Arrival and the First Few Days

So the past few days have been pretty busy, which is why I've had to put off writing this first post. In the future, I hope to post something everyday, but this one is going to cover my first four days. I'm warning you in advance, it's a long one.

2-26-2015
The start of my 28 hour day and Asian Adventure began at 4:30 a.m. on the 26th when I woke up before leaving for the airport just after 6 a.m. Although we had known in advance that there would be snow (you know how Milwaukee and Chicago are in winter), the three hour car ride to the airport felt long enough for me to have already reached Korea. But I wasn't there yet. Not even close. After meeting up with Stephen, who is both from SLU and studying at Sogang, we made our way through the completely empty security area and to our gate. The flight was delayed an hour, but we eventually got on our merry way. Well, it was merry until shortly after the first in-flight meal. Of course there were other options, but I chose the bibimbap because I figured I might as well try Korean food for the first time. That plan backfired, and I ended up with a stomach ache for at least the last half of the plane ride.

It tasted good going down, but it wasn't a great start to things.

2-27-2015
At some point it became Friday after crossing the International Date Line. I think one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced was flying for 14 hours straight with constant daylight. In any case, we landed safely, and extremely smoothly for such a large plane, at 5:30 p.m. Korea time (2:30 a.m. back in Wisconsin).

Land ho!

I am so thankful that Stephen was confident about where we had to go because I would have taken ages to figure out how to get a ticket for the train/subway thing to get to the guesthouse we were to stay at. He also had printed walking instructions once we had reached our stop. I'm seriously so glad he was there. After checking into the guesthouse and dropping off all of our luggage, we headed out to explore for a bit. We actually ended up walking all the way to the Sogang's front gate because we figured why not, since it was relatively close. Returning to the guesthouse shortly afterwards, we both passed out pretty quickly. Like I said, it had been a LONG day.

The only picture I managed to take the first night without completely seeming like a tourist.

2-28-2015
Saturday morning rolled around, and I sure did not want to get out of bed. But the heated floors, which are a pretty common thing in Korea, helped to make the morning a bit more pleasant. I, as quietly as possible, got ready and left the room, but I know I definitely woke up the other two girls in there (I think they might have been from Beijing). A short taxi ride brought Stephen and me to the back gate of campus where our dorm, Gonzaga Hall, is located. The short walk, I mean hike, from the street to the dorm's door seemed to last forever as I dragged almost 100 pounds of stuff behind me in my suitcases. That certainly made me wish for a moment that I hadn't packed so much. My calves are going to be no joke when I get back with all of the hills and slopes in Seoul. I'm serious.

Anyways, we checked in and headed off to our respective rooms. I walk into mine to find Jen, my awesome and super nice roommate from Hawaii. Oh, but she's also Korean so I basically have the best roommate ever. We can talk for ages to each other in English, but she can hold her own out there on the streets and in shops. Honestly, I couldn't be luckier. We end up heading out to Emart with her friend Leo (also from Hawaii and super nice) to buy, well, everything. Emart has everything. EVERYTHING. It was a bit overwhelming, but still completely awesome. Also, shout out to that nice sales lady in the shampoo section that saw me agonizing over what to get, tried to help me figure out what was going on with all of the package deal things, and then gave me a free body wash as "service" in addition to the one already taped to the set I chose. Yeah, she seemed nice. Anyways, we put our strength to the test, hauling everything back to campus on the subway in cardboard boxes. Let me tell you, laundry detergent, shampoo, conditioner, juice, instant rice, and other things are heavy. But I finally had a pillow and blanket after the trip so it was totally worth it.

Orientation took up the rest of the day, starting at 3 p.m. I was naturally exhausted as I always am, but the jet lag hit me hard. Somehow I made it through two hours of orientation and a tour of the campus (which I only remember about half of). Dinner came next, but when the menu was announced, I couldn't have been less enthusiastic. Bibimbap. Again. My stomach still wasn't completely better from the plane food, and I definitely didn't have an appetite for the same thing that had screwed it up in the first place. If I had to guess, I'd say I barely managed to eat just under half of it.

So at this point, I'm beyond tired and I have no idea what is going on with my stomach (this time around the bibimbap seemed to sit okay for those who were curious). And we still had dorm orientation at 8:30 p.m. I briefly fell asleep three times in the hour and a half between the dorm orientation and dinner, and I might have been awfully close to being out cold during the orientation. At least I'm not the only one who has no idea what went on there. The microphone didn't work well at all and there was only one little projector screen.

Now, everyone was planning on going to an after party planned by this student organization on campus that does things with the exchange students, but being in my state of exhaustion, I didn't end up going. I was going to, I really was. I know that no one who knows me well will believe that, but I actually wanted to go. But I didn't go. I went back to my room and passed out within a minute of my head hitting the pillow. Classic Maggie move.

3-1-2015
And then I woke up the next morning after getting about 11 hours of beautiful, wonderful sleep. The mattresses here are rocks though, so I don't know if it was actually the most restful sleep, but whatever. I tried to figure out what I was going to do for the day, bouncing between shopping for some smaller things I still needed for my room at Daiso (basically the coolest dollar store ever) and going to the National Museum of Korea. I opted for the museum as I had yet to do anything fun and touristy. A group of seven of us made our way safely and easily on the subway, which is just as fantastic as the one in London. Organized, efficient public transportation is something to be very thankful for, always. Anyways, we didn't even make it into the museum before deciding we wanted to eat. Six of the seven present were Americans and all of us were girls, so yeah, we like to eat. I did try a piece of ddeokbokki for the first time. It was as spicy as I had imagined, but much chewier.

Eventually we made our way to the actual museum. But wait, what's at the top of these stairs? Oh, some pretty sweet scenery with Namsan Tower, or N Seoul Tower, in the distance.

Naturally, many pictures were taken before we finally, and for real this time, entered the museum.

That tower though.

We looked around a bit in one room before the guided tour in English started. Our tour guide was so sweet, her English was great, and she was super informative.

Plans were changed around a few more times after we returned to campus. Some of us decided we might go to Hongdae for some dinner and shopping. But then we realized that the yellow dust levels were a bit high to be wandering around outside for a long time. Ditching that idea, we donned our surgical masks and headed out to find Daiso (the awesome dollar store I mentioned earlier). Finding it proved to be a bigger challenge than we thought, but we were eventually successful. I personally bought a bunch of stuff, most of which I needed. As for dinner, we hit one of the many food stands that all sell the same things. I will most certainly be returning in the near future, it was so good! We kind of got a bit lost finding our way back to campus, but we figured it out pretty quickly.

Seriously so tasty.

The group narrowed down to four, as we dropped all our purchases in our rooms and went to a cafe right across from the dorm. We sat for almost two hours chatting about all kinds of things (Kpop and the attractive barista were definitely the highlights). Although it was a school night, I didn't go to sleep until about 2 a.m. as Jen and I had our first of, I'm sure, many roommate talks. And then I passed out, because, well, that's just what I do.