Flying

Well, it's 4:30 in the morning and I'm still on Pacific time, so I woke up earlier than expected. I guess that still gives me six hours of sleep. Anyway, since I have a couple of hours before I have to go catch a shuttle to orientation, I thought I would update you folks about the flight over.

San Francisco from the air:

Ahem, Korean Air is probably the best airline I have flown with yet. That's a good thing because it is by far the longest flight I have taken, so spending it in misery would probably fall under the torture category in the Geneva Convention. There are a few reasons why it was a great flight. First, was chance:

This was my seat. It may not look special, but it was in the very back row of the very back of the plane, and the seat next to it was the only one next to it. There weren't no three seats for this fella. The kicker is that the seat next to me was empty. And I was inches from a toilet. How can you beat it?

I'm glad you asked. You can beat it by inserting flight attendants (stewardesses) who come by with a refill of your wine glass every 15 minutes. On top of that, you get tons of movies to choose from and can watch them whenever you want on the biggest chair back screen I've seen yet.

Now before you get too jealous, let me inform you that my luck did run out around three hours into the flight. After serving dinner and wine for those three hours, they created their own sun schedule and had everyone turn out the lights and pull down the window covers. This was for 5 or so hours so we could simulate traveling into tomorrow over the International Date Line (does that sound like a sleazy phone dating service to anyone else?). At the beginning of this is when they stopped serving the wine and I tried to catch a nap. In that lull between awake and asleep, some old Korean guy came and sat down in the empty seat next to mine, even though his former seat had an empty one next to him and he was on the aisle...pretty ideal if you ask me. I did not get a nap that day.

So, of course he sat there for the rest of the flight. I didn't get miffed though, instead I burned through The Informant!, Where the Wild Things Are, The Burning Plain, and Public Enemies and still had 4 hours of doing other things. Pretty long flight, and it was weird to have it take place entirely in daylight.

So, after the five hour "sleep" period, everyone woke up (probably including the flight attendants [stewardesses]) and we got served OJ and bananas. Korean man snorted and coughed for a while, and here's Siberian Russia:
I'm thinking of buying a summer home there. It's only a hop skip and a jump from there to Korea land. Anyway, Incheon Airport is huge. I think it takes at least 15 minutes to walk from end to end of the main terminal (talking width of the airport exit area here). Pretty massive. It took me a while to orient myself (pun halfway intended). When I finally did, I realized that most things were in English, sometimes even before Korean. "Krazee Burger" and "Paris Baguette" were only in English. I got some money out after a somewhat confusing ATM experience, and it seems the largest bills they have are the 10,000 won note.

This sounds like a lot of money, but it's about equal to $10. Imagine carrying 30 of those puppies in your wallet. Mine would hardly close. I had to get rid of them somehow. Aha! Overpriced hotel!

I'm just kidding. The hotel was actually very well priced for what I've gotten. Currently I am in a silk robe thing. It's not a robe as we know it. It's a robe in two parts: the shirty vesty thing and the skirt. Yes, I am wearing a skirt. And even with that extra breeze, it is really damn hot in here. They heat the floors instead of the air in the room. It sounds like the rest of the room would be cold, but boy does that system work. My feet are burning, my luggage is cooking, and I'm sweating. This hotel room is a challenge to use because everything is done with a button. Those buttons add up, and they're all in Korean so I'm afraid I'll accidentally call the fire department instead of turning down the heat. I don't even want to touch the coffee maker.

Listen, if I don't update for a while, it's because I got sucked into the bathtub. Jajeon-geo for now!