Fourteen hours is a long time to sit in the middle seat of an airplane. At some point in time, the idea of ever leaving the plane feels like an impossibility. It seems as though your entire existence will become watching The Fighter over and over, unable to move an inch for all of eternity. Then, when you finally hear the roar of the landing gear on the runway, you realize you were being a melodramatic loser and that the flight wasn’t that bad. I can’t say that I’m excited for the flight back home in two weeks, but at least I know I can survive it now.

As I stepped off of the plane, it become abundantly clear that I was stepping into a whole new world. Incheon International Airport is the largest structure I have ever seen; I was in total awe of it. There were signs bigger than any building in my hometown, hundreds of shops, restaurants, pharmacies, banks. You name it, Incheon has it. As we travelled towards Seoul, the largeness of the whole area became even more apparent. I thought that I could imagine a metropolitan area of 25 million, but I now know that I was foolish to think I could even come close to comprehending that sort of scale without seeing it for myself; words do not do it justice. There are apartment complexes with more residents than there are citizens in my hometown.

Perhaps more shocking though is the way that Seoul seems to have integrated both modern and traditional components of society; villages sit between skyscrapers. In one moment, it feels as though you are twenty years in the future, and in another, you could easily be tricked into believing you had traveled to the past. I have never seen anything quite like it, and given that my goal in choosing this program was to experience something new, I have to say I am extremely satisfied thus far. I wish I had more to say about Seoul, but to be perfectly honest, I passed out the moment I got into my hotel. If all goes well, I will have much more to say in my next post.