Tired, Sweaty and Ready to Go!

Leave it to me to think of witty, or maybe not so witty, blog titles late at night…

For those of you who are wondering, kimchi is a type of food eaten at every meal in Korea.  It is basically just fermented cabbage and smells like fishy eggs…yum!  I’ve yet to try it, but soon enough.  Soon enough.  From what I’ve heard, kimchi doesn’t taste very good at first (clearly.), but over time it tends to become delicious.  I’m a little skeptical of this, but I refuse to be the American who doesn’t try new things.  I’ll keep you updated.

As for my Korean speaking abilities, well, they’re limited.  So limited in fact, that on my plane ride over, whenever the stewardess asked what I wanted to eat or drink, I always jumped on the words I knew, which were basically steak and Coca-cola.  The conversation went something like this:

Stewardness: Steak or anyeugnblahblah? (later on it was octopus or chicken….)

Me: Uhhh, steak.

Stewardness:  Drink?

Me: (looking at the cart and seeing a lot of unrecognizable containers) uhh Coca-cola.

Here’s the thing about Coca-cola.  It’s magically universal.  Anywhere you go, you can always feel reassured about drinking a Coke.  Plus, it always tastes better outside of America.  Something about using real sugar.  Anyway, no matter where I’ve traveled, Coke is always my default beverage, my safety net.  From Guatemala to Korea, Coke prevails!  Awesome.

However, besides the steak shenanigan, there were maybe only three other exciting parts to my exciting day traveling across the Pacific.

1)  I was sandwiched between an elderly Vietnamese woman and an elderly Korean man.  The Korean man slept almost the entire flight (really impressive), but the Vietnamese woman tried to talk to me a lot, which considering her lack of English skills and my lack of Vietnamese, proved to be really difficult.  There was a lot of pointing and misunderstandings.  My favorite part of this experience was when half way through the flight she pulled out her cell phone and started playing her favorite hometown tunes.  Without any headphones.  After about 5 minutes of some very screechy Asian tones, I asked her if she could turn it down.   She looked at me, then her phone, and started talking very quickly.  It turns out that in the process of playing her music, she had locked her phone and couldn’t get it unlocked to stop the music.  We eventually had to remove the battery to get it to stop.  So that was fun!

2) I watched The Lucky One 2 ½ times…  Okay, okay.  Here were my choices, all of which I exhausted after the first 6 hours.  The Lorax.  That was cute.  Journey to the Center of the Earth.  That was a little weird and you can only watch The Rock do his pec jiggles so many times.  Seriously.  Battleship something something…yeah wasn’t into that.  Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.  Seen it too many times, but still a classic.  Mirror Mirror.  Also cute, but I only like Julia Roberts as a Pretty Woman, not an evil queen.  And finally, The Lucky One.  Zac Efron.  Done.

3) Upon arriving at the airport in Seoul, I collected my 150 + pounds of luggage (yes, I’m for real).  I then proceeded to get turned around in the terminal and went the complete opposite way from what I was supposed to, carrying and wheeling my 150 + pounds of completely necessary items.  When I reached the end of the terminal, a nice man asked if I needed any help and I said I was looking for Booth 8.  He then told me that Booth 8 was at the other end of the terminal. Oh.  Serious bummer.  At this point, I can already feel the intense 94% humidity coming in from outside.  I’m sweating like crazy.  I’m delusional because I haven’t slept in like 24 hours.  And my muscles are starting to give out from carrying around my 150 + pounds of crap.  Yes, at this point it is crap.  The walk to the other end of the terminal took about 15 minutes…  I was a beautiful sight.  I don’t even want to think about all the wonderful first impressions I made yesterday.  I really am a nice person everyone!  And I really don’t usually sweat this much!  Oh brother…

Today, Tuesday the 21^st of August, orientation officially starts.  Once again, the weather is about 80 degrees and so humid that the shower I took this morning already seems like a joke.  Whatever.  I love Monsoon Season.  And ponytails. 

I also made my first Korean purchase.  Get ready.  Gatorade!  I mean I have to keep those electrolytes going.  I am already the sweaty girl.  I don’t need to be the girl who passes out on the first day of orientation too.

I’ll get some pictures up soon, maybe.  If I remember to get my camera out. 

I also hope everyone had an awesome day on Monday, the 20th of August, because I had to skip over that day.  Lost, gone forever.  Sad. 

Happy week everyone!