A Warm Welcome

I meet my host family at 3:30 AM this morning when I arrive with Harrison on their doorstep. They live in a modern high-rise apartment just a few minutes’ walk from my academy, on the 7th of 15 floors, overlooking the rice paddies and city roads of Seosan. As you enter their home, low-profile teak panels line the receiving room, where shoes line the muted tile floor leading to the main hallway. I push off my Adidas sneakers and step carefully onto the neatly laid wood flooring. Aisha (English name) and her parents receive us graciously and pour a glass of fresh orange juice for Harrison and me, seating us at their dining room table, and engaging us in small-talk as we sip. They are kind, demure, and so hospitable, particularly considering the extremely late hour. My head is erupting with an obscene headache, my cue that I have pushed my body well past exhaustion. I am relieved when they show me to my room, and even more relieved to crawl beneath the covers and surrender to what is left of the night.
Hours later, I meet Harrison outside the apartment, and we drive to pick up the rest of the staff for Friday’s lunch meeting. Minutes later, I receive a warm welcome from Terry (Harrison’s wife, also a teacher at EGA), Sunny, Christine, Tahira, and Maggie (the teacher I will soon be replacing), outside the building that houses my new school, English Genius Academy. I want to both laugh and turn embarrassing shades of red as I view the gargantuan banner Harrison has placed out front of the school, welcoming me to EGA and showcasing my soon-to-be-infamous passport photo, sans smile. After a short drive, we arrive at a traditional Korean restaurant and leave our shoes at the door as we are taken to a large room with a low table lined with woven mats. I follow suit and sit cross-legged on the floor, and take a small ceramic cup into which a brown-tinged liquid has been poured. Unable to distinguish the taste, I ask, and am told that this is “barley water,” made by boiling water (in order to purify it for drinking) with dried barley. What follows is nothing short of an all-out feast, as plate after plate and bowl after bowl is set before the group at the table. We first eat an appetizer of noodles in anchovy broth, and then everyone begins to take a bite here, a portion there, from the communal dishes.
I count five different kinds of kimchi, made with cabbage (traditional), cucumber, daikon radish, some kind of green vegetable, and yet another form I can’t quite recognize. There is beef bulgogi (literally, “fire-meat,” and one of the better-known dishes easily found in almost any Korean restaurant in the U.S.), served with delicate oyster mushrooms. One plate holds green salad with a sweet, milky dressing, and another a spicy pork dish that wins my vote as tastiest at the table. The cellophane noodles carry a deliciously light sesame taste, and I manage to handle my chopsticks more or less efficiently, until I try to secure a mouthful of fish from yet another plate. As we continue eating, our server brings several more rounds of dishes to the table, including a delicate soup made of seaweed, a bowl of rice cooked with black beans, another bowl of a soup made with burnt rice, a plate holding two whole fish, head, fins, tails, and all, and several small vegetable dishes. The final touch is a cup of a strongly flavored, very sweet cinnamon drink, topped with what appear to be pine nuts. We all sigh with that unmistakable sound of complete satisfaction, and thank Harrison for the delicious meal.
Next I am given my tour of the academy, which includes the office area and two classrooms. Harrison bestows me with my very own set of slippers, which I will of course wear inside the school at all times. They are hideous at best, and I chuckle underneath my breath along with Maggie and Christine, who are humored at the sight of my red-and-pink cloth house slippers, complete with a huge bow atop each foot. He tells me that he picked them out himself, happy to find some shoes with my very favorite color. It’s almost too much. But of course, I parade around the school in them for the afternoon, as I am introduced to some of my new students, and sit in on a few classes with Maggie.I manage to squeeze in a nap for several hours, and wake around 8:00 PM to a delicious smell wafting through the house. My host mother has prepared yet another feast, not only for me, but for her younger daughter, who has just returned home for the weekend, from her boarding school north of Seoul. I meet Rianna and easily feel as though I’m at home with these two younger “host sisters” and “mom” and “dad.” Dinner is Vietnamese-style, plates of julienned vegetables and meats, and cellophane rice paper wrappers, and we each assemble our own custom-made spring rolls for rapid consumption. Later I present them with a small gift of American treats – my favorite popcorn (Orville Redenbacher’s Naturals, with Olive Oil and Cracked Pepper, mmmm!), the best U.S. chocolate (IMHO, Hershey’s Symphony Milk Chocolate with Almonds and Toffee), and a board game, Yahtzee, which we then spend the next few hours playing together. The popcorn, interestingly, refuses to pop in their state-of-the-art microwave, so we dissect the bags and pour their contents into a heated wok. The girls erupt with giggles at the sound of the corn popping, while I heave the massive pot up and down on the flame, trying to keep the kernels from scorching. After a few handfuls, the verdict is in: it’s a hit! Mom brings out Korean-style potato chips, Bugles, and diced watermelon, and just when I think I can’t possibly handle any more food in one day, we start in again with after-dinner snacks.Through the screened porch, as we huddle on the living floor around the Yahtzee board, I hear a high-pitched chorus of hiccups, which the girls inform me are frogs chirping from the rice paddies just below us. We decide to take a walk through town to offset our bloated tummies, and so that I can hear the frogs up close, since they can tell I am mesmerized by the sound. The air is damp and cool, and we stride three-deep, arm in arm down the tiled sidewalks of Seosan. It feels so second-nature to be here that I’m half amused at the reality that my family is half a world away. What will this year here hold for me? Only time will tell… But if my first experiences and impressions are any indication, I am in for an incredible journey, shared with wonderful people. Seosan is starting to feel more and more like home.