Wednesday Night Stories: Wake Up in East Asia

I had many, many ideas of what my year in East Asia would be like. Some were fulfilled. Most were crushingly, devastatingly taken away (a process I'm actually thrilled about, no joke!).

My first 24 hours in the country were a whirlwind and almost feel like they didn't happen, but photo evidence suggests otherwise. Here's a recap.

I had never been to East Asia before deciding to go there. But folk who had been there told me a number of things among them, "Say goodbye to blue skies!" and "Breathing the air is equal to several years of smoking." So, I was pretty eager to see what the atmosphere held for me as our plane landed.

(Aside: I love that English has an entire word for "to exit a plane" and I love that the word is "deplane").

So, as we deplaned I was excited that the deplaning-tunnel was state of the art with giant floor to ceiling windows giving me a grand view of the tarmac and with it . . . the sky. As I looked up, I saw something better than I could have imagined. I burst out laughing, to the point where I nearly fell over onto the person in front of me. Above me and all around was the grayest, dreariest, smoggiest sky I had ever seen in real life or in any photo. It was too much for me, I could do nothing but laugh (and try to limit my breaths to 3 per minute).

In fairness, the next 4 days after that were clear blue skies, making that first day somewhat of an outlier.

Otherwise the rest of that day was spent exchanging money (I was carrying more money in cash than I had ever even remotely had in my bank account) and signing a rental contract that I could not read one character of . . . scary, eh? Also, delicious food was involved.

But the next morning is where things got interesting. I woke up via jet-lag around 5:30 AM and was able to survey the neighborhood from our apartment's 17th floor window. Around 7:30 AM something started to happen in the courtyard of the shocking pink elementary school across the street. Suddenly, all the students were outside. And they were lining up in something akin to a military formation. And they started chanting, no, yelling in unison:

" . . YI ER SAN SI WU LIU . . . "

The patriot inside of me became somewhat terrified I was watching the future downfall of America because let me tell you this, there is nothing scarier than a pack of kindergarteners of one mind and one mission. They will take you down. Take. You. Down.

But then instead of bayonet fighting or bomb disarming the kids just did some stretches then went back to their classes.

Whew, threat averted.

And when I started learning the language the next week, I discovered that the kids we're actually just counting to 10, not pledging the overthrow of Western democracy.

Once again, threat averted.