Hi everyone! So today was my first day in Seoul. I just finished window shopping near Ewha Women’s University, which has a lot of cute little clothing and make up shops, and now I am cooling down in my room.

Let me go back a little bit and update you on my journey here. The flight was fine, albiet, very lenghthy. I started off at Pittsburgh at 7a.m. and then moved onto Toronto and then to Vancouver on Air Canada. Everything went smoothly and all my connecting flights were on time and I honestly couldn’t ask for a better flight. I was sitting next to a Canadian college student named Megan who was on her way to visit her friend. After I got to Incheon Airport, I went through customs painlessly and then got onto one of the airport buses into Seoul for about nine dollars. From the airport to Seoul it takes about thirty to forty minutes and I was all ready to get to my guesthouse which was a two minute walk from the bus stop, except I started talking to this Australian college student sitting next to me on the bus and I must’ve missed it. Whoops. After getting off at a random bus stop and debating on what to do, especially since it was starting to get dark, I awkwardly hailed a taxi. Luckily, the driver was really nice and knew where Ewha Women’s University was and I figured if I could get there, then I could find my guesthouse. On the way there, the taxi driver was very friendly and even tried to communicate with me in English, while I tried to communicate back in the little Korean I know. He even gave me candy (yes, Mom, I know I am not supposed to take candy from strangers) and pointed out monuments on the way there. When I got there, it had gotten really dark and there were still crowds of people walking around, but with some spotty GPS navigation, I finally made it to the guesthouse. However, I was disheartened to see that after they kind of adventure I had that day, I would have to walk up two flights of stairs with outrageously overpacked suitcase. Then out of nowhere, like an angel of light and goodness, a little old woman came and grabbed one end of my suitcase, and helped me carry it up they stairs. As quickly as she had appeared to rescue me, she was gone. Okay, maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that, but I was touched nonetheless. The receptionist at the gueshouse was also very nice and I was grateful that my room had air conditioning. By the time I flopped down on my bed, a sweaty, hot mess, I remembered the haunting words of the stewardess telling me not to go to sleep until you would normally go to sleep. I groaned as a looked at the 7:20 p.m. on my phone and reluctantly cleaned up, unpacked a little and headed out again. I walked up and down the street, but ended up getting some triangle kimbap and a couple of cans of soda at the convenience store next to the guesthouse. I was so exhausted and I wasn’t even that hungry, but I went up to my room and ate one of the triangle kimbaps and tried, but failed to watch an episode of the X-Files (in Korea, Hulu and Netflix are blocked, but I subscribed to a VPN hiding service so I could cheat and still watch it). By the time, I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, the clock read 9:30, but I called it “close enough” and with that I was out for the count.

When I woke up feeling more than refreshed, and texted my Dad for a good twenty minutes. I then laughed metaphorically in the face of the stewardess who told me to not go to bed so early. I work the graveyard shift, so I am going to go ahead and brag and say jetlag is no obstacle for me. I showered and got dressed and went down in the common area for a breakfast of toast and hardboiled eggs and after that I went out again, this time in daylight. Since Sogang is about two blocks away from my guesthouse, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to scout it out for tomorrow. The campus was relatively big for being in a city and it has a huge soccer field in the middle where I watched some guys playing soccer. After that, as I said before I just did A LOT of window shopping, and resisted the urge to buy everything. I did indulge in some make up and a bracelet. I safely crossed the bridge that is ordering food at a restaurant in another language (phew) and I had some hot, but delicious bowl of udon. I even went and got probably the best manicure of my life (the nail salon girl must’ve spent thirty minutes on my cuticles!). 

It is now 3:45 p.m. as I write this, and since starting this blog entry, I have cooled down sufficiently and I am ready to go back out again. Since it is kind of late, I am not feeling confident enough to try the subway quite yet. I just want to note that everyone I have encountered so far have been more than friendly and I am beyond grateful for that. The fact that people have been trying to speak to me in English (without me asking if they knew how) makes me want to learn more Korean. 

When you read other blog posts, they always tell you to beware of culture shock, like it’s some sort of disease or paralysis that you can catch while you’re away from home and by all means I am not saying that it doesn’t exist. Except rather than call it culture shock, I would call it something else. I feel like it’s something in between culture shock and wonder lust. I mean, it’s only my first full day here and I am a little overwhelmed, but in a good way and not at all in a frightened or I miss the way things are back home kind of way. It’s only 8:20p.m, but I think I am ready to call it a night. Not because I am tired, but more because I want to kind of take it all in a little bit (and because it’s raining right now). Before I came back to the guesthouse, I went to a coffeeshop called Coffine Gurunaru, finished reading the Ocean at the End of the Lake by Neil Gaiman, which is a short, but not short enough to be a short story, novel. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has an afternoon on the sun porch, with a glass of sweet tea, to spare. It was kind of quirky, but it was the kind of novel that had a lot of hidden backstory, so you wish it went on forever. However, I think if it did go on forever, it would lose its magic. As I sidenote, though, maybe it’s because I am in university-type of area, but there are coffeeshops EVERYWHERE and a lot of them are open until around midnight (hint hint nudge nudge, Irvings). 

Okay, I think I will finally bring this blog post to an end. I am glad I applied to the Geoblogging program, because even though I am not huge on keeping journals, I have at least thoroughly enjoyed writing this blog post. I hope it wasn’t too informal. I just took an copyediting class this past semester, so I am really concious about typos now, but since I am writing this on the go and I don’t have my handy dandy blue editing pencil with me and I couldn’t fit the Chicago Manual of Style in my suitcase, you will have to excuse any errors that slipped through probably only one read through. I am really not trying to sound pretentious, I’m pretty sure I got a B- in that class. Film majors often say that being a film major has ruined movies for them because now they just have to overanalyze them. Well, I can say with confidence that being an English major hasn’t ruined books for me, but it has made me extremely paranoid and given me a strong sense of inferiority in comparison to my peers who have far more interesting blog posts than myself. 

Tomorrow I check into the dorms, so this is goodnight! I hope to post more about that soon.