i suppose it's my turn...

it's 8:54 in the morning and desperate housewives is on (in english, hooray!). jet lag is very real as we've all woken up at about 6:30 am for the past two days and then pass out in the afternoon. i honestly can't recall the last time i was awake before 9 am.

i guess first impressions are still here, but the most shocking thing to me so far is how unfazed i was, and remain, about the new surroundings. i feel like i should feel uneasy or anxious or something like that being in this foreign place, but i don't. it just feels really natural somehow.

thursday seems like it was such a long time ago, but here's my recap:
woke up at 5:00 am in stl, mo, usa to get to the airport by 6:15 am. our flight left at 8:04, so we had plenty of time to be condescended to by disgruntled airline employees. i've had this problem pretty much every time i've flown, the people working act like you should already know all the answers to any possible questions you might have. sorry i made you have to do your job...while you're at your job.

so we leave our parents in tears and then fly to chicago in a cool 45 minutes where we then board korean air all the way to incheon/seoul. we ended up travelling roughly 24 hours, but despite the length everything went pretty smoothly. what i learned from korean air is that you get lots of snacks and lots of drinks. two meals, chicken nuggets, bananas, little sandwiches. and juice. as soon as you finished one juice, another tray was coming by. just a constant beverage flow. the row of kids next to me had to have drank at least a gallon of sprite each. seriously, these kids can put away their clear sodas.

the flight path to get here was sort of bizarre. we flew out of stl into chicago, then from chicago all the way to seoul/inchon, via northern canada, over alaska and part of siberia...again SIBERIA!! that's fucking crazy. which made me wonder (and i know this is stupid), but when you label an area, such as siberia, does air space figure into that domain too? if i'm 34,000 feet above siberia, am i also technically in siberia? does the label on the map only refer to actual land? just curious, because i would like to say i've been to siberia...anyhoo, like i said, i keep expecting to be overwhelmed by the "culture shock", but i'm not at all. there have been a couple moments of actual "holy shit, i'm in korea" but nothing sustained like i was expecting. everything looks pretty cool, but ultimately it feels like a vacation. i'm staying in a hotel until monday, so maybe when i actually get to unpack some of my shit it will feel different. i'm not just visiting here, i'm living here. well, typing it doesn't make it seem any more real. or maybe it is real, but i'm just relatively unaffected. similarly, when i left columbia, i also had these expectations that i should be heartbroken and needed to manufacture some tears, but they just didn't come, trying to muster up some sentiment that wasn't there. i guess i was just so ready to leave (not that i hate columbia or anything, just that having this totally attainable goal postponed for so long makes one rather antsy) that it feels somewhat close to natural for me to be here now. blah blah blah ramble ramble ramble

so anyhoo, after we get off the plane, it was just like you see in movies where some foreigner is standing behind a rope with our names on a sign. oh yeah, this was after a totally painless customs/immigration "procedure". so we meet up with cindy and transport all our luggage to a minivan and ride the two hours from seoul to chuncheon. i tried to stay awake the whole time, but i fell asleep. but it was basically this extended dreamstate anyway waking up to the images of seoul and all these high rise apartment buildings, ski slopes, kias and hyundais, and these anime characters marketing all imaginable products, which is an odd sort of cultural dynamic--there are so many of these customs and traditions engraved in the most mundane daily events (how you exchange money, how you pour beer into a glass), yet there are also these inherently hip/young images plastered all over the place marketing products for pretty much every demographic. and when you pass restaurants they will have a winking caricature of whatever meat they serve on their sign. it's just interesting to see the harmony of old and new all around me. also, the city is huge, but a lot of the houses still have this pagoda-ish aesthetic to them (lots of churches with big red neon crosses on them too). just a study in contrasts. i guess i can be included in that now...

the hotel i'm staying at looks like some sort of sex dungeon. there are porn channels readily available, tons of lights that you control with the tv remote, the floor is heated (a bitch when you're the one sleeping on the floor. had to sleep with julie and rory 2 nights ago...), a whole bathroom that i can see into (including a hot tub/bath tub and a sauna in the shower). it's very modern. but after 24 hours travelling, it sort of sucked to check into a one bedroom hotel when there are three of us. we shall see. but i did get a free sweatshirt!

i have eaten a lot of swine so far. the place we ate 2 nights ago was f-ing awesome--you sit on the floor and cook meat on a grill, but each little grill on the table had it's own individual hood, which was also cool because people smoke while they eat.

yesterday we went exploring without the aid of anyone from our "institute" (a word i will use loosely when referring to where we're teaching. seriously, this place is tiny). for snacks at convenient marts they have tuna jerkey and a whole dehydrated squid. seems like pretty much all the snacks have some sort of fish part in them, unless it's chocolate--my crunky chocolate bar tasted like a crackel. there's a market right down the street with fish in containers outside and tons of bizarre drinks, i drank an aloe drink with little chunks of stuff in it. pretty tasty. seems like actual water is hard to come by. i drank some in the hotel this morning and felt like i needed to yack.

okay, last bit of recap, went to an esl teacher party last night and felt pretty awkward and inferior, so i drank until i didn't really care so much. it's a lot easier to go into a group of foreign-looking foreigners (read: not white) than it is to mingle with people who look like you. it's interesting to see how the whole "cooler than thou" attitude translates to different social groups. whether it's hipsters, hippies, or esl teachers in south korea, the self-importance is universal. but who am i to talk about that, i'm about as judgemental as it gets. but i'm also always right.

post party, went to a dance club called lava (actually, went to lava I and lava II), replete with chingy and nelly and 50 and all other music that makes people want to grind on each other. and i did. if anyone has seen me dance, you know how funny this image is. i'm a terrible dancer. but the best part was that i wasn't as terrible or socially awkward as the majority of people there. i guess the chances of me blending in are pretty much shot, so i might as well just draw as much attention to myself as possible.

this just in: "i love the bidet." quoth the julie, nevermore. i haven't used it yet, but i'm sure i will sing its praises.

a wise man once said "enuff z nuff", so more later when i have an actual computer in my actual apartment where i will actually have my own space. fucking shit.