Greetings from Korea!

So i'm sitting in the Korean Airport, and it turns out they have free internet! hurray!

Everything has gone smooth so far, we met up and drove up to SLC airport without a problem. We had 2 12 passenger vans taking us so we didn't have to worry about getting up there on our own. There was a huge amount of traffic heading south, i'm sure going to lake powell for the long weekend, but northbound was relatively traffic free.

We checked in and everything went smoothly at SLC! Hurray!

Dr Balling has given us each a number so that we can count off and figure out if everyone is present. We've been doing that, it kind of makes me feel like being in elementry school, but i guess it's effective. We've been joking around about buying a rope and putting knots in it so that we won't get seperated just like the sunbeams in church. I'd love to see us crusing around the busy streets of beijing with that!

We landed in LAX and then had to leave the secruity area to go to the international terminal. I am grateful that Dr. Schultz knew what was going on and could lead us to where we were going because i was sooooo lost! It is not a very organized airport! That and then there were just these random arrow signs showing where to go as parts were under construction. all in all very confusing.

When checking in it was finally the transition to the accented english, you know, the part where you have no idea what's going on and then they stop talking and are waiting for you to respond. I'm going to have to practice my listening and deciphering skills to figure out what is happening so that I don't have to ask people to repeat everything.

We had to sit in the LAX internation teminal for about 3 hours. Tyler has an oldschool computer game that he brought that can play multiple people, so we passed the time playing that game. It's a pretty fun game that keeps the time passing.

We all say by ourselves for the long flight over. I don't know how seats are assigned, must be when you check in, but i was disappointed to learn i'd be by myself. My seat was a B seat, so i felt confident know that i'd be a roach for the 12 hour flight. When I sat down right behind me was a couple that had the 2 seats on opposite sides of me and wanted to sit together, so hurray! i got to move over and sit on the window seat directly over the huge wing.

At least i wasn't squeezed in.

The flihgt wasn't anywhere near as bad as I expected. I mixed it up with that i was doing and thing went just fine. I started with a movie. Silly me, i thought the movies would be edited. I was watching Grand Tourino, and it turns out definitely not edited. I got to a scene with a gang and the f word was getting dropped all over the place. If i were a good person i probably would have turned it off and watched it when i got home on clean flix, but i was already wrapped up in the movie. Thankfully that was the worst of the language and while there were a few time my ears hurt it wasn't too bad.

For dinner i had steak. It was the only thing I could understand the flight attendent saying. The steak was actually pretty good except i think they forgot to cook it. It was almost completly red the whole way through. Good thing I was hungry and while not my favorite was able to eat it.

I then slep horribly for about 4 hours and then listend to the Count of Monte Cristo with my eyes closed for another hour. I had to rewind and relisten to parts and had cat napped through, but the book was really exciting, it made me excited to listen to the rest of it!

I then watched Yesman, the lights were off and the reading light that was supposed to shine for me shined on the nice little korean lady 2 seats away. Oops. So no reading was accmplsihed until just before landing.

Yesman was actually way funnier than I thought it would be, but that might be because i hadn't gotten much sleep.

After htat movie the flight was almost over so i read the rest of the way.

While not something I would want to do, it certainly wasn't as bad as I anticipated it being.

Now i'm just chiling here in Korea. We have a while before our flight leaves so i'm hurrying to finish the email so tyler and I can go walk around for a bit.


If you have other questions feel free to email me!

-Richard