So I woke up at 8am today, and again at 10am -- I'm hoping that that's good news for the jet lag. Anyways, here's a blog post with all the details from the travels (because I really wasn't gonna type that much on a cell phone...)
Philly was super easy as usual; I got to the terminal within half an hour of getting to the airport -- got a DD bagel and then just waited. The flight to Seattle was rather uneventful, got some good sleep in and watched a movie on the laptop. In order to connect in Seattle, you have to take a train across from one terminal to the next; which takes about 5 minutes. While I was eating the aforementioned cod sandwhich I heard the intercom come on and a woman ask if Jacob, Cedric could please come to the terminal. It was cool because she had gotten me a "better" seat! I had a pair of window seats all to myself!
For the most part that worked out really well, got to watch a bunch of movies... But at the same time it makes the flight a little lonely. Better than getting unlucky and worse than getting lucky with the "conversational sparring partners" we sometimes find on airplanes.
The descent was awesome -- you could see the low hanging clouds over the countryside with large slightly aggressive mountains poking through which had the effect of making it look like the clouds were the ground, and the mountains were just floating on them.
And then I got to the baggage claim and realized my bags weren't there. Now to be fair -- In Seattle I had to take that train, on top of walking for 15 minutes to get to the terminal just about 15 minutes early... But they still should have found some way to get my bags there on time. In any case, I get to try and track them down after writing this post :) fun! I pulled out a print-out from an e-mail sent to me by my friend Lauren Cook (who is teaching english in Busan) and it became like a bible for the next few hours!
The exchange rate for cash is pretty nice -- you chop off the last zero (it's always a zero) and imagine a decimal place and you're done. Makes it very non-confusing to buy things; a coca-cola here is a touch cheaper than it is back home :) I took a bus from Incheon airport to Seoul Station (really impressed by the highway system), which took about an hour; then boarded a KTX train to Busan which departed at 9pm and arrived at 11:40pm -- it was not the high-speed express line; which I may attempt to take in the future just for the "experience." The train was pretty nice, fairly comparable to Amtrak, but $50 instead of $150; which is a pretty nice perk.
I got to Busan and reached Lauren on a pay phone (100 Won) -- she was already at the station at a different quai. So next was the taxi ride back to the apartment, she gave a spat of instructions that I didn't understand and when we got closer said some words that I had to assume meant left and right until we got to the apartment :) One funny thing about the language: Yes is "neh" which is kind of funny, because it either sounds like "meh" or reminds you of a certain monty python film (yes I know it's "ni" but its close enough that my brain makes the connection...)
We had dinner at a Korean diner, which consisted of some rice and noodles with seaweed, lettuce, some seasoning and hot sauce. There was some Chinese kimchi on the side, which Lauren informed me was being imported because of a cabbage shortage.
We finally got back to the apartment around 1am, at which time I was able to skype my family over skype and see my sisters (and mom) make funny faces at me! Then I tried to make friends with Lauren's dog Dexter -- he doesn't seem to hate me... But we're not quite friends yet either.
I fell asleep at 2am on Thursday after leaving home at 6am on Tuesday to the first "night-time" I had seen in over 40 hours!
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