Mind Power

    The human brain is a very powerful tool. It is capable of remembering hundreds of thousands of pieces of information. For example, can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street? I can. I can also tell you the names of everyone who lives there. And yes, I am able to recite the preamble of the United States Constitution on command. I am also fairly confident that I will never forget the way it smelled the time we dissected frogs in the 7th grade. And, let's be honest, it's probably safe (and embarrassing) to say that every word to the "Fresh Prince of Bel Aire" theme song is locked up there for life.

Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Ernie, Bert, Grover, Oscar the Grouch, Elmo, and Mary Lou
What.

    These are things that are perplexing to me because I never tried to remember this stuff.... yet my brain decided at some point that it would take the liberty of just doing it for me. The things your brain (and mine) is capable of capturing and maintaining upkeep on never ceases to amaze me. 

    .....And Korea is no exception.

    When I first came to this country, the initial culture shock was something for which I could never have prepared. Now, of course when you plan to move to a country where they speak a different language, not to mention use an altogether different alphabet, you obviously imagine things being slightly more challenging than what you're used to, and you make an effort to learn some "survival" words like hello, thank you, bathroom, and wine, but there is no way you can ever truly prepare yourself for the fact that everything, no I mean everything, you see and hear is in Korean. 

Whoa.

Not to mention, nothing looks the same as it does anywhere else. When I made that drive from Incheon to Suwon on my first day here, I mostly remember thinking, Well! I'm lost. For a year. Dammit. And I was for awhile. But then, suddenly, one day.... I knew where I was! It was amazing. Thank you, Brain, for having my back on this one. I truly owe you one.

    What is your point, Laurie? Is there one? Yes. Fear not. I'm getting there.

    This past week, South Korea celebrated Lunar New Year by giving everyone off work, and probably by practicing a lot of other traditional celebratory routines of which I am unaware, but most importantly, the time off. Because of the long weekend,  Rachel and I decided to go on a mini-vacation to Daegu. We have been there once before, and decided a second time would be fun. We would go to visit Alex and Jodi. Now, because of what I mentioned before about everything you see and hear in Korea being in Korean, if you happen to be lucky enough to pal around with someone who knows what they're doing and where they're going, general practice is then to space out and just follow the expert. This is a self-preservation technique to keep your brain from imploding due to an overload of stressful, Korean-to-English-translation-slash-navigation. For example, if I go to Seongnam to visit Rachel, I never know where I'm actually going, I just follow her around because she lives there and she knows what to do and where to go, and vice versa when she comes to see me in Suwon. 

    So this, of course, was also the case in Daegu. This is Alex and Jodi's city, they know what to do. Thinking and paying attention is now: Switched off. And this is fine and dandy of course, because who needs to pay attention to where they're going when they have tour guides? Just relax and enjoy the scenery, right? Sure!

"If you look to your right you will see lovely Korea.
Don't worry about what the signs say, just follow me, please!"

However, when you have been enjoying adult beverages on a Friday night and you've already returned to the apartment, and your city experts have already gone to sleep, if you suddenly decide that you desperately need crappy, fatty, and calorie-saturated food in a serious kind of way, you might have a problem. Not because you won't be able to find your junk food fix (This is Korea! World Capital of Dunkin Donuts!), but because you may or may not be able to actually find your way back again. Rachel and I became shockingly (or not so shockingly due to buzz) aware of this while sitting at a random Lotteria in a random part of Daegu. This, of course, was after having left the apartment, hopped in a cab, spouted boorish instructions about "food" and "hungry" to the cabby, and driven off into the night without a care in the world. I'm still not entirely sure if it was our overwhelming craving for some kind of sustenance, or the effects of a few too many beverages, or a combination of both that caused us to throw caution to the wind that night, but somehow the distinct possibility that we could become profoundly and irreversibly lost upon leaving the apartment alone was completely overlooked.

Might as well just airbrush Rachel and me right into the middle of this picture.....

    And once we had sufficed our need for munchies, it became time to take on that daunting task of finding our way back to the apartment. Ok, I have absolutely no idea what Alex and Jodi say to the cabby when they get in, and I definitely wasn't paying attention to where we were going on our ride here, so....... back in the general direction from where we came, I guess?? I'm pretty sure Rachel and I had that exact same thought at just about the exact same moment because we looked at each other and just started to laugh. This was ridiculous! How were we going to get back?? I mean really. But! We made a go of it and headed across the street to catch a cab headed in what we believed to be the general direction of the apartment. We hopped inside and told the driver to go straight. With that having bought us a little bit of time, we tried, amidst a swarm of laughter, to decide on our next move. That's when I saw the river.

    "Hey! I know this river! We drive along it on the way back to Alex and Jodi's! Hey, hey driver! Make a 왼쪽!" I shouted.

    So the driver turned left at the next intersection, but we still weren't in the clear. 

    "Now what??" I turned to Rachel who just laughed and shrugged and probably just assumed we would never make it back.

    "Wait!" she said. "That's the bike shop!"

    "Is that good?" I said, confused.

    "Yeah! I recognize that shop! Driver, make another 왼쪽!"

    So again he turned left and suddenly, by no small miracle, it appeared we had found Alex and Jodi's street! We couldn't be totally sure, but it looked pretty familiar, so after a couple more blocks we finally told the driver to pull over and drop us off. When we got out of the cab, we both looked across the street, then looked at each other and screamed, "IT'S THE DOG STORE!!!!" This meant that we had, in fact, found the apartment. Between the two of our minds, we had somehow vaguely remembered the streets of Daegu just enough to make a successful, albeit impromptu, journey through this unfamiliar city.

   Once upon a time I thought I would never know where I was in Korea, no matter what, but this Lunar New Year I was proven completely wrong. Despite the fact that we can only mostly read the language and can hardly even begin to speak it, our minds have found a way to wade through the mess and come up with a solution. And for this...... I owe you an apology, Brain. You are pretty damn fantastic!