Onward from Korea

We left Daegu on a train yesterday, on our way to leaving Korea for good. Staying in Daegu to heal and rest was nice, but not so much actually part of traveling for me. It was more of an epilogue to the two years working and living there. I did get to see all of my friends again, but I also had to say goodbye to Miju, and we both knew it was for good.

I don't want to elaborate any more than saying it didn't make for a very happy train ride, and not made any easier by the fact that my cell phone was deactivated, something I had asked my ex-co-teacher to do in the morning before I realized I couldn't go to the bank and transfer all my money home and close my account. I still had unreturned phone calls and text messages to respond to, and goodbyes to make, and I had to pull myself together enough to borrow the phone of a stranger to call her up and get it reactivated for a day so I could say yet more goodbyes.

And it would have been a great train ride. We were on a slow train north and east through the countryside and the mountains were green and rice paddies were deep. The air was incredibly clear and brought the tiny villages and land they occupied into such sharp clarity that I don't recall seeing before in Korea. It may have been the sentimental chemicals running through my brain, or maybe just the long, humid, and very hazy summer air from just weeks before.

Neither of us got much sleep the night before. We didn't get to bed until 6AM, and drenched in cigarette smoke, because we were celebrating Adam's birthday out on the town. I got up at 9:30AM to do some errands only to find that banks don't open on Saturdays in Korea. I napped a little on the train, and we played a game of cribbage to pass the time once the sun dropped below the mountains in the west and we couldn't look at the scenery.

The train master would speak to us in broken English every time he walked through the car, and a few stops before we got off, he planted himself across the aisle from us to have a conversation with us, whether we wanted to or not. His English wasn't great, and my Korean is not good, but we managed to communicate.

He was a jolly enough guy, but had terrible breath when he got in close enough to show us a video of his wife pulling out of a parking space on his cell phone. His oldest daughter was in Ireland for the last four years and never came back. He lived in Yeongju and rode on slow trains 11 days out of the month for a salary of 6.5million won. That's a job, schedule, and paycheck that's hard to beat.

It was easy finding a cheap motel once we stepped off the train. Donghae is a small city with nothing more than a port, at least according to the guidebook and our impressions from simply looking around. The ATM was closed when we arrived last night but open this morning when I sent money to my ex-co-teacher to pay for my phone.

We got some food and went to a smoky PCbang. I couldn't upload any photos. I brought a worthless SC card USB adapter that doesn't let me access my photos, or even register with any computer I've used. I'll have to use Adam's plug in the future. We were left with only a few hours in the morning and early afternoon to kill before we make our way to the ferry and whoknowswhat after that.