The Final Day. The First Day.

This is it.  This is my last day in Korea, perhaps forever.  It's strange, it's sad, but it's good and I'm happy, too.  I'm glad to be going back to America, but it's strange to say goodbye to people when I know I probably won't see them again.  Some I think I will see, but some I'm nearly certain I won't.

I kept expecting something to happen.  For there to be some big feeling, like at the end of a summer camp or something.  But, really it's just me leaving.  Everyone else has work tomorrow.  I'm not sure exactly what I wanted, but I'm pretty sure that no matter what I would have this feeling.  It's just how life is.  Things don't come to a halt in order to mark a transition or a big change.  One just goes into the next.  One day you're in Korea, and the next you're in America, and the rest of the world keeps going on the same way it always has.

I'm ready to get moving, to get out of here.  I hate all the packing and preparing, especially when I'm leaving things for good.  I'm not good at cleaning up and to be honest, I have a ton of stuff I had to get rid of.  In a place where it's fairly common to see a drunk businessman pissing on the side of a city road--at times even as school girls are passing by--I get nervous about taking out my trash.  It's true.  Trash, recyclables, that stuff everyone has and everyone has to get rid of, I keep around for fear that someone will see me taking it out and tell me I'm doing something wrong.  So, through the course of this day and night, I've taken out bag after bag full of empty plastic bottles, and just all that little trash and junk that accumulates in the process of living.  But soon I will leave it all behind.  That's what I keep reminding myself.  If I forgot to do something or did something wrong, they can come to America and get me if it's that important.

Well, that first part was written several hours ago.  I got out of my place ok, though I did leave a bit of a mess.  Oh well.  Now I'm in the airport.  But, that doesn't mean there haven't been some issues.  First off, I wanted to take a bus from Pohang to Incheon Airport.  There is a direct bus, Ive taken it before.  Unfortunately I wasn't paying enough attention and got a ticket for the bus simply going to Incheon.  That's kind of like getting a bus to downtown Chicago when you ment to go to O'hare.  Plus, instead of being an express bus, it was a local, meaning we had to stop about 6 times along the way.  Really, though,that's probably for the better because I had to pee so bad the moment I stepped on that bus.  When I finally arrived at the Incheon bus terminal, the driver insisted on shouting at me--the only passenger left--three times "Incheon tuminahl!" Once I got off the bus, a taxi driver was quite willing to take me to the airport for the low low price of all the money in my wallet.  Unfortunately for him there wasn't as much in there as he was expecting.  Still it was a rip off.  I got to the airport in a timely fashion though, which was good because I had to locate the bank and hope that I would be able to transfer all my money home.  Thankfully it worked.  There is an actual bank in the airport and they handled things with no problems, though a bit slowly.  In another stint of good luck, or perhaps it's because of my charm, I was able to get my very overweight bag checked without paying the 230,000 won charge.  I was ready to pay if that's what I had to do, but the lady let me slide because my other checked bag was so light.  I just hope I don't get in trouble going from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Anyway, that's it for now.  I thought I had some deeper kind of stuff to say about missing Korea and going back home and all that, but really I'm just too tired.  Soon I'll get on the bus and hopefully sit next to a pretty girl so I can promptly fall asleep and drool all over myself.