Korea

A few weeks ago I went to South Korea to take the GMAT. I am applying to business school for next year, so the past few months I have been doing little else beside study. Aside from my trip to Korea, I haven’t left Mongolia in the past 18 months. It was kind of strange to visit a developed country. The roads are actually paved. There ARE actually roads. Cars aren’t in a constant state of breaking down, and there are buildings taller than 16 stories. It was kind of intimidating.
Even just leaving Mongolia was a pretty funny experience. As I was standing in line at security a bunch of little kids who were probably going to study in Korea came, all carrying bottles of juice. Not only did they get to take their juice past security, they didn’t even go through security. They were just waved on through. And of course, there weren’t any of those “line control” things, so it was just a line of people standing waiting, which of course meant people were cutting to the front the whole time. Some people in Mongolia are just too important to stand in line. The woman at customs in the Ulaanbaatar airport took a very long time looking at my passport. She couldn’t understand the English on my Mongolian visa, and where it says “3 YRS,” she thought it meant 3 months. I explained that I live in Mongolia, that I’m a Peace Corps volunteer and I was just visiting Korea. She gave me a confused look and then let me pass. On the airplane as we approached Seoul, the flight attendant was passing out entry cards for Korea, and when she got to my row she gave them to the Mongolians sitting next to me but not to me. I asked her for one, and she said “no, you don’t need one. You are a transit passenger.” So I explained that actually, I live in Mongolia and was visiting Korea and then returning to Mongolia. We went round and round a couple times and she was clearly very confused, but eventually gave me the card.
Being in Seoul was fun, it was kind of frustrating at times because I didn’t understand anything that was being said around me. In Mongolia I’m used to being able to catch at least the gist of a conversation. Luckily, most people in Korea speak pretty good English so it wasn’t really a problem. I didn’t really do much because I was there to take the GMAT, but I did walk around Seoul a lot. I was kind of disappointed in the weather, it was cold and overcast the whole time I was there. Not nearly as cold as Mongolia, but I was really hoping that it would be warm enough that I wouldn’t need to wear gloves and a hat every time I went outside. I was really impressed with some of the differences I noticed in the few days I was there. Crossing streets, everyone waited for the light to turn before walking. Even if there were no cars coming. I was kind of shocked by that. In Mongolia that almost never happens. In Tsetserleg there are no street lights, but even in UB, people normally just walk right out in traffic. If you don’t, you probably won’t ever get to cross the street, and there is usually so much of a traffic jam that the cars aren’t really moving anyway.
As soon as I got to the check-in counter to my flight back to Mongolia I felt right at home. Everyone was speaking Mongolian and I could understand them, they were all trying to cut in line and an old woman in a fur coat even rammed me with her luggage cart because I wouldn’t let her cut in front of me. Everyone had luggage carts. Mongolians usually travel with little else besides their purse. I have seen women going on week-long trips without so much as a change of clothes, but coming back from Korea is an entirely different story. Nearly every person on the flight had a luggage cart full of boxes. Everything from Apple computers to blankets. The woman at the counter seemed surprised that I only had one duffle bag.
Even before I checked in, the flight had an hour wind delay. Flying into Mongolia in the winter is a tricky thing. I have heard rumors of at least two people who flew in from Beijing that got to Mongolia, and then had to go back to Beijing without landing because of either smog or wind. The weather in Mongolia is fickle. Luckily my flight didn’t fly all the way there before realizing there was a problem with the weather, so instead I just waited in the airport an extra hour. As soon as the airline staff showed up at our gate, there was a rush of people (there is no “group A” etc when flying to Mongolia, it’s just a free-for-all). The airline staff eventually came out from behind the desk and yelled at everyone to go sit down because they weren’t ready yet, but only about 5 people left the horde to sit back down. Once they did start letting people through, everyone started scrunching up to the front and two airline employees had to come and physically push people into some semblance of a line. That made me smile, and I was happy to be coming home. I didn’t even forget my line-standing defense mechanisms while I was in Korea. One man tried to casually cut in front of me and I gave him my best death stare, so he got behind me instead.