The 40 hour Tuesday

I'm back!

I have been for almost 5 days now.

Life in Saskatchewan is pretty good. Laura's family has made me feel exceedingly comfortable. Ten more days and we're off to Calgary to visit my people. Right now, we're just trying to figure out how to relax again. You don't realize how much you just go-go-go in Korea until you suddenly find yourself in a small town in Saskatchewan (Langham, to be precise). So far, we've slept quite a bit, made a few ventures into Saskatoon, and basically tried to re-acquaint ourselves with a lack of tension. I think we're doing pretty well.

Now to catch you all up with the trip back and the days leading up to it.

We headed to Busan on Saturday for a couple of nights as a sort of vacation before flying home on Tuesday. The first night, we stayed at rather shabby hotel right next to the train station. We quickly realized that if we were to have a decent vacation, we needed better lodgings. So, we splurged, basically for the first time since coming to Korea. We stayed at the Commodore Hotel, a so-called "Super-Deluxe" hotel. It lived up to its designation. It was designed to look like a traditional Korean building, but came with all the trappings of a fancy hotel, including highly overpriced restaurants and room service, both of which we took advantage of (or perhaps were taken advantage of by...). Anyway, we luxuriated. We also spent our time wandering Busan, doing some last minute shopping and enjoying our last Korean weekend.

On Monday, I met up with the owner of my school at the Busan Immigration Office. There, he gave me my plane ticket and the rest of my money. Also, we went up to the counter and got myself an "Exit Order." So, yes, I was ordered out of the country. Fun stuff! Leave it my school, or perhaps Korea in general, to leave everything until the last possible moment ("Oh! You're leaving the country on Tuesday? We'll give you your plane ticket and final pay on Monday, then.").

The day of the flight was really long. Literally. In fact, I think Tuesday (from 12:00 am to 11:59pm) worked out to be about 40 hours long due to time zone changes. Laura's flight to Seoul was at 7:00am, so we were up at 4:30 to get ready and be at the airport on time. We made it no problem. And we both got to wait forever after that, me in Busan for my flight to Osaka (4 hours) and Laura at Incheon for her flight to Vancouver (9 hours). The Busan International Airport is terrible. There is absolutely nothing there. Seriously. Just a crappy duty free shop and an absolutely terrible snack bar. It was a loooooong 4 hours. Speaking of long, I finally got to the Osaka airport. Trying to find my transfer gate and ticket counter was basically me walking down an infinite grey hallway. To my left were the giant windows overlooking the tarmac and to my right was a wall. A really long, grey wall. I swear I walked for half an hour until finally finding my gate. Then I got to wait, again. Osaka, at least, has stuff. I had a coffee, browsed the magazines and still got bored after an hour. So, I sat myself down and read for a few hours until the plane left.

The flight to Vancouver didn't actually seem very long. There was a huge Russian man as our flight attendant, who was somehow chosen as the appropriate person to wander the aisles with the perfume catalog. I slept for a good portion of the flight, after finishing the book I had started in Osaka. Customs in Vancouver was remarkably quick, the only snag being when asked if I had brought anything with me and I replied, "no." She gave me a funny look and said, "You were in Korea for 14 months and didn't bring anything back?" I amended my statement and proceeded through to get my baggage. It was there that I waited forever. My regular bag came through, but I had to wait at the fragile baggage area for quite some time for my guitar to come through. They seemed to only bring one or two things at a time, mostly golf clubs by the looks of it. Finally it came and I got myself through to the Air Canada counter to get to Saskatoon. Now it was time to wait for Laura to arrive.

Of course, her flight was delayed. A storm near Japan, which strangely had no effect on my flight, caused hers to take a longer route. When she finally arrived, there was a massive line at customs. With about 30 minutes until the flight to Saskatoon left, she emerged and we quickly got her flight changed to the same as mine (she was originally slated to go through Calgary first) and her money converted and made our way to the domestic terminal and our gate to Saskatoon. We were startled by Dan before going through. He just kind of materialized from behind a pillar to greet us. It would have been great to hang out and chat, but we had to rush. We'll be back in Vancouver soon enough, so it will just have to wait.

The flight to Saskatoon was short, but cold. We were greeted at the airport by Laura's family, who immediately took us to Tim Hortons's for coffee (how Canadian...). Thus, here we are, marginally settled, with clean laundry, comfortable surroundings and time to relax.

However, the drama for us didn't end there. The day after arriving, we found out that the apartment we had paid our deposit and first months rent for, as well as having signed a lease on, had been sold and we would no longer have the chance to live there. Despite screwing us over, they are still trying to help us find alternative lodgings and have found some places in the same area that are similar. Hopefully, it will all turn out well. I'll let you know.

Guy