Quarantine Correspondence: The Swine Flu Follies

Korea is mystifying. Every street bustles like Michigan Avenue. The place goes on forever. Apartments outnumber and tower above the high-rises, which themselves are omnipresent. There are, at last count, four billion subway lines, with more added every day. Everyone is required to use at least one cell phone at all times. No streets are named. Cabbies watch TVs planted next to GPS screens on the dash. Red lights are ignored at best. Sidewalks are informal motorcycle lanes. And everything, everything, is neon.

I have a day to myself with which to take it all in. I'm sitting on the stoop of a the Coffee Bean (the one across the street from the other the Coffee Bean) piggybacking a wireless signal and eliciting looks from passers-by ranging from mild curiosity to apparent distaste.

It'd make more sense to start a few days back:

THURSDAY MORNING I bid my parents a "later dudes" and checked into Korea Air KE038. I sat in the nosebleeds next to a Bona-Fide Korean coming from Columbia, MO who helped me perform the necessary preparations on my bimbibap, in-flight meal one of two. Fourteen hours, two chapters of Bruce Chatwin's biography and five movies later I debarked on

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, took the Gangnam COEX bus into the heart of Seoul to meet Brian, the representative from the Korean school and publishing company YBM, my employers. Brian checked me in to a hotel for a four-day "quarantine," long enough, presumably, for any swine flu symptoms to surface before placing me in proximity to students.

SATURDAY MORNING, after a fruitlessly questioning the sweet old couple at the front desk, I hailed a cab and made my only instructional offering; the name of the building where I'd meet for orientation, "Kyobo tower, Gangnam." For the meager sum of four thousand won, he took me one city block down the street, where I met Amanda Fuji, one of YBM's other teachers solicited by CIEE (the U.S. company that hired us for YBM). With her cell phone we reached Michelle Kim, CIEE's in-country liason, and her assistant Claire, in the coffee shop inside. After a short history lesson on Korea and a sandwich, we set off down the subway entrance to cut our teeth on public transport. On CIEE's dollar, Amanda and I were given T-Money cards, refillable proximity-passes usable on subways, busses, taxis and water-taxis. For lunch we were served about twenty small courses ranging from a mildly sweet, thick soup to noodles to salads to fish to beef, with cool barley tea to drink. I carried the team, but we still couldn't finish everything. On full stomachs, we practiced deciphering Hangul, the Korean alphabet.

After lunch we took a water taxi up the Han river to the national assembly where we paid our respects to the recently departed former president Kim Dae-jung. Then a regular taxi up to the university district north of the river to visit Ewha Women's University, perhaps the most attractive campus I've ever seen. Following that, dinner at a small college-food joint: dduk bokki (chewy rice cakes under a puddle of hot sauce and melted cheese) with assorted finger sandwiches on toasted white bread. For about eighty cents US, the subway got me to Gangnam station, a fourteen second walk from my hotel. I showered and crashed.

SUNDAY MORNING I was up at six, my Western circadian rhythm lagging behind me. I killed a few hours and headed down to the subway at eight to meet Amanda. We train'd up across the river to the Kyobo Tower in Gangbook, met Michelle, grabbed coffees and teas and marched down the road, past the US embassy (the first I've ever even seen in my travels to 10+ countries), down to Gyeongbook Palace for an hour of sightseeing. Then a lunch, like Saturday's, about half again more than I could manage to eat.

After lunch we rushed to see NANTA!, a Blue Man Group-esque performance which bills itself as "a combination of Jackie Chan, Iron Chef and the Marx Brothers" and delivers on the promise. Then Korea House, a replica ancient Korean neighborhood, where you can paint fans and make traditional Korean paper, and after that a trip to Seoul Tower, an observatory on a hill. At the topmost viewing deck, one can see the outermost edges of the mega city, offering a reaffirming sense of place among the metropolitan rush below.

For dinner, a Korean BBQ expertly tended to by Michelle and Claire, and glasses of Soju which I mistakenly assumed were to be drunk as a shot. Michelle's baby boy, who joined us at Korea House, had all but slipped into a coma long past his bedtime, so Claire, Amanda and I set off to tie one on before heading home. One beer later we filed down into the Subway and I, dogs barking, got back to the hotel at around 1:00 a.m. I showered off the day's grime and collapsed, nudged to sleep by a stomach full of beef and drinks and two days' worth of Seoul.

Today, MONDAY AFTERNOON, is my fourth and final day of quarantine. Unaided by Michelle's street smarts, un-tethered by Amanda's cell phone, and completely incapable of communication beyond "hello," "thank you," and "may I please have some water," I set off to tackle Seoul by myself. Having achieved the first phase of my plan, code-named "find a wireless connection and email mom and dad," I have no choice but to summon the cojones to embark on phase two, "buy some pants."

Work tomorrow. Inshallah.