The First One: Welcome To Seoul, or Maybe Not.

Greetings, one and all, those with enough time on their hands to read these ruminations. Before I begin this thing in earnest, I suppose I should have a sort of introduction. So here goes.


For me it had always been a matter of time before I decided to live abroad again. I got a small taste of adventure while studying abroad in London. London’s a great city, and I had a great time there, but I’m ready for a bigger challenge. So today is my first day in Seoul.

I settled on South Korea in between working at the American Girl Boutique and Bistro in Minnesota’s own Mall of America, paying off student loans, and generally having to scrape together enough money for rent each month while dreaming of traveling. A big part of it was honestly the money; I wanted to teach English and South Korea pays its teachers better than a lot of other countries. Places that do pay better often require something a bit more substantial than a Bachelor of Arts in English and Theatre. There was that, and stories I’d heard from friends of mine who’d been teaching there. They told me they loved it, in so many words.

I’ll be training in Seoul with the EPIK program for a few days, and then it’s off to Daejeon, about eighty miles to the south, to start my job. If you’re wondering what age group I’ll be teaching, well, so am I. EPIK has a way of making sure you get to the country with as little information as possible. But I’m actually pretty lucky that I made it here at all. Which leads me to the meat of this post, entitled:



WHY I”LL NEVER FLY UNITED AIRLINES EVER AGAIN. EVER.



My working idea behind this blog is that within each post will be embedded a short work of creative nonfiction. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep this going throughout my yearlong experience here in South Korea. This particular story has to do with my experience with United Airlines and their repeated efforts to ruin my new adventure before it’s even begun. Let this be a warning to young and inexperienced travelers: United, like all American corporations, wants your money. They want your money so, so badly. They want your money so badly that they have foolproof measures in place to ensure that if they screw up, no matter how much, no matter how much they lie to you, it will be you who gives them even more of your money in the end. You have been warned. Here goes with a little creative nonfiction.



Yusuf seemed detached. It must be hard not to be when you deal with angry people day after day. At this point, I was one of those angry people and Yusuf was dealing with me.

I had tried to contain my anger. I really had. I knew that the situation I now found myself in wasn’t his fault. I knew that really it wasn’t anybody’s fault but that of whoever wrote the rules for the airline. But my rage had to go somewhere, and Yusuf was right in front of me.

“What do you mean, it’s not your policy to switch the ticket? They told me they had already switched it!”

“They shouldn’t have told you that, then.”

“Damn right, they shouldn’t have!” I paused. “I’m sorry. I know… I know it’s not your fault. I just…”

“I understand,” Yusuf said, still tapping away on his keyboard, still not even glancing up at me. “The woman over there has the same problem.”

I glanced to my left and saw a woman with her head on the desk, sobbing. This did not help my outlook on my own situation.

“I will make a call. Give me your passport,” Yusuf said, picking up a white phone that, until this point, had remained out of sight beneath his desk.

Now, I know that everyone who has ever gone to an airport could probably tell a horror story or two, but I believe mine qualifies as one of the worst. Let me explain what happened to me in the twenty-four hours leading up to my conversation with Yusuf.

I was trying to get to Seoul in time for the start date of a contract I had to teach English. I had left out of Madison after bidding adieu to my family and friends for the year and arrived in Denver more or less on time. The plan was to fly from Denver to Los Angeles, then from Los Angeles on to Seoul. Unfortunately, my flight out of Denver was pushed back to the point at which I would have missed my connection out of Los Angeles.

So what does one do in a situation like this? Why, find a customer service desk and get an updated itinerary, right? Apparently, about half of Denver thought this was the best option, as well. As I walked up to the customer service counter the line of annoyed and irate passengers behind me was so long that I could not see the end of it as it stretched down the terminal.

In Denver, they assured my that, despite my flight from LA being on a different airline, that they would switch it over to their airline and get me on a flight out of San Francisco the following day. After a flight out of Denver and a night at the Best Western Hotel in the scenic South San Francisco Industrial Park, Yusuf assured me that this was, in fact, impossible.

He hung up the phone. “They tell me that there is nothing they can do,” he said.

“So then…”

“If you’d like a flight out today it will cost…” He tapped on his keyboard for a few seconds. “Fourteen-hundred and sixty-two dollars.”

My head dropped onto the desk. I looked exactly like the woman next to me had a few minutes earlier, minus the sobbing. Though I felt that may not be far behind.

“There’s no other way to get there?”

“It appears that all other Korean Air flights are sold out until…” Tap, tap tap. “March.”

“Jesus.”

“You would have to purchase a ticket with a different airline.”

I lifted my head off the desk and reached for my wallet.

“Fuck it,” I said, and slapped my card down on the desk. “Just do it.”

I turned away as Yusuf tapped away at the keyboard, copying the information from my card.

I had decided to leave my comfortable Saint Paul home to look for adventure, and I suppose I’d found it already. In less than twelve hours I’d spent my first night alone in a hotel and spent more money at once than I’d ever done in my life.

“Here is your card and passport. Here is your boarding pass,” Yusuf said. “Thank you for flying with us.”

I took my things from him and turned around without replying. I wondered if he’d included that last bit for the sake of irony or because he was constantly on autopilot. Either way, at least I was finally on my way.



So that’s it for my first attempt at my second attempt to keep a regular blog. In all honesty, I don’t know if I’ll keep this creative nonfiction thing up for the whole year or just go back to it when something totally ridiculous happens, but I figure hey, at least it’s different from your normal travelogue, right?

Next time on English Major Away, ruminations on my orientation in the greater Seoul area, thoughts on the textural sensation that is raw baby octopus, and a few surprising things I’ve already learned about my home for the next year.