One week in, jetlag begins to abate

Herro!

I am settling in here and am getting close to getting over my jetlag--I remember hearing somewhere that it takes a day for every hour of time change that's happened. It's 13 hours between DC and Seoul so should take 13 days. It has been 9 days, so I have 4 more days of being able to use jetlag as an excuse for anything. It was pretty rough, I kept getting up at like 3am and being pissed at myself. And most of the rest of the day, until I forced myself to stay awake until 8-9pm.

I've been in classes for about a week now and I've been running home after classes end at 1pm (midnight DC time) to nap. Yesterday I mobilized myself to drag myself a screening of this Korean movie:

English title is "Finding Mr. Destiny." It's about a guy who gets fired from his travel agent job and starts a service to track down your first love. His first reluctant client is a musical director who is stuck on her first love that she met in India ten years ago. The two of them travel all over Korea looking for her first love and...you can guess what happens. It's fun to watch, you should try to get your hands on it if you can!

I took pictures of my dorm room here so you can see just how tiny it is. Check it out:

The entryway. Koreans take off shoes when entering a home--which I like, keeps the street filth out of the house.

What you see when you enter. Bathroom is on the left.

Bathroom. I have my own which is pretty nice.

View from the window in my room

It is narrow.

Dinky pay-as-you-go phone. I haven't quite figured out how the keyboard works or how to check messages.

This little gem is the card slot that lets me get electricity in my room. It works so the dorm ID I need to enter the dorm, and my room, has to be put into a slot for the electricity to work, and it looks like this:

Koreans are really into conserving electricity. I almost fell down a set of escalators a few days ago because I thought it was moving and naturally propelled myself to catch up with it. It is a clever idea, but a pain.

In other news, I am seeing some relatives I haven't seen in 10+ years. I saw my grandmother and my cousins. This weekend I'm seeing another uncle and his family, on my mom's side. One of my cousins has two kids and a third on the way, so I am excited to meet them.

That's all for now. It is monsoon season and looks like it will be raining all summer long, the first day I got here was really beautiful and then it's rained--I think 7 out of the 9 days I've been here it's rained. All day too, a steady sprinkling to a downpour, not like a shower at some point in the day. I have been mostly staying indoors.

I think that's enough for now. I'm really wanting to go hiking this weekend, we'll see what the weather is like--if it's a sprinkle I'll just put on rain gear and head out, I saw lots of people going hiking despite the weather over the weekend.

Flight

Dulles terminal

Hello friends!

I am, as I write this, sitting in the plane from DC to Seoul. It's a direct flight about 14 hours--not so bad, no layover.

I am amazed at how thin the stewardesses are. I'd say on average they're about 5'7" and 100 lbs. And they're strong. They have to pull those heavy food carts and lift overpacked suitcases into overhead bins. On a related note, my mom beat me at arm wrestling the other day. Don't mess with Koreans, they are stronger than they look.

Anyhoo, flight's been good so far. I'm being fed and watered like a veal heading to the slaughter in two and a half weeks. Oh look, they just brought the cheese cart. And here's three cheeses. And grapes. And I see a bottle of port wine.

Check it out, I even have a tiny tablecloth.

And stuff I ate earlier. Bibimbob and soup and banchan:

Like my miniature bottle of red pepper paste?

Oh hello dessert. Tiny cup of haagen-daaz or mousse cake. I thought the cheese platter was dessert.

I have had three (airplane) glasses of wine. The two white wine varieties are called "California" or "Argentina." I had the Cali wine.

Background

Hello friends,

Welcome to my blog--I'm traveling for about a year before law school starting out with about 6 months in Seoul, doing a Korean language program. If I get motivated I may teach English or do some kind of internship. Knowing me I'll probably just read and bum around and go hiking.

Afterwards I want to go somewhere else and surf for a couple months. Or work on an organic farm. I don't know yet. Feel free to make suggestions! Bonus points for politically stable regions.

I'll try to post regularly with pics and generally provide yet another source of stimulation while you sit in your cube.