Currently I am in the Atlanta airport, waiting here during my seven-hour layover to be able to eventually get on my 14-hour flight. I have been using this time to reflect because there has been little time to mentally prepare myself for my trip since finals ended just yesterday. While I’m so excited there’s also a part of that is nervous. I will be traveling to a place so far away with such different customs and everyday occurrences that I am trying to make sure that I am prepared. But this far away land also bring about excitement in the form of mysteries to come and adventures to take place.
Talking to my mom on the phone I realized that I am the first among our family to travel anywhere in Asia. She is so excited to be able to hear the stories that I will make and the companies that I am interested in exploring. This all has happened in such a quick manner that I feel neither prepared nor unprepared. What I’m sure of is that I am ready to take advantage of this opportunity and embrace this trip.
Having landed in Seoul I have to say, the flight was better than I thought mostly because the post finals exhaustion kept me asleep for about 12 hours of the flight. After finally landing I can’t wait to see the hotel we will be staying in and the area that we will be able to explore around us. Once I got to the hotel, I got some breakfast and then took a nap until we went out on our first adventure!
The subway system was a little confusing, but we were able to get to our first destination the Palace. Esther our tour guide was providing us with a ton of information about each section of the palace, and we ended the tour by watching a guard ceremony.
We walked from the palace to a central market where we split off in groups to get food. The food was so good my group and I ended up getting three dishes and splitting them among us. We later went to the Handok village that was as residential street with older architecture, but it was a tourist spot. This meant that we had to be quiet as to not disturb the residents. After we split off in this area my group and I got slightly lost and had to track our friend’s location back to the meeting spot. We got a little bit of ice cream, and I had this fish ice cream which was great.
We finally ended our night when we went to a market, and I ate an octopus that was still moving. It was tasty but it was kind of freaky I would definitely do it again. We ended up going back to the hotel after this to get some rest before we ended our night by heading to the night market down the street and getting some great Korean food!
