Arrival

In my childhood memories of Korea September brings high blue sky and crisp weather .  But this year on the last day of August, as we were driving up to Inchon airport to meet three young ladies arriving for their journey as missionaries, the Typhoon Gonpas hit us with heavy rain and strong wind.  For Koreans it would have been a safer and saner choice to take interstate bus for travel to the final destination Daejeon from the airport, but we could not traumatize the innocent beings to navigate the huge airport and bus terminal points while maneuvering suitcases filled with life essentials, also some not so essentials, for the next eleven months of their lives, and with no Korean language.

Anticipating the bad weather we left early giving us four hours for the three hour journey.  We arrived early enough for dinner at the airport and having failed to gain entry into a lounge we went to the arrival gate, just to learn that the flight arrived one hour ahead of the schedule.  Padding a few minutes to the flight time to improve their "on-time arrival" statistics is a common technique, but adding one hour to the three hour flight is too much.  We panicked momentarily, but realizing that the YAVs would not be the first one off the plane and their luggages would not be the first on to the carousel, we relaxed and waited.

Before too long, a sixty-one year old lady (Haejung) squealing like a teen ager seeing her heartthrob awoke me from my daydream to see three beautiful young people pulling their luggages.

After loading up the van, and squeezing into the seats, including a jump seat, we set off to Daejeon.  I was quietly concerned since I had come back from the Stateside just the night before and did not know whether the jet-lag would hit me without notice.   After an hour or so on the highway I asked Katie, who was the only one awake, about the airplane food.  When her comments were all on the quantity and not on the quality, I knew she was hungry and we live in different worlds.

It was close to midnight, but we stopped at one of the ubiquitous highway rest areas (a very large travel superstore) for some real food.  They all seem to be more animated with new energy.

It was almost 1:00 a.m. when we arrived at their house for the next year.  We gave a brief tour of the house and distributed essentials like wifi password and the cell phones we had secured for them.

By then it was five hours past our usual bed time and we crashed after a very brief prayer of thanks, but we did not fail to ask for wisdom, patience and humility.

Seven hours later, they all had to show up for their placement interview at the Korean language school in Hannam University.  Haejung and Simon had that long forgotten anxiety of taking children to the first day of school.  They also gave us brave smiles, but we knew they had knots in their tummies.

Then very early the next morning, I took off to Tokyo, Japan for a two day business trip.