I’ve never flown so much in my life. The flight from Pittsburgh to Dallas took a neat 3 hours (a very manageable chunk of time, no sweat). The flight from Dallas to Seoul, on the other hand, was a grueling 14 hours. I entered the Pittsburgh airport at 5 AM Saturday morning and didn’t step outside again until Sunday at 4 PM (Seoul has a 13 hour time difference, but it’s nearly 24 hours all in).
That being said, the trip to Seoul went more smoothly than I could have imagined. When I got on the plane and sat down, a Korean man approached me with a note on his phone. He wrote that he and his wife were on their honeymoon, and asked if I’d please switch seats so that they could be together. Not only was this an incredibly sweet request, but the man who approached me had been sitting in an aisle seat, and traded me for my middle seat, making my next 14 hours exponentially more comfortable.
My in-flight entertainment included 3 movies: Eighth Grade (which was good but full of secondhand embarrassment), RBG (which was even better than I expected), and Say Anything (which I thought had a relatively convoluted plot for a rom-com, but was okay). I also spent a lot of time listening to Father of the Bride, Vampire Weekend’s new album, as well as reading New Micro, an anthology of micro stories (stories under 300 words each) that I’ve been really enjoying recently. I also spent a few minutes brushing through a Korean phrasebook (how much I actually absorbed is tough to say, I do know “Hello” and “Thank You”, so that’s a start).
After leaving the Seoul airport (and being greeted with the everyday luxury of fresh air and sunlight), we were introduced to our guides (YP and Rob, who are both lovely) and driven to the hotel. We then went out to a traditional Korean Dinner, and went over the program overview.
After dinner, Halima, Sayuri, Kayla, Emma, Emily, and I walked around the Children’s Day (a Buddhist holiday) festivities. It was incredible. There was a massive concert, that combined both dancers in traditional hanboks, and modern elements like strobe lights, rappers, and blasts of fire. We also continued down the street to the Jogyessa Temple, which was absolutely covered in paper lanterns. The lanterns were organized into color coordinated rows and connected to form a massive roof both lighting and covering the courtyard. In the center was a 500-year-old tree, and a big ring of dancers in hanboks and costumes dancing and forming conga lines to traditional music. It was beautiful and colorful and so much fun; it’s funny how universal the idea of a celebration is, we had almost no context for the holiday or the dances, and we didn’t even speak the same language, but we could still join in and have a good time.