I have always depended on the kindness of strangers

3 hours of packing and good-bye pancakes, 2 hours of airport security, 11 hours of flying, and 0.5 hours on a bus left me in no condition to find my way across a strange university campus; especially after I dropped my map in the my rush to get my luggage (all 100 lbs. of it) onto said bus. Fortunately, people in general (or at least in Seoul) are not as bad an idea as global warming would lead you to believe.

a) the bus dropped me off at the corner of a 4 lane road and an 8 lane road. The university was on the other side of the 8 lane road. The only way to "cross" it was to go under it through the subway station right off campus. Trundling my way up the steps on the other side, I was stopped by a random stranger who volunteered (though there wasn't much communication involved) to help me carry the 50 lbs. suitcase not strapped to my back up to the other side.

b) once I'd left the subway station, it was still not apparent where I was. Two blocks of street shops and neon-lights lay between me and anything that remotely looked like a college campus. I eventually got to campus, but was so frazzled by then, I was in no mood to wander aimlessly between buildings, looking for English signage (and, like I said, I'd lost my map). Fortunately, two exchange students who'd already been here for a few months recognized my plight and offered to lead me to the international house/dormitory office. 10 signatures later (at least one of which attested to the fact that I don't have the swine flu) I arrived here:



This is my room. Note the dormitudiness of it. Falling asleep last night, I actually thought I smelled the Whitman dining hall at breakfast.



These are the ridiculously steep stairs leading up to my bed. Sleep-walking has now officially replaced my driver's license as the most likely reason I will break my leg.



And, for good measure: this is the International Education Building, which houses the "Institute for the Early Universe" ("-iverse, -iverse, -iverse, -iverse...") We're on the 8th floor. I think there are 14 in total.

It was very quiet in the office today. Aside from the secretaries, I didn't see another soul for 3 hours. Then Kyoung Kyoo (there's no way in hell I spelled that correctly) arrived. He's a string theory post-doc. He's been here since April. He guided me to and through lunch (Hanover readers: think larger portions of the little appetizers you get at Yama's) and, most important of all, showed me where the fifty-cent coffee was to be had.

And now I prepare to sleep my second night in Korea. I'm still in survival mode (read: I don't actually believe I'm going to live here for the next two years).

When Nature (one of the secretaries) asked to hold on to my passport for a week, I freaked out a little inside. I either think the sky is going to fall on me and I'm going to need some kind of international identification, or I think that one week is a significant portion of my time here.

Tonight for dinner I had 2 bananas and 2 nectarines. A small fruit stand was all I could find in the surrounding mass of commercialdom that I could be absotively, posilutely sure was vegetarian. I could live that way for a week or even a month, but not 2 years. Either my Korean will have to improve, I'll have to figure out how to use Korean google maps (any time I go to google, the characters appear in Korean; there is no "English" button), or... still not sure.