As some of you may already know, I recently received a fabulous fellowship from Oregon's Center for Pacific and Asian Studies. This fellowship allows me to study Korean in Seoul for six weeks practically free of cost! The last month has been a whirlwind of activity as I have prepared to depart and it has been stressful knowing that I would be leaving my loved ones behind. But yesterday I left my beautiful homeland and made my way to the capital of South Korea, which possesses a vastly different kind of beauty.
Thursday morning, after a late night of packing, I woke up tired but excited. My family drove me up to PDX, but unfortunately the traffic came to a halt halfway there. We hoped it was just typical congestion, but it turned out to be an accident and what should have taken 30 minutes slowly stretched into over an hour. By the time we reached the airport, I had no time to waste so after hasty goodbyes I ran to check in and my family drove away. :'(
The Alaska Airlines check-in machine told me that it was too late to check in and that I should go to the main desk. The woman there sassed me and informed me that my bag would probably miss the flight and therefore the connection as well and that if it did I would have to go get my bag another time. This didn't sound appealing to me as the Incheon airport in Seoul is over an hour away from the university, but I didn't have a choice so I made my way through security and on to the terminal.
The flight to Seattle was uneventful and I didn't have to wait long for my next flight to Seoul which was just over eleven hours long. bleh. My first impression was that the flight would not go well. On the other side of the plane in my row there was a woman with a small poodle in a pink harness which began yapping as soon as the plane took off. I soon began preparing my pillow to go over and smother it, but the noise ceased after several tense minutes.
The seats on Korean Air are pretty comfortable and each passenger has their own touch-screen tv with an array of movies, tv programs, documentaries and music to keep them entertained. I had created an eleven hour long playlist on my ipod which kept me distracted for the first couple of hours, but I eventually grew restless and kept seeing interesting movies on the screens of the seats around me, so I looked through the different option and decided to watch Beastly. They had English, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese audio and I decided to watch it in Korean to get in some practice. The movie was actually pretty good, and satisfied, I listened to a couple more hours of music.
Once again I needed to mix it up so I looked through the movies again and settled on Sucker Punch. What are the chances that the two movies that I would decide to watch would both have Vanessa Hudgens of all people in them? *Readers please don't judge me!* The movie was not what I was expecting, but I enjoyed it as well. More music and I was starting to feel agitated. I couldn't manage to fall asleep and I really needed to move around and break the monotony. I was eight hours in with three more to go. I did my best to suppress my discomfort and was happy when they began to bring around the second meals. Unfortunately the pasta which I got was smothered in cheese which I didn't realize until too late. I was so hungry that I decided to risk aggravating my… intolerance, and tried to eat around the cheese. Ten minutes later I could feel my stomach beginning to cramp and I tried to just relax and focus on not vomiting. Luckily I succeeded.
After enduring one more fit of yapping by that demonic poodle, I made it to the Incheon airport with sore joints, a sore stomach, and extremely exhausted. Thank the Lord, my bag arrived with me. The bus ride to Shinchon went by quickly and I checked into my dorm, unpacked, and exhausted, fell asleep immediately. It was quite the ordeal, but I couldn't be more excited. Now the adventure really begins. Wish me luck!
