Jet Lag

*Warning* I am using this as some what of a Journal so there is probably a lot of stuff you don't really care about in my posts. Sorry! 

My flight to Korea was scheduled for Friday, January 31. So Thursday I spent most of the day packing and getting last minute stuff done. I am really good at procrastinating, really I don't know if anyone is as good at procrastinating as I am. I was born that way. Seriously, I was 2 weeks overdue so I even procrastinated being born. At least I'm good at something ;). Don't worry though, I am going to stop procrastinating starting Tomorrow.
Anyway, so Thursday night me and my parents and sister drove to Utah and I said some goodbyes and we slept at my Grandparents house and I fell asleep around midnight. I woke up at about 4:30 am and I couldn't sleep anymore because I was so anxious. And thus began the longest day of my life. My flight was at 8:30 a.m. so my parents dropped me off at the airport at about 7. We said our goodbyes, and I checked my bags and got through security and all that jazz. I went and found my terminal. I wasn't there for long when I saw a tall blonde haired girl come over and sit down. I recognized her as Amy so I went over and said Hi. I had met Amy on Facebook. She is also from Idaho and is doing the TaLK program as well and she had the same flights as me. It was definitely nice to have a travel buddy who was going through the same thing I was. Every time I have flown prior to this I have been alone, but I have never flown all the way across the world before so it was comforting to have another person to talk to and figure stuff out with.
Our first flight was from SLC to San Francisco and it was on a pretty small plane. It was a good flight. I got to sit next to Amy so we just talked the whole time and it helped the time go by quickly. I honestly don't remember much about that flight just because the 2nd flight was so long that the 1st one gets swallowed up in it.
When we got to SFO we had to walk all the way from one end of the airport, where the Delta terminals are, clear to the other side of the airport, where the international terminals are. SFO is a pretty big airport. It is definitely the biggest airport I have been in. Bigger than Portland, Baltimore, SLC, Vancouver, or Phoenix. Although I'm sure trekking all the way across it made it seem even larger. Once we got to the International wing of the airport we had to go through security again. I thought that was weird because whenever I have had a layover before, I have never had to go through security again. Our layover was 3 hours so we decided to grab some grub. We ate at a Mexican restaurant that was very expensive (of course! we were in an air
port) but it was actually very good food and very filling! Then we went and checked in at our terminal.
The flight from SFO to Incheon (Seoul) was with Singapore Airlines. It was a good experience, but dang that was a long flight! At least I had technology to entertain me. I think I ended up watching like 5 or 6 movies. They fed us 2 meals that were really good. The flight attendants were all young, beautiful women. (That's the benefit of flying Asian airlines ;) haha) It was cool because they didn't wear normal flight attendant clothes. They had on ... well I don't know what they were wearing but they looked like this.

Anyway the flight was long. It was light outside during the whole flight until the last half hour or so since we were flying against the rotation of the earth. At one point I thought, 'Oh we should be getting close' then I looked at the flight path and we still had over 5 hours remaining. The flight path was kinda weird, we stay along the coast and went up and along the coast of the Gulf of Alaska, then along Russia, then we flew all the way down Japan, then up Korea to Seoul. I think they try to stay close to Land just in case of an emergency landing. Did I mention my flight was long (Almost as long as this post is getting to be.) Even though I started getting really tired, I never slept during the whole flight. I figured it would be best if I waited till night to sleep so that I could better adjust to the day/night difference. Toward the last couple hours of the flight the wave of sleep deprivation began to overcome me.

We got to the Incheon airport at around 6:30 pm local time, which was 2:30 am in Idaho. So yeah, long day, but it still wasn't over. Once we got to the airport we had to take a shuttle to where customs was. Then we had to go through customs, then we had to get our luggage, then we had to find the TaLK booth. Luckily to help us through all that, there was a cool guy that I sat next to on the plane who frequently comes to Korea for work so he was able to help us know where to go and what to do. He was a younger guy from San Francisco, who had graduate from Berkeley.
Anyway, so we got through all of that, exchanged some $green for some multicolored won, then found our way to the TaLK booth. After that we sat around for about 2 hours waiting for our bus to come back and get us and take us to Jochiwon (Where we will be staying during orientation). Luckily there were about 15 other TaLK Scholars waiting as well, so we got to meet some new people which made the 2 hours go by faster. Finally when our bus got there we packed all our stuff on it and we jumped on the bus and headed to Jochiwon.

The bus ride was quite an adventure. If that's how people drive here then I guess I know why Asians are stereotyped as bad drivers. At one point we were literally inches from running straight into a pole. Also it was dark outside and it was super foggy. Oh I forgot to mention that it was raining when we landed in Seoul. So even though I wanted to see what Korea looked like, I wasn't really able to because the windows were all fogged up and it was rainy, foggy, and dark outside. The bus ride was just over 2 hours long. I actually tried to sleep a little but to no avail, due to the crazy driving and some of the other scholars were talking quite loudly.

By the time we arrived at the Korea University Sejong campus in Jochiwon it was past 11 pm. At this point I had been awake for about 26 hours and I was about ready to lay down on the floor and sleep. We had to check in and sign up for a bank account though. They gave us our room keys, name tags, and these Korean style vests (most people don't wear vests like this in America but I have seen Koreans wear them before).

I know you are all jealous of my vest ;)

Oh I also signed up for a field trip but they were only taking one bus so only 40 people could go. But they had a wait list in case people didn't show up. I was number 4 on the wait list so I figured I wouldn't be able to go. When we finally got up to our rooms it was almost midnight. Luckily my roommate turned out to be on the same bus ride with me. Some people's roommates were sleeping when they went in their room. So I am glad that I didn't have that problem. My roommate is a cool guy. He is a black guy from Toronto, Canada named Ashton. He is really nice. I think I got pretty luck with having a great roommate. We spent like an hour and a half putting stuff away and getting situated then we got on our computers to test out the internet. So by the time I went to bed it was around 2 am (10 am Idaho time). So I had been awake for about 29 hours. I was so tired and yet I still woke up on my own at around 7 a.m. still tired and yet I couldn't fall back asleep.
The campus is really nice. They provide all 3 meals for us while we are here and we get to sleep in these dorms.

The guys are on the right and the girls on the left. 

My room is on the 8th floor. 

It was really foggy the first couple days I was here so we couldn't see much of the view but it finally cleared up and this is the view from my room. 

Here is what my dorm room looks like from the doorway:

Here is my bed:

Yes, the bears are awesome I know! 

And I thought it was interesting that our toilet, sink, and shower are all in one, with the same floor and no door or curtain for the shower to keep everything from getting wet.

The food here is really good. I am so glad that I get to eat Korean food everyday. It has been too long!

Well I lied to you on my last post because I told you I would tell you about my field trip but this post is too long already so I will make a separate one about the field trip.


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