Day 2: Last Day of Travel

Let me just begin by expressing my love for the people of Korea. Seriously, they are the greatest: such wonderful flight attendants, so kind and patient (until you go through customs, they're a bit crankier over that way), so accepting that we Americans are pretty loud and obnoxious, typically more than willing to help us fix our (many) mistakes, etc. Needless to say, they're great.

We had a wonderful night in Seoul and got to see the city a bit, because our hotel was about a twenty five minute drive from the airport. It was dark outside when we drove there, so we mostly got to see the brightly illuminated buildings as we passed by. The architecture in Korea is so different than what I am used to seeing in the States; it's so modern looking and it has lights, everywhere. It was funny to drive past some of the businesses because some of the names were written in Korean, and the others, very broken English. I think I saw a place called, "Very Yummy Taco". I wanted to take a picture, but the shuttle man was on a serious mission to get to the hotel, he was hauling lots of luggage and a loud group of Americans.

When we got to the hotel, we got into pairs of two to get room assignments. Ms. Jenna Neeley and I got assigned to room 1107.I am only noting the room number because we got to be on the eleventh floor, of 20, in the hotel and the room had a phenomenal view of the night sky. The buildings were lit late into the night, and the massive windows opened up to a remarkable sight of the city. This was a dream in itself to stay in for the night.

Not only was the view incredible, a soft and cushy bed had never felt so good. My tailbone was seriously so sore from sitting on the plane for so long yesterday, and it was glorious to not sleep upright with your head cocked to the side. I think one of the coolest features in the room was probably the toilet, weird, I know. This thing was incredible! It had a full remote with instructions of the many different options to choose from (all in Korean, so we just pushed them all to see what each did). I found one that heated the toilet seat, no more sitting on a cold potty! Also, it was a buhday (unsure how to spell that one) where water shot up from the toilet and sprayed you off. I can admit, I was quite surprised by this and jumped off of the toilet as soon as the freezing water touched my skin, only for the spraying water to continue spraying into the air, making a huge mess all over the floor and toilet seat. After that, I was done toilet experimenting.

Jenna and I decided to begin listening to a chapter of D&C each night of our trip come bed time. Let me tell you, last night was incredibly successful. I think we were both completely out by about verse three. It was a long day, we tried. We will get better and more accustomed to the time zone eventually. (cross your fingers)

We woke up this morning bright and early, well I guess not very bright. It was dark still when we woke up; we have been really thrown off by this whole light when late, dark when early, time switch thing, it has been taunting us all day. We did in fact get to see a South Korean sunrise, however. I can't even explain how remarkable this was. The sun slowly crept up over the mountains and behind the sky scraping buildings off into the distance. It was almost as if the sun was a perfect circle with swirling colors of pink and orange emerging from it. It was brilliant, and a wonderful way to start off our day of travels.

When we got to the airport, we had thirty minutes to get through security, customs, immigration, and find our gate. It is a much more difficult task to do when you are in a group of fifty, in a foreign country, where no one knows where they are going. A Korean man eventually noticed that we were struggling quite a bit and acting as a human road block, to just about every entrance (there are a lot of us). He so generously gave us some direction by taking control and showing us where we needed to be. It was like he was herding sheep, we were hopeless.

I got through all the checks and balances, only to notice that I had then lost track of my group. Fortunately, the Korean airport is marked in both English and Korean, which saved my life. I met back up with the rest of the group by our gate and was ready for our next four hour flight to Guangzhou, China. From there, we plan to catch a bus to our final destination. It still doesn't feel real, that I am this far away and that it nearly took two days to get here. It has been quite an adventure already, I really look forward to what the next four months hold in store for me.

Pictures:
#1: The view from Jenna's and My room
#2: The beautiful sunrise we witnessed this morning
#3: Cute and such intricate cookies we found in the Korean airport
#4: Airplane food, say what? We had fish, rice, tofu, Lychee, a roll, and individually packed water for lunch on our flight today.
#5: Our precious flight attendants, can't help but love them, right?