First Day Impressions....

I am nestled into my small, but very modern dorm room....and survived my first full day in Korea. I arrived at 4am in Seoul and quickly went through security and "passed" the flu screening. Everyone arriving via airplane must fill out a very detailed health questionnaire. The interesting aspect of the data they requested was they wanted both your flight number and your seat number plus a detailed address and phone number of a contact in Korea. Then they pressed a tiny temperature sensor to the back of your neck and checked your temperature. If it was normal you were waved through. If it was high they quickly ushered you to a secure area to be checked out by a doctor. Like everything in Korea, it was a fast and efficient way to get hundreds of people through the process in a very few minutes.

The university had a person meet me and help me get a bus ticket to Gwangju. I had everything completed by 5am.....but my bus left at 7am. So I managed to find a Dunkin Donut shop and get a good cup of coffee and some donuts to fortify me for what I thought was a three hour bus ride. Wrong....the bus was caught in a horrific Monday morning rush hour traffic jam getting through Seoul. Geez.....it makes traffic on I-70 look like a cake walk. Miles and miles of cars slowly inching forward. We didn't get out of the metro Seoul area for about two hours. But once we cleared the traffic it was a beautiful, but hazy drive south towards Gwangju. The actual bus trip was five hours...and we didn't arrive until noon! But the "express bus" was pretty plush. The seats could be put into an almost horizontal position--so most people fiipped them back and were snoring within minutes. I was tired, but also wanted to see the countryside...but the traffic allowed me to get a few hours sleep and once awake, I was able to enjoy the scenery.

I am in Korea.....yet my mind and my soul wanted me to see Vietnam again. I knew better and my longing for Vietnam provided a great opportunity to compare and contrast the two countries. It was an interesting process. Although Northern Vietnam is rugged and hilly, South Korea is much more mountainous. The four lane interstate highway the bus was on passed through at least 10 long tunnels carved through the mountains. I had an old highway map from 2001 when I was last in Korea and the expressway we took was only a dotted line on that map!

Looking out my bus window at the rural countryside gave me another jolt --where were the people? The valleys here -- like in Vietnam, are highly agricultural. But in Vietnam you see people everywhere....working in the fields, walking on the sides of the roads, sitting in the shade of the trees. Hundreds and hundreds of people would be walking, working, or just visible everywhere. The rice fields in Vietnam would be filled with people slowly placing the small rice plants by hand into the water flooded paddies. Lots of water buffalo would be in the fields pulling plows or carts. None of that here. It is planting season yet few people were working the fields. Most of the planting and work is highly mechanized. They use a small "tractor" that is specially designed to place the rice plants in the water. Little stooping and bending! Lots of small tractors were visible, but mostly the fields were just rows upon rows of mechanically placed rice plants just peaking out from the surface of the water.



So...first impressions: A hIghly mechanized country. All the cars are new and Hyundai or Kia...no Toyotas or Hondas. The Koreans distaste for the Japanese is very evident just by looking at their preferred brand of cars. As history has shown, little love lost between the Japanese and Koreans! The country is CLEAN! We stopped at a roadside bathroom and I was ready to hike my pant bottoms up and get ready for the "squatty potties" and some nasty toilets. Holy @#$% - the place was immaculate! It had toilet paper! It had soap. It had hand dryers! And no one asked for money to use the toilets. Little trash or plastic bottles litter the countryside like many of the other Asian countries Phil and I have traveled through. Clean and tidy seems to be the Korean Mantra.

So.....just some initial impressions based upon my recent experiences in Vietnam. More later about the campus and Gwangju.