Freedom so far has been a lot of hurry up and wait.
Right now I’m sitting in the Incheon Bus Terminal, waiting for the next bus to Yeosu. The bus doesn’t leave until 2 pm (it’s 10:30 now). It’s about a five hour drive down the length of the ROK, ending on a peninsula jutting off the southern tip into the East China Sea. So I’m looking at another 8 ½ hours until my long journey – which began more than 2 weeks ago, when I flew from KC to Denver – comes to an end.
I think I made it through quarantine as well as could be expected. I stepped into my room at about 8 pm on Thursday, June 24th, and didn’t set foot in the hallway until 7 am, Thursday, July 8th (ie, today). In that time I didn’t go stir crazy, I didn’t tear up the walls, I only dreamed of escape once, and on the whole it was almost a relaxing vacation.
The key was routine. I woke up every day about 6 am, and, after lazing in bed with a book or the Internet, got up and looked outside (when I made my tick mark on the wall, so I didn’t lose track of days). The view was the same train station, a little patch of road with some buildings, an open field (where in the evenings men would practice their golf drives), and the end of Incheon Airport’s runway (where I watched the planes coming and going).
Then it was time to exercise. Had to stay fit since I spent most of my day sitting. I had a workout app on the phone and the robo-trainer drove me pretty hard, but between that and the diet I came out of quarantine in better shape than I’ve been in since I landed in the USA last August. I’d go for about an hour, putting on a YouTube video on the TV, then head into the bathroom. Unlimited hot water, so long hot showers and lazy starts to the day helped.
By 9 am, breakfast had been delivered. Three times a day, I’d open my door to find a little plastic grocery bag stuffed full of goodies to eat. Every meal included a packet of white rice, what I referred to as Korean fixin’s (a 4-tub container with some form of kimchi and other common Korean garnishes), a bottle of water, a sweet (yogurt or fruit at breakfast, fruit or a pastry at lunch and dinner), a salad or vegetable, and finally a meat. The meat could be fish (on the bone, often scaly, too), beef (usually spicy), pork (spicy), or chicken (mmm),* on a weekly rotation I worked out. I got curry twice and bibimbap twice, my favorite meals.
After breakfast, until lunch I’d read my book or teach myself something on the Internet that I was curious about. I read 4 books during quarantine – Django Wexler’s Shadow Campaigns series, a fantasy series featuring an expy of the Napoleonic Wars, but with demons. Kajal would video call several times a day and make sure I had human contact.
After lunch, until dinner I would play on my Switch – Breath of the WIld is an old standby, Paper Mario: The Origami King, Civilization VI could eat an entire day if I let it, and I played Assassin’s Creed: Rogue from start to finish. One morning I was able to play Among Us with friends 14 timezones away! Or I’d watch a movie – I watched all 3 Brendan Fraser Mummy movies for the first time in nearly a decade, I think. The original is still excellent, the second still a very solid sequel, and the third is still terrible. Alas. In The Heart of the Sea was an excellent naval adventure with Chris Hemsworth and Tom Holland.
Dinner would come around 6, I’d eat it, clean up the debris of the day and place it in a bag just outside my door, and I’d spend the evening relaxing from another difficult day. I’d usually curl up in my chair facing out the window at the airport, and read while the sun set and the lights on the runway came on. Then at nine, get ready for bed, and read until I fell asleep.
So this morning, at last, I was free. A hazmat-suited woman came to my door and asked if I was ready to check out – God, yes. I stepped into the hallway with my bags for the first time in two weeks, and surreally (but entirely logically) saw up and down the hallway about a half-dozen of the same people I had come into quarantine with, who had had their own private ordeals in rooms just a few feet from mine. We crowded into the elevator, were loaded onto a bus, and driven to the nearby subway station.
At Unseo, I worked out where the nearest bus terminal was, bought a ticket, and wrestled my bags up to the platform – on the wrong side. Damn. I wrestled them back down, across the station and up on the proper side. Wait, no, I had been on the right side to begin with, I wanted to go towards Seoul Station, not Incheon Cargo Terminal. Double damn. Down, across, and up one last time, and hten onto the train.
Just needed one transfer – it took a few minutes to wrestle the bags across the new subway station, including a tricky business lifting one of my bags from the wrong side of the gate after I got cut off from it, but I managed to board an empty train heading to Incheon Bus Terminal, took over fully two seats with me and my baggage (there was no way to take up less space, sorry Koreans looking daggers at the inconsiderate waygook. -shrug-), and had 30 minutes to recover. At about 9, I got off at the Incheon Bus Terminal stop, wrestled my bags up two floors – to the wrong side of the street. Triple damn!
Back down, across the station – my arms are going to fall off, I think – and then up two more floors, and into a hot, humid day outside Incheon Bus Terminal. I made it halfway through the approach courtyard before I took a 5-minute break, my arms trembling from the strain and my whole body soaked in sweat. Jeez, it was hot. Then at last, at about 9:20, into the bus terminal and to the ticket stands. Next bus to Yeosu – 2:20 pm. I had missed the morning bus by about 50 minutes. Oh well.
So, my heavy bags are next to me in the concourse and I have an uncomfortable seat. It took me about 20 minutes to write this, so I’ve got 3.5 more hours to kill. Might seek some food – but that means either leaving the bags, or, worse, dragging them.
I need to find a way to fit a year’s worth of belongings into only 1 checked bag next time. No more of this two bag nonsense.
*yes, that was A Girl Worth Fighting For reference
Gwangju Dreaming 