. There were purple mountains. Our school collected the six of us. Everybody had nicer luggage than I did, but I paid little notice. And a van drove us away from the airport through the city. Buildings looked much like buildings. Except all of their signs were in Korean. It was much more populated than I was expecting. And much less green. And we were taken to a hotel, a yeog-wan, where we would stay until we were assigned housing. They also gave us some cash. The money was all adorned with persons that looked like what I imagined Confucius to look like.

The room was heated from the floor which was altogether cozy. The bathroom, the entire room was a shower, which was nifty. That night there was a small party and most of the teachers joined us by the side of a lake. There was meat on a stick. Crunchy sweet carmelized meat. I grew very fond of that. And cheap beer. And the air was stunning and the smells were stunning. And I was at the start of a marvelous adventure. It’s quite something to be away from everything that makes you comfortable. No family. No friends. You can’t even read the signs.

It wasn’t until the next morning when I woke up needing a coffee, that I felt anything like terror. I didn’t know how to get a coffee. I tried to get one of the new recruits to join me in my quest but it wasn’t that important to anybody else. I remained keen and stubbornly set out to get caffeinated. In my little Korean to English book it said that coffee was “co-pai”. I pronounced it like “Co-Pie”. I went from store to store saying hello, I had practiced that, and then, looking needful, “Co-Pie.” I was turned down a couple of times. There were alleys and alleys of places I didn’t understand. And vendors selling what looked exactly like larvae – it was. I finally found a place, I asked for “Co-Pie” which got the quizzical looks and then I pantomimed drinking from a mug and looking less sleepy. They gave me a cup of coffee or rather something quite a lot but not quite like espresso.

Coffee in Korea was almost always quite a lot but not quite like espresso. I believe I paid roughly the equivalent of $20 for that coffee. It’s not the shopkeep’s fault for ripping me off. Not really. I would have ripped me off too. I was just that stupid. I didn’t know how to say coffee and I didn’t know what the money was worth yet. And still it was worth it. I needed to feel independent.

I later learned that the Korean word for coffee is coffee. Except you don’t really pronounce the “f” very hard and you sort of hurry the last syllable. In Korean, “Co-pie”, what I was actually saying, means nose bleed. It’s lucky for me then that I only lost $20 and that I didn’t find some confused but obliging fellow to pop me in the nose.

We were relocated within four days. My first purchase was a coffee maker. Plastic and black with little red bits. And I soon found coffee that tasted quite good. And, before long, I got on quite a lot better. When I came back, thirteen months later, I had all new luggage. I left behind my faithful coffee maker.

SS