On March 31st at about 9:30pm Korea's time, my mom and grandpa Lyle landed at Inchon International airport about an hour's drive west of Seoul. From the minute he landed, grandpa was mystified. The traffic jammed six lane to each side highway we were driving on existed only as a rice field the last time he had seen it. Trying to figure out the general location of where he was now compared to fifty-two years ago seemed nearly impossible. Inchon was just a small port city connected to Seoul by train. When he flew over from Japan it was not in a huge jet to this port city, but in a "flying boxcar" (see pic) to K16, which is now in Seoul and known as Gimpo International airport. The site seeing of our drive home consisted of highrise after highrise, apartments mostly, but some bussiness buildings with many bussinesses in one building. Numerous bridges lit up by multicolored lights and consisting of both three lane roads for cars and subway tracks crossed the Han River at maybe two mile intervals. Grandpa declared that when he had been here, the one bridge crossing the Han had already been destroyed by the South Koreans to keep the North from recapturing the land south of it. The only way for them to cross the river then way by a pontoon bridge. Actually, even after we went entered Seoul, that whole part of Seoul hadn't existed. It was rice fields known as Yongdampo. I've been told that when they started building up the area south of the Han River that is known as the New Downtown or Gangnam-gu, they build eight lane roads through the fields before even starting the buildings.
Although the part of Seoul where I live wasn't even part of the city while he was here, I have been able to figure out where many of the places he had been during his stay in Korea are. Our itinerary for today is to visit Ewah University with Mia (the person who taught me Korean while still in the United States) and possibly other parts of the downtown area. Grandpa was stationed at Ewah University while he was here and we want to try to find the same building or at least where it was. Then he has another picture of part of a palace, so we'll try to figure out which one that is.. most likely Gyeongbokgung, because that's the biggest one.
The schedule is just so busy and this morning I'm letting them rest for awhile before we begin. First I'm taking them to visit my school. We'll go there around lunch so they can actually meet people and then up to the opposite corner of the city. Updates on that possibly tonight depending on how tired I am.