Arrival in Korea

(I look awful, but airport selfie!)

So we just arrived in Korea and are on the way to the hostel. Sadly, our flight was delayed NINE HOURS in Detroit, so instead of getting in at around 6:00 pm Korean time, we got in at about 2:30 am, which sucks.

First, we rose bright and early this morning and left NYC on a medium sized plane, which was nothing compared to the huge long haul international plane we took from Detroit to Incheon. During the nine hour layover we ate, watched the World Cup (a bunch of strangers started crowding around too, haha. Since we were waiting for a flight going to Korea and watching Korea play, of course a lot of people were interested in the score).

The flight was pretty bad and ugh, the food was alright, I was in the middle seat,  and the air was pretty dry. However, I watched the movie Brave which was pretty good and made up for the suckiness of the long flight. I also tried to watch the Secret Life of Walter Mitty but I couldn't do it and fell asleep. I only got up to walk around once, mainly because I was in the middle seat. The last three hours I totally counted down the minutes on the flight tracker.

We got a nice greeting from SNSD at the airport though, haha. But really, we walked out of baggage claim and they had a banner for us and people with cameras, etc. None of the girls were too happy, But whatever, it was nice I guess. We took a group photo and then left-

now we are on this party bus:

I'm pretty sure it's a school bus, but it has purple curtains and gold tassels hanging from the window so it feels so fancy haha. At long last, hello Korea! 

The drive through Seoul was so surreal- all of the signs and 한글 and just the city in general. 

~Next morning~ 

So today is the first day of PDO and I got maybe two and a half hours of sleep last night, tops. The hostel is really nice, a lot nicer than I thought it was going to be! There are about ten of us in a room, with a toilet and a shower. It's not really separate though- there is a drain right next to the toilet and a handheld shower and you just shower yourself next to the sink and toilet paper and stuff. There are also a pair of rubber pink bathroom slippers, which is really cute. The public showers are a lot more interesting, to say the least. They are just one giant room, with about one foot dividers between the shower heads. The dividers are opaque and there are no doors. I showered in fear that someone would walk in on me, I took possibly the fastest shower in my entire life. 

They delivered breakfast in the morning (sandwiches, bananas, custard pies, and Gatorade), and then we went to orientation where we talked about security and various other things. The security presentation by a guy from the embassy basically turned into a q&a about what it is like to be a foreign service officer, haha. Then we had our first Korean meal! 

We then went back to the orientation room and got into groups to do a scavenger hunt around Seoul! The scavenger hunt was supposed to let us learn more about Korean media as well as learn to use the subway system! We were paired with a Korean college student who was our team leader (if we didn't have him we would have been completely lost of the subway hahaha). Our topic was media, so we went to city hall and asked people about their favorite newspaper/political issue/wether they liked kpop, etc. it was kind of embarrassing to do it in Korean, but our team leader helped us translate the questions, and also explained what we were doing to the people we asked so they weren't super weirded out by us approaching them. While we were walking around we saw the Sewol ferry memorial, and the people we asked often cited that as the most important in country issue. 

Also, we took a picture in front of the palace! 

While we were walking around the palace  we asked a family a question and they got really excited and wanted their kids to take pictures of us. The kids were NOT impressed though haha. Also, a lady from a Korean church showed us over to this little stand they hand where they were handing out DELICIOUS iced tea, and we talked to a few people there for a while. Then they told us to go inside the church (the first church in Korea) and we did where we were stopped by more people who wanted to talk. Basically, everyone is really excited to talk to us and they were super nice. Good luck out team leader was there so he could help explain what we were doing, haha. I did a lot of smiling and nodding. 

After that we walked back to the subway and bought ice cream from a convenience store! Korean ice cream is delocioussss omg 

But basically the day was really fun! Our team leader was awesome and super nice, and his English was actually really good even though he thought it wasn't. Our group was also pretty cool, and of course it was so much fun to wander around Seoul for the first time!! But after we got back we did some more stuff, ate, and then everyone was super tired so we all went to bed really early but then woke up at like five am haha. Sorry if there are any mistakes in this post, I'm typing in bed without my glasses haha. But today is host family meeting! Yay!