The Koren eagle has landed.

I made it here! After a great weekend of seeing family, hanging out with Ben and packing..., I left bright and early on Monday morning. I hitched a ride to the airport with Kevin who was leaving for AZ for a few days for work. After spending a few hours in the airport, we boarded our first flight to Seattle. I was already tired at this point since I'd only slept for like an hour or two the previous night. But we had two hours to wait in Seattle before boarding our flight to Seoul. I don't really like flying. Its uncomfortable and boring and I can never sleep. Although I love Asiana airlines and would never fly on any other airline if I had a choice, it was still miserable. I slept for like 15 minute periods throughout the flight, but just couldn't get comfortable and sleep. So I ate everything they brought me (the most attentive and adorable flight crew ever!), which was a lot. And I watched some movies (not a very good selection). And wished I was sleeping the whole time.

When we finally landed in Seoul, we were greeted by a representative from the program who ushered us onto a bus. A disco bus. This thing was crazy. I'm pretty sure it was nicer than the plane we had just flown on. By this point I think I had already been up for 24 hours (more like 48 since I hadn't slept much the night before), so I was pretty grumpy and tired. But we had yet another form of transportation to take to our destination. Anyway, the bus had like color-changing lights, disco-type ceiling, fringe and beads on the curtains......pretty amazing. I was kind of delirious though and so didn't take any photos. I had heard that the bus ride would take anywhere from 4 to 7 hours, depending on who I asked, so didn't really know what to expect (something I think I am going to have to get used to on this trip). After about two hours we stopped and we exited the bus. They never said anything to us, we just got off the bus and headed into the building where we stopped. Which turned out to be like a rest-stop type area with a cafeteria and restrooms. Nice restrooms. And weird food. But they ordered food for us (after I got yelled at for not deciding quick enough if I wanted "fish cutlet" or "pork cutlet." Uhhhh...neither?) and we sat down to eat. Port cutlet. Served with kimchee, rice, cole slaw and french fries. So Korean, clearly. Now, at this point, it was about 11pm if my memor serves correctly. We had already been driving for a few hours and I was soooooo ready to be in my bed. And they just were giving us no clue as to how much longer it would be. So I just kept curling up in a ball on my seat and sleeping. I actually did get a good (ish) amount of sleep on that bus. We later pulled over once more, and after being sorely disappointed since I thought we had arrived at our destination, we had yet another potty break. Then one more hour and we finally arrived. We all found our rooms, chose our beds, and I tried to get the internet to work. I was exhausted. And emotional. And had to try realllllly hard to not cry when I could not get the effing internet to connect. Each room has an ethernet cable in it, and you have to type in the ISP address, etc. Anyway, after asking numerous people to help me, which none of them did, it magically started working. So I told my parents I was still alive, sent a message to Ben, and was finally able to sleep peacefully. My roommates and I (there are four of us in this room) have all been sharing my computer since its already connected. Although it isn't the best connection, its good enough and I've been able to keep in touch so far!

There will be many more posts to come, fear not! We had an interesting first day here, and tomorrow starts our training before we head to our camps in a few days. So I will update soon on all that!

Airplane food. "Bibimbap." So good!