I'm in Korea! Let the adventures begin :)

As predicted in my last post, the goodbye with my family was emotional (I may or may not have shed a tear or two...no pictures of the alleged events exists, so you can't prove anything!) and, at the risk of sounding cheesy, I have to say I have an amazing family. My parents ferried over to Vancouver with me, where my brother picked us up and we hung out at his place few hours...he bought us all delicious pizza and Lea made us awesome Bon Voyage cupcakes:

My whole family has been incredibly supportive through all of this, and each and every one of them wanted nothing but the best for me, regardless of how much I know they'll miss having the family together as often as we usually do. I can't thank them enough for it.

Okay...enough of the cheesy stuff...onto the trip...boarded in Vancouver, with the bags weighing in at 22.9 kg each (max allowed: 23kg...booyah!)

Got on the plane, where I had 12 hours of darkness...sadly we kept following the dark side of the earth, so we were in perpetual night, which meant that even though I passed some amazing sights (Alaska, Russia, etc), I saw little more than the lights of Northern Japan and the moonlight reflecting off the snow/ice on the land on either side of the Bering Straight). For being a long haul flight with 300+ people, the plane was surprisingly quiet and I got to sleep about half the trip. The trip:

I got three meals on the two flights and the last one was awesome...I even got Chinese Pepsi Max!!!

The Beijing airport was beautiful and almost completely deserted (it was, after all, Monday 5 a.m.), I took a few pics, but here's a quick unedited one just as a teaser...I'll go through them, and post up some better ones in the coming days/weeks:

For some reason, the Chinese saw it fit to stamp my boarding pass five times...I also got a Chinese stamp in my passport, which is pretty neat...on the smaller flight from Beijing to Busan, Korea, I was the only non-Asian person onboard... :)

Upon landing here, I thought I was going to be asked a million questions, being that I'm about to inhabit their country for a year...nothing. This went with the theme of my trip, which was flawless. Went through a ton of customs, security, etc, etc, and no one cared about me or my bags, all my flights left and arrived on time, I found all my gates, etc...it could not have gone any smoother. I got to Busan and my recruiter Alistair was there waiting, continuing the awesomeness he's always exhibited. He drove me and  Hieu, a Canadian woman who will also be teaching in this province to Changwon and dropped us off at a nice hotel in the middle of the city then let us explore. And explore we did for the next 6 hours!

Love this place...it was perfect summer weather, I was just in a T-shirt even after the sun went down. Koreans LOVE their Korean cars, and the roads are full of them...driving is generally pretty crazy and I think I'll be very happy without a car (though I'll miss Reginald!)...even the cop cars are Hyundais:

And...as if impatient drivers weren't enough...you get funky tricky things like this: a road that twists and turns for no reason at all...looks cool, but seems kind of silly haha:

Anyways...in the 6 hours I walked around the main roads and back streets of Changwon, in and out of stores, restaurants and whatever else we could find, I did not find a single thing I didn't like about this place. It's all amazing and it's all great and it's all awesome. I'm sure the novelty will wear off, but those of you who have known me a while remember that I have lived in cities where I hated them every second of every day from the moment I moved there. This is the polar opposite so far.

Random: they have underground pedestrian street crossings, so you don't have to dodge cars...it's pretty neat:

The people we have encountered are kind and polite and despite knowing no Korean, we managed to make ourselves understood. My first Korean purchase (after a pop, since it's ridiculously dry here for me) was a sweet potato puree filled bun of some sort...it cost the equivalent of $1, and it was very filling and super delicious!

Now I'm back at the hotel and while my new friend has gone to sleep in her room, thought I'd update you guys before I head out for another quick walk and pick up some munchies to enjoy while watching Futurama :D 

Couple of oddities:

At the hotel room, you have to insert your key into a special holder and only then can you turn on the lights. This is so that when you leave and take your key with you, you automatically turn off all the lights in your room...pretty smart :)

Also...the bathroom contains the shower (top left), the toilet (far right bottom) and the sink (centre)...with no division whatsoever between the three...you shower in the same physical space the rest of the stuff is in...therefore, I imagine, if you shower before doing everything else, you'll be walking into puddles on your return to the bathroom...haha

Okay...that's enough for now...thanks for reading my blog and looking forward to your feedback :) Look for another installment tomorrow...when I meet my principal, my co-teacher, get a bank account and get my own apartment in Masan (a suburb of Changwon)! :) 

T.