Summer Rain 여름 강우량

First Collision - Part 1

It was raining; had been raining ever since the day I arrived here. I still remember the way the thick raindrops would hit the small, circular window right beside me as the plane prepared to land. But the bad weather hadn't been able to take away my excitement, not at all. That day, once I had collected my luggage, was the day I first met my host family. I remember the broad smiles on the faces of Kim Jung Ha and Kim Jang Sul as they waved at me, so I wouldn't miss them and get lost somewhere in the crowd. Mr and Mrs Kim turned out to be truly friendly people, just the way I had been picturing them ever since I had first spoken to them on the phone. She was more talkative than her husband though, but I chose to blame that on the fact that he was focused on the street, trying not to get involved in any of the traffic jams building up around us. The way he maneuvered the car through every small gap he could find told me that in his almost 40 years of driving experience, he had learned a lot of things. It was funny, because the first ten minutes they both weren't quite sure how to speak to me, so what happened was that they switched from Korean to English and back again repeatedly. "You can speak to me in Korean, it'll be just fine." I told them in their mother tongue, though I yet had to get rid off my western accent. In my five years of practice, I still sounded quite a bit like a foreigner, even if a person wasn't directly looking at me, they'd be able to tell just by hearing me.

Immediately, I could see the relief in their eyes. Mrs Kim was quite a short person, her hair tied up in a neat bun, a single dark lock framing her face as she turned to look at me, who was seated in the back of the car. "How was your flight? Have you been able to catch some sleep?" Although it was a lie, I gave her a quick nod, simply because I reckoned it wasn't exactly relevant to reveal that I'd spent more than thirteen hours next in between a family with three children that all seemed to have found pleasure in kicking my seat nonstop and two ladies in their forties who shared whatever recipe came to their mind. Well, it wasn't all bad – at least you could say that I learned how to make the perfect diet brownies, since I still had the entire recipe in my head, creeping through my thoughts. As we made it further into the city of Seoul, I couldn't help but lean my forehead against the window, trying to take in whatever building we passed. The rain still hadn't stopped, but thanks to the dark clouds, the city lights seemed to shine even brighter. We don't really have huge cities of this sort where I live, so that was quite a new, breathtaking thing to see. But would I be fine in a world that was twenty times the size of the world I was used to?

The family's home lay on the outskirts of the city, where there were a lot of steep streets leading up to many smaller and bigger houses. Some of them were rather traditional looking, while others were definitely quite modern. The car came to a halt in front of a small restaurant, which I had been told of before. The family owned two restaurants, one in the city centre and one out here, right beneath their apartment. It looked quite inviting from the outside already, small but obviously decorated with a lot of passion. As the cold rain met my hair and skin, I felt a shiver running down my spine and quickly took my suitcase from Mr Kim, insisting on carrying it myself as I hated it when others had to make any effort for me. I didn't want to seem like a spoilt brat, besides I was young and quite capable of carrying it myself, so I didn't see why he should have to do it, but of course I thanked him numerous times just for offering his help. Making our way inside, I glanced around the small restaurant area. There was a bar, a few tables and self-painted pictures of flower bouquets and such hanging on the white walls to brighten up the atmosphere. It smelled of udon and other meals and I immediately felt my stomach tighten a little, as I hadn't eaten anything in almost a day. Of course they had offered food on the plane, but I after hearing about brownies and cheesecake for hours I felt as though I had eaten whatever the women next to me had brought up, so I hadn't been able to even try to eat anything back then, which I now regretted.