Lazy Days and Getting to Ganghwa (alternative title: Crazy Questions)

hwahhh... (my spelling out of a sigh)

It's been a long car ride to Ganghwa island. But first, I have to talk about the days before I got here.

I was living with a family that my family knows through our church. Two children gone to school from eight to three and a father that works late enough to eat dinner at his job makes for a quiet home. This was just what I needed to get adjusted to the time difference. For the first time since sixth grade, I went to sleep at nine o'clock. It's only 6:24 right now and I feel like I need a nap. That's some strong jetlag.

Anyway, since I start my volunteering job and my taekwondo lessons next week, I needed to visit relatives while I could. My relatives in Ganghwa are among those further from where I'm staying so instead of waiting for the kids of my host family to get home, I'm spending a few days in a historically rich part of Korea. For those of you unaware of Ganghwa's importance and location I redirect you to a website that will explain it much better than I ever possibly could: Google.com.

The car ride over was interesting to say the least. My aunt (the driver) speaks probably as much English as I do Korean. That is to say: hello, let's go, give me, and various single words that hold no significance alone. Fortunately, she brought her son's English tutor. Unfortunately... well, I'll try to explain. All of the websites I read about travelling in Korea said something or other about how Koreans can ask very strange questions to foreigners. When I read about it, it seemed natural that Koreans would be curious about foreign culture. This was kind of like that but different.

Anyway, (I feel like I'm JD Salinger when I write that word. Except, you know, not dead) from what I've seen of Ganghwa, which is about ten minutes, it's very different from Seoul and Ansan. It's much less developed. There were rotting shacks and buildings with windows so dirty you couldn't see light through them lining the narrow dirt road we walked to my aunt's home on. I feel like I'm in blade runner or something when after all that, we get to the door and there's a fancy electric combination lock on it. (You type in the numbers on a keypad to unlock the door, it seems like everyone has them in Korea). And when we get in, there's a big led television.

Well, that's my second post. I was going to write one about shopping in Myeong-dong, but the draft didn't get saved/I'm too lazy to rewrite something that wasn't very good to start with/I'm sure I'll go there again. If you have any suggestions as to what I should do while I'm here, I'm very open to them. Hopefully the interval between my next post will be smaller as I'll probably have access to my netbook. Also I'll try to include pictures next time.

New Korean word(s) of the post (I'll try to include this section unless I forget, meaning this is probably the only time you'll see it):

Jiang (usually accompanied by a thumbs up and a smile): Super!; Amazing!
(Aie) Jin-cha~: literally means "really" but is pretty much an all purpose word used anytime.

Premier Post and Airplane Adventure

Hey, guess where I am?

I'm typing this from the living room of my cousin's parent's condominium in Seoul, South Korea. I only woke up at 5:30 am, so I guess I'm pretty adjusted to the jetlag of I-don't-even-know-how-many hours. I'll just say it's 8:30 am here right now and in Wisconsin it's 6:30 pm yesterday.

The airplane service on the way was nice. I got to watch several movies I hadn't seen yet. Sherlock Holmes was okay and the ending was nice. Avatar was good except for being a bit too long. Alice in Wonderland wasn't that great but How to Train Your Dragon was unexpectedly good. The food was great. I had three-ish meals: Bibimbap, a ham sandwich (the reason for the -ish), and chicken and rice. For some reason all of the flight attendants thought I spoke Korean. The guy next to me was sleeping for most of the flight. Overall, Asiana gets 9/10 stars because apparently I look Korean (I wonder why).

The only problem was that the plane ride was longer than all of the aforementioned movies back to back.

After 11 hours of sitting in a cramped seat watching a small lcd screen, I welcomed the prospect of sleeping in a bed. After a small fiasco while I tried to find the people who were picking me up, I found out the car ride to my cousin's home was another hour of sitting down. I didn't mind though; I slept through most of it. My relatives took me to Kraze burger (actually not pronounced cra-zee to my surprise) and we had dinner (breakfast for me). One short drive later and we arrived at their condo. I took a shower and went to bed.

There you have it. The chronicles of Andrew's first hours in SK. This blog will probably not be a day-to-day thing but I'll try to post the more interesting things that happen. Here's hoping World War three doesn't start while I'm here.