Flights and Early Impressions

Hey everyone, I’ m here!

Those of you especially astute will know I should have been here for about 17 hours, whereas it has been less than six. Clearly there were some issues with my flights. In Albany, we got delayed about an hour - boarded a bit later, and were forced to wait another 40 minutes. I ended up arriving in JFK with 15 minutes before departure, mixed with some misleading directions (I asked when I got out of the plane, I am directed to a terminal, the woman there is on the phone and then runs away, security guy tells me to go a different rout that takes me out of the security zone. Apparently I was supposed to take a shuttle to the terminal, who knew?) and my lack of experience in JFK, made it an impossible feat. I got a good chance to run around JFK trying to arrange my flight though -- they tried to scare me with “The next flight to S. Korea is at midnight,” and “Korean Airlines employees don’t work from 2pm until 11pm (2pm being when my flight departed. Apparently I had been pushed into a flight to LAX with a connecting flight to Icheon, just no one told me/told me the right person to ask. In any case, it ended up alright. I just lost 11 hours due to the delay (5 additional hours in air, 6 additional hours in stations).
Moving on, the flight to LA was alright -- I was next to a woman with loud toddlers, but they slept most of the flight (including the woman, who sat protected them like a bear or lioness, and thus slightly on my leg). This big, dark-skinned, male flight attendant was pretty helpful/sweet to the little girl, which worked out nicely for me. I watched both “Taken” and “Milk” on the flight, the latter being a tad more enjoyable than the former.

Flight to Korea was extremely long. Thankfully, I met a nice woman on my rush to catch the flight (would have been interesting if I missed that one, too), and sat next to some nice people as well. I traded e-mail with the woman who sat next to me. All good.

In Incheon, normal stuff. Got my bag (which got there before me), exchanged money, got my phone to work, got hassled by a taxi driver. Took a bus to near the school, took an hour, then spent about an hour trying to find my dorm. I learned in this full process that Sookmyung can be pronounced many, many different ways.

Finally, got to the room where I am now. It is pretty amazing, way better than my dorms at AU (perhaps even better than Federal 301 - though that’s pushing it). Came with sheets, towels (which my roomie has apparently used), bunch of shelving, a TV, A/C, a bathroom, slippers, a refrigerator…it’s just awesome. Only two real issues, and one sort of fake issue. I don’t have adaptors yet, the wireless internet is more-or-less a lie (I didn’t bring a cable because I was informed it would be awesome), and I have a roommate (I was told I would be in a single/double room with no roommate). Except the internet, these aren’t really big concerns as they gave us much more than I expected. There is even a common room filled with frigs, a stove/oven (I believe I was told we wouldn’t have that) and rice cookers. Hell, there is even a floor heater! Also, my netbook makes scarce internet hardly a problem. I should have some pics up over the next few days -- just need to figure out how I want to upload them.

Also, beginning to think I should have brought my full keyboard. Totally not used to this guy yet.
Further plans for today: Maybe go for a walk around the area, meet some of the others in the dorm, eat something, go to this electronics shopping district with my roommate (his name is Zach, for the record), upload this.

--Daniel