"What do you think of the traffic in Korea?" I was asked by a middle-aged woman in my first week teaching English.

"I try not to!" was the initial response that came to mind but instead I asked her what made her wonder.

"Oh, most foreigners say that's the first thing they notice about Korea," she answered nonchalantly.

She was on to something. I don't remember my first taxi ride in Pusan. I've tried but I believe, like many victims of trauma, I have repressed the memory. The first memory I have is more a mosaic of the true memory embellished with snippets from the famous car chases in classic Hollywood movies. I only know this because at one point I can visualize my taxi driver driving under the "L" in a late model American car that could have only belonged to Gene Hackman in The French Connection. I never said my memory was accurate. Anyway, as I have a tendency to exaggerate and I was suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome you're going to have to cut me some slack.

And so I didn't have to think long before telling her, yes, the traffic was perhaps the most obviously different thing I'd seen in my first week. After only a week, I was still frightened riding in a taxi. While rounding a corner and watching a wayward bus emigrate from it's lane and begin to loom larger in my passenger window I'd think of my premature death.
"Was she wearing clean underwear?" my mother would surely ask through her tears.
"Well, ma'am, we're not certain if it was clean before the accident or not. We get a lot of that in these parts,"

Of course, because my mother would insist on coming here if I were to perish in an unfortunate but at the time, seemingly probable bus-taxi-man on a scooter-traffic accident, the conversation would be much different. No Barney Fifes' here. I can picture my little, Hispanic mother giving the twenty-something year old Korean cop a hard time (add slight Spanish accent here), "What do you mean, che wasn't wearing her seatbelt? Che always wears her seatbelt?"
"What would you rike to do with her lemains?"
"Why wasn't che wearing her seatbelt? Why did che have 'lemains' with her???"

But miraculously, I survived my first week of taxi rides. Then, thanks to the kind hands of the gods, I made it through my first month of taxis. And soon it was obvious (to me, at least) that I had been put on this Earth for a very special purpose in life, though that purpose had not yet been revealed at the time of this writing. Fate alone allowed me to survive one third of a year riding in Korean taxis.

Had it not been for my sudden belief in God, I would have come to the conclusion there must be some kind of system here. If it were up to the odds alone I should have been killed in my first month. Could there be a system? More research still needs to be done. Another student described the traffic as "organized chaos". Hmmmmmm, "organized chaos", I like that.

Maybe it wasn't divine intervention. Maybe it wasn't pure luck. Maybe the crazed taxi drivers, hurried moms, work-release program bus drivers, testosterone driven teenage boys, kamikaze scooter deliver guys and the rest of the normal drivers knew what they were doing. They had a method. There's little competition on the roads here and so that makes for less hostility and the system works here. In the United States, our motto is, "Mine, mine, mine" My street, my lane, my space. It's different here. With the exception of the Short Man Syndrome felt by some taxi drivers in regards to all of the buses, there's no animosity between the drivers whose cars push and shove their ways around town.

Today I will step into a taxi and sit back, relaxed enough to read a book and disregard the buses and scooters sharing our lane. In fact, if truth be told, I've come to enjoy most of my taxi rides throughout the city, the traffic patterns remind me of, well, fish. A lot of fish. A giant, gas guzzling, carbon monoxide omitting, school of fish. I will watch in relaxed amazement as all three lanes of traffic turn left at the same corner and somehow ALL of us manage to merge into the one lane road without touching each other.

Organized chaos? Maybe. Or "organized fish", I think.

"Will you drive in Pusan?" my student asked at the end of our discussion.

"Hell, no!" It just slipped out.