Landed

I made this choice.
What am I doing?
Panic finally settled in 5 minutes before the plane landed at Incheon International Airport. What if this is a big mistake?
Calm down Mb. Breathe...
Ok. I make it through customs, grab my bags (extremely ecstatic that they arrived with the plane I was on), and look for a sign...with my name on it.
As I look around none of the signs have my name on it. No worries, the plane landed early so I may have to wait a bit. After taking about 10 steps heading in the direction of some benches, a middle-aged Korean man comes running into the airport with a sign. My sign.

"Hooray! That's me!"
He smiles at me and says nothing. I search my brain trying to remember how to say "Hello" in Korean but nothing comes to me. Oh well. This should be interesting.
We head out of the airport and he gestures to me that I should wait by the road. Then he takes off running in the same spirit as he came into the airport. He seems harmless.
A few minutes later, a minivan pulls up and he helps load my jam-packed bags into the back and opens the door for me to get into the van. At this point, I am completely trusting this random stranger to take me where I am supposed to go - where that is is completely unknown. This is weird.

While riding in the back seat I start to cough like crazy. After finally controlling myself for a minute I decide to bust out my Korean phrasebook and try my hand at Korean. I say hello. He smiles, nods and says hello back. Step 1, Check. The coughing continues. As we're driving down the highway to who knows where he begins to take his eyes of the road and searches for something down near the center console. Then he hands me a clementine orange and gestures me to eat it. It helps ease my coughing for the rest of the ride and I am eternally grateful to my new Korean friend. I say thank you. He understands! Now if I could only memorize the words instead of having to use the book. I know this will take time, but sometimes it would be nice if we could just upload languages and other things to our brains like in the Matrix.

About 30-40 minutes later we get off the highway. Then he pulls into an alley. Yikes!
I begin to wonder. What if this is actually a scam? What if I really have gotten myself caught up in one of those sex slave trades? Who will come find me?

I start to go into survival mode. If the taxicab man doesn't know taekwondo, I might be able to take him. I am wearing my winter boots and I feel I could deliver some mean TaeBo kicks, maybe even throw in a vicious left hook and right uppercut. The scary level increases as we pull into this parking lot that is somewhat hidden by these curtains that resemble a car wash. It's dark and scary. Oh dear. This is really happening.

There's a man dressed extremely well in the dark parking lot. He opens the door and says "Marybeth, I'm Danny, welcome to Korea!"
All is well. We're actually at a hotel...a fairly nice hotel and my room is very modern. Danny goes over the info that I need to know and tells me that I will have an apartment by the weekend. There's also another new teacher, Kelly, in the room next door and that Meghan, who I have been emailing all of my questions over the past few weeks, wants to take us out for a bit later.
I'm alive. I'm in Korea. It's almost 8am...Now I can take a nap.