I flew from Spokane to Seattle, and left Seattle at 2.20 for a direct flight to Seoul on Korean Airlines. It was a great flight. It lasted under 12 hours, making it as speedy as any flight to Seoul (many are 20 hour affairs that involve several stops), and Korean Airlines is great. Everyone gets their own personal TV and they can watch whatever they want and even play games. There was a Uruguayan film available and I was very pleased with the opportunity to listen to some Spanish, but there was hardly any dialogue in the movie that lasted more than a sentence or two. After that I played this soccer game for a while and quit after it got too easy. Then I slept for about 4 hours. After that, I watched the news (BBC, CNN, and KBS, the Korean news) and read the newspaper articles that were available as well. Then I read my magazines until we landed. The flight was almost entirely over the ocean, though at one point I opened my window to look at the Pacific and was shocked to see nothing but mountains. I thought we'd only be flying over the ocean but we fly northward to account for the curviture of the earth's surface, so we flew over the peninsula that separates the Sea of Okhotsk from the Bering Sea...I don't know what it's called. Anyway, it was nothing but snowy-peaked mountains, and there was a settlement on the coast. We flew over the Japanese countryside as well, but only saw a little bit. Eventually we got to Korea and flew over Suwon (I believe) which had several sports stadiums.
The Incheon airport was very nice, as good as any I've seen in the states. I got my bags immediately (no wait) and bought a bus ticket, and the bus showed up right away. The people on the bus were very helpful and let me know when I had to get off. I got off at the stop and was supposed to call a cab to take me to the school (that's what the instructions seemed to indicate). I tried flagging a taxi but none would stop. Then, this girl came up to me and asked if I needed help. I told her I needed a taxi, but the ones we stopped wouldn't take me because my bags were too big. So she called a taxi to pick me up, and a few minutes later just went ahead and called the number they had left me. She told them to pick me up, so after about a half an hour they came. She is an English teacher and very nice and friendly, she left me her number and said that she and her husband could show me around Seoul anytime I wanted. And while she was waiting with me she called and cancelled an English lesson with one of her students, just so she could help me! I wouldn't have let her but she told me after she had already done it.
So they dropped me off at my apartment and I put my stuff there, and then Simon (the guy helping me; he works at the front desk at my school) showed me a restaurant and I had some great beef soup. The other teachers at the school were having a drink very close by. Initially I was going to go out and meet them but in the end I decided I was too tired. So he took me to a 'PC room' instead so I could write this blog post. It's pretty hilarious, it's midnight and it's full of Korean kids smoking cigarettes and playing World of Warcraft. Everything is very high-tech here from what I've seen, and all of the computers are very nice and have huge monitors. Nothing like the e-cafes I've been to in Latin America.
Well, I'm absolutely exhausted (it's like 8.20 AM my time)m so I'm going to quit here. Maybe I'll edit it later and add more or something.
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