Saturday June 28th
After Abbey's speech, our guide talked for a while about Journey and upcoming events, then we closed the ceremony with a prayer.
Then- of course, it was time to take a group photo!
After taking a bagillion-million-trillion photos, we headed to a restaurant to have lunch. Bulgogi hot pot and some yummy ban chan.
After lunch, we finished up some question/ answer videos for a video the company was putting together and it was over.
We hung around and chatted for a bit and then everyone went their separate ways. A lot of the group members were staying on an extra day or two all together in a hostel. I had a hard time watching the van of them roll out together.
Sunny and Hyo, Korean staff members, took me to a bus stop to catch the bus to the airport.
While I was waiting to cross the street to the bus stop, I heard a noise I had never heard from a human or an animal in my life. It was like a high pitched growl-scream. It was utterly terrifying and everyone on the street turned around to see what it was.
I'll tell you what it was: It was a tiny Korean girl yelling at her boyfriend. She looked like she had the power of a thousand suns and he looked like a sad puppy who went on the rug and was caught by its owner.
The growl-scream turned into shouting which turned into her slapping him in the face a few times and pulling on his shirt. He never hit back- he just sort of blocked shots and tried to gently pull her hands off of him.
I turned back around, to try not to be rude, but I was so intrigued.
The best part was when the shopkeeper of the store they were in front of very bluntly told them to get out from in front of the store using hand motions like "shoo, shoo"- at which point I noticed the boyfriend's (ex-boyfriends?) phone was in a million tiny pieces on the pavement.
GREEN LIGHT- It was time for me to cross the street. I was sad to leave the K-Drama that was unfolding in front of my eyes IRL.
I asked Suuny and Hyo, "This is normal?"
Hyo answered, "Not normal, but kind of." -which is the shortest yet most complete answer I could have asked for.
I said goodbye to Sunny and Hyo and got on the bus.
The crying part was over but I think something was going on between my brain and my body.
I could not stop sweating from the time I stepped foot into the airport until I was on the plane. It wasn't about missing my flight or not knowing how to navigate the airport...it was something different- just shear internal chaos.
This was unfortunate because the guy at Check-In was cute and I looked like I had just stepped out of a sauna.
I told him I wanted to check a second bag so I didn't have to carry it. The first bag was free and the second bag was: 100 dollars!!!! (WHAT THE....????) I told him I would reorganize my bags and make everything fit between my 2 carry-ons and my checked bag.
I rolled my suitcase over to the side which was still directly in front of everyone waiting to check in.
My suitcase sprung open and all of my everything was there for people to see- plus I am still drenched in sweat.
I finally tetris-ed my way into getting everything to fit.
I walked around the shops before I entered the airport: I bought a copy of Korean Harper's Bazaar and Korean Vogue to take home. I'm going to miss all the advertisements in every store only featuring Korean people.
I had one last meal in Korea- fish cake soup with Udon noodles and a Cass beer.
The flights home were easy peasy. I had a tight connection in Tokyo to make my flight to Seattle but they took good care of me. I got to go through a secret passage way to make it to my terminal.
The flight from Tokyo to Seattle was a breeze. I watched Dallas Buyers Club, slept for 5 hours, and watched half of another film and we were landing.
A police dog found my egg sandwich from Seoul that had been in my backpack for like, 18 hours. I had forgotten about it. The security man had a very serious face and told me I was going to have to report it to customs. I told him I could throw it out but he got even more serious and told me I had to take it to customs.
Yessir!
At customs, the lady apologized and told me she had to throw it out.
Yeah, I know lady, no one wants to eat that egg sandwich.
Ralf picked me up from the airport and that was that.
In the blink of an eye, I was sobbing in the airport- feeling unprepared to leave for Korea and there I was- back at Sea-Tac.
The same but not the same.
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