The flights started on May 4^th and only ended on May 5^th. The Korean Plus3 group met in the Towers lobby at 4 am to catch our bus to the airport to be early for our 7 am flight. Because of the early wake up there was no real reason to go to sleep so most people stayed up through the night including me. So that meant once we made it to the Pittsburgh airport and onto the plane, I passed out and woke up in Dallas. The next flight was the hard one though. 14 hours sitting from Dallas to Seoul, over 7000 miles. This was the longest flight I had ever been on and it was really difficult. At one point my legs were going numb but luckily at that point I only had to wait a little longer to finally get off the plane.

We landed with no problems in Seoul, South Korea. The culture shock hit me as soon as I got off the plane with signs written in Korean and people pushing past me to get through customs. We got our luggage and found our hosts from the Asia Institute. They took us to the hotel and then immediately out to dinner at a restaurant called 설가은 or Seoulgaon which serves traditional Korean food. There I tried a lot of dishes that I had never had before including lotus flower roots, fermented skatefish, black rice pudding, and many others.

After dinner several groups went exploring the nearby streets of Seoul. Today is the Buddha’s birthday so throughout Seoul there was celebrating and music. In fact, immediately outside of the hotel there was a concert that featured groups dancing and singing with the occasional fire show. Further down the street, we found a Buddhist temple surrounded by paper lanterns. These lanterns had wishes written on them from families asking for good fortune. There was more dancing outside of the temple with families and tourists alike smiling and having fun. This was definitely a fantastic start to an exciting trip.