Straight from the book of a tired man

Well, it's shortly after wakeup, I'm deep into culture shock and am probably going to go for a short walk after this. This is really just a short entry to let you all know I'm alive!

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4:40am wakeup, had to snooze once since sleep was so short. The dirve went quickly as we reached the airport by 6:30. Baggage check took only a few minutes since we were so early.

I've always heard bad things about Air Canada, but the service I received was nothing by exemplary. The food on the plane was good, their was always somebody there to help me, and generally all I got were smiles! The one thing that went awry, was that I was picked for a random spot search. So my baggage and every bit of me was given a thorough search before I was allowed to enter the departure area. Oh well...

The flights themselves were an ordeal, 16 hours in the air with minimal sleep really wasn't my idea of a good day. When I wrote this entry, I turned on my hotel TV only to find that they were playing a pre-recorded game of the Blue Jays vs. the Cleveland Indians. Pretty odd...the best part about it was that they dubbed over the umpire. "Huai!" he would exclaim in a reverb filled insertion.

Anyways...the flight from Toronto to Vancouver was pretty uneventful. I had an aisle seat and the middle seat was unoccupied, pretty sweet if you ask me. Just an aside...it's 9am and I can hear a cicada outside..sweet.

Anyways, the from Vancouver to Inchon let me know what I was in for. Waiting at the flight gate, I was one of 4 white people. Since being in Seoul, I'm the only foreigner I've seen so far! Anyways, on the plane I befriended my seat mate, Shin. She was a mother from Ilsan who had been visiting a daughter in Calgary. Her English wasn't great, but I could talk with her well enough, was I let her know that her English was fine. Before that, she realllly didn't want to talk to me. Shin played a great role for my first Korean experience. She was my guide when we got off the plane, hawkishly guiding me to the right areas and the right bus. We exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers and I should hopefully get to visit her soon enough.

It was a whirlwind from there to my hotel, especially since I'd only had 3 hours of sleep and had been awake for 24 hours. As the bus from the airport blazed along the highway, I kept on laughing at the ridiculous fact that I was all alone in Seoul.

Sorry about the spasticness here...but I gots to go. I'll hopefully be meeting with a friend later on..then I won't be as alone! Now it's walk time. I'll do my best not to get lost or owned by a car.