The Magic

While Samantha was here we talked a lot about Korea and the differences between here and the other countries we have been to. I explained to her that I  hadn't found the "magic" yet. I can easily recall times when I was walking around Reykjavik and the magic was flouting through the air in contagious whispers.

One day when I came back from school Samantha told me:
"I found it."
"Found what?"
"The magic."

A few days later she took me to the river that runs through the city so we could look down from the walking bridge to the fish below. When she explained about this magic I assumed it was coy, you know, the large orange fish that people put in outdoor ponds. So we walked to the spot and we looked below. All I saw was gray fish that sometimes their scales reflected the sunlight back to me. I stared for a moment or two and said, "I don't feel it". Samantha tried to convince me that there was magic down there. We stayed for ten minutes or so and I never had any luck feeling the magic. That is, until a few days ago.

Last Friday I hopped on a bus with Meredith and we headed to Tongyeong, which is a smaller coastal city at the South tip of Korea.

One of my favorite parts about being in a car or bus traveling is looking out the window. From Minnesota I've been able to drive though Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois all during the summer before coming to Korea. The midwest has very distinct features to its landscape. There are roads covered by a canopy of green trees, evergreen lined roads, rolling hills with tan rock, and a lot of farm fields that really aren't that bad to look at. Iceland had a very distinct landscape as well. There were volcanic rock everywhere and it was almost impossible to drive anywhere without seeing a mountain. While on a bus in Sweden between cities I felt transported back to farm country, it was amazing.

Let me get back to the magic. Now that it is nice outside I'm actually looking out the window while on the intercity buses. I've noticed some common landscape features of Korea (once you are outside the city). The roads are lined with squares of rice fields covered in water and behind the fields are green mountains. These little villages are scattered among the rice fields and a high rise apartment complex is never far off in the distance. Another constant is red neon crosses on top of steeples, they are always red and neon, that glow bright in the night.

On the way to Tongyeong there was mist rising off the rice fields due to the rain that had happened earlier in the day adding a sense of mystery and magic among the villages and neon crosses. I stared out the window until the sun had fully set marveling at the fact that Korea had some magic after all.