I am here! I’m alive!

After a fourteen hour plane ride I landed in Seoul without any problems. Korean Air really is a great airline. I even slept about two hours which is a big deal for me. Normally, I can’t sleep on airplanes. They had toothbrushes and toothpaste in the bathroom, strange outfits for the flight attendants and a number of other small things that made it a good flight. Also, we flew AROUND North Korea which I appreciated. I may have gotten some sort of cold or something, though, because my throat is killing me. Upon landing we were informed that the Korean figure skater, Yu-Na Kim, had just won the gold and a world record at the Olympics.

Getting through customs and immigration was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I figured since I was staying for a year and was going to work in Korea they would have more questions in immigration for me but as it turns out, they don’t care.

When I walked out of the gate, there was a guy from the hotel holding a sign that said ‘Mr. Emily Everhart’. Since there probably wasn’t a guy on my flight who happened to have the same name as me, I figured he was there to meet me. He seemed pretty embarrassed about the sign because when I gestured towards him he immediately hid the sign. I decided it would be rude to ask to keep it.

He showed me to a car that took me to my hotel, about 25 min. from the airport. We crossed a Sunshine Skyway-esque bridge into Seoul proper and I checked into my hotel. I tried to stay awake until something resembling sleeping time in Seoul but at about 7pm I fell asleep while reading and dropped my Kindle. I decided that staying up much longer would be detrimental to my electronics and maybe I should take this in baby steps. I went to sleep and woke up again at 3am. I told myself I was going to at least stay in bed until 6am but that didn’t work either. I ended up reading some and watching some historical dramas on television. There was this one about Robin Hood which I found enthralling in my jet-lagged state.

I finally went down to breakfast which was served buffet style. It was good but WAY too expensive. I’m going to check out the convenience store down the street and see if they have food stuffs so I don’t have to eat here for lunch or dinner. Honestly, the buffet was so good I might pay for it again tomorrow.