plane trip

I am here! Korea, in all its glory, so far looks a lot like Florida with funny symbols on the signs.

The flight went straight through from Atlanta to Seoul, and it was good and long, the better part of sixteen hours. I had envisioned that we'd cross the US to the west and hop from california to korea across the pacific, but I was not taking into account the fact that the earth curves. We actually went north across the country, over a bunch of places in Canada that daddy and I saw a few weeks ago, across the top of Alaska, and down Asia, with just about no time over the ocean. I talked to one girl who flew out of Baltimore and had a stopover in San Francisco, and she said that they also went straight up from San Francisco and over Alaska, so that must have been a mightily long voyage and I don't envy her the chance to get off the plane for a few minutes in the middle.

I lucked out on the plane seating. It was set up with three seats on each side of the plane and four seats in the middle, and I had an aisle seat on a middle row. The seat right beside me was empty, and I was pretty excited about that. Then, wonder of wonders, one of the two men sitting on the other end of my row of four moved to a different seat and no one replaced him, so the other man moved to the other aisle seat and we had two empty spots between us. It was wonderful; I could spread my stuff out, wiggle my elbows, curl up to rest in a comfortable position, breathe, all those things you can't normally do in an airplane seat. The plane was also sized right for me, with chairs that were short enough to support my head instead of tall chairs that push my head forward. It was, however, far too small for some of the bigger men on the flight. There were a couple of guys in front of me that hit the top of those chairs just under their shoulders, which meant they had nowhere to lean their heads back on that long flight. I liked having my head comfy, but I did feel sorry for them. It seems that optimally, you visit korea comfortably only if you are korean-sized.

The aisles of the plane were also very narrow. All of the attendants but one were young, pretty, slender Korean women, which seemed to be an aesthetic thing until I started watching them stroll down the aisles and realized you pretty much had to be a slender girl to walk through there comfortably while carrying trays or wielding carts. The exception above, by the way, was a youngish and not very large Korean man. The above sentence looks like I meant one of the women was not young, pretty, or slender, but that's not the case.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the flight was the first of two meals they served us. The attendant told me I had a choice between beef boullion and bibimap. I hadn't a clue what bibimap was, but since the Korean passengers around me were choosing something that was definitely not beef boullion, I decided to do what they were doing. Unbelievably, that meal came with an instruction sheet. The Korean people did not get instruction pages, so they must keep the things on stock just for clueless-looking American girls. The very nice attendant showed me what all the dishes were, told me how to put them together and eat them (even pointing out that you used the silverware provided, which I hope means he didn't want me to be confused about chopsticks or something rather than that he thought I really couldn't figure that part out), and gave me the instructions as a reminder. Bibimap (no clue on pronunciation) turns out to be a bowl of yummy vegetable stuff, none of which I recognized at all, that you mix with a big plate of steamed rice. Then you add sesame oil and hot pepper paste and stir it all up. I cheated by only mixing in some of the pepper paste, figuring that ordering the stuff was adventurous enough without setting my mouth on fire. It was delicious, which was really exciting because airplane food is not often the best there is, so I bet the real stuff on the ground will be even better. It also came with watermelon and canteloupe, which was good but unremarkable, and strong pickles with sesame seeds, which I didn't eat because I don't like pickles anyway, and seaweed soup, which was very good and didn't taste seaweedy at all.

More later if I have some time. Right now I must ready for my orientation program this morning.