Tea in Incheon with a Retired Lawyer (Who Shattered My Expectations)

Her name is JiYeon. And she completely shattered my expectations.

She is my neighbour, and we only met because of a false fire alarm at my apartment building that caused me to run out in a panic. Yes, it was my first time experiencing that, so I got scared. We decided to go to a cafe in Incheon the following day.

I will admit that I had assumptions. I expected formality. I expected hierarchy. I expected a very polished, very corporate conversation about practice life and all that.

What I got instead was a 60-something woman who laughed easily, kicked off her heels under the table, and said: "Okay, so tell me, how do Nigerian lawyers deal with impossible clients?"

And just like that, we were off.

I ordered a hot lemon and ginger drink, I had discovered that it goes incredibly well with my body, especially coming from a tropical climate to the cold Korean weather. She ordered a hot coffee. I insisted on paying. We talked for two hours over those warm drinks.

We talked about client management. Impostor syndrome. The difference in legal systems. The pressure to be perfect all the time. We talked about how exhausting it is to be a young woman in a male-dominated profession.

What surprised me most is that the problems are the same. The cultural context is different, sure. But the core struggles are universal.

She told me about working long hours for weeks in her young years as a lawyer. I told her about working at a firm in the US, all while still trying to prove myself as a real lawyer. She told me about her hope to leave a legacy behind.

By the end, we were not just two lawyers from different countries having tea. We were two women, one young and one old, one Black and one Asian, trying to build something meaningful in a profession that may not always make it easy.

That is what travel does. It shows you that the world is smaller than you think, and that the things that matter most are the same everywhere.