Monday, August 18, 2008

Journey from Korea to the US

Yes, I am still alive and back in the US (for one more week). I have been on 9 plane flights in 11 days. Here's a recap of what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks.



I left Korea on August 7th after almost beating my friend Patrick in ping pong the night before (okay, 'almost' may be stretching it a bit :))It was a nice send off! I up bright and early and took the 6am bus to Incheon airport. This is a view of the base at 0600 just before I left. The other two pictures are of just ouside the base and the Han River in Seoul (that's just fog, right?)






For those of you who haven't had the experience, there are some good and some not-so-good things about 14-hour flights. This one started out in the not-so-good category with the 90 degree temperature in the cabin. The pilot assurred us in Korea, Japanese (I think) and broken English that the 'comfortable temperature would get better as soon as we took off'. Great, except sweating and then being stuck in a confined space with recycled air for 14 hours is probably not great. Plus, they had confiscated my water bottle (which I had filled after going thru security). Really though, things then improved as I was moved from my seat to a bulkhead seat (if you ever get a chance, try to get one of these!) so a couple of siblings could sit together. This meant I could stretch out my legs (really stretch them out, as in, I could stretch them as far as they could go and they didn't hit the wall in front of me). One advantage of being on long flights is that you can catch up on movies that you haven't seen in the past year. Here's a recap: 'Nim's Island' is cute; selecting someone to go on a mission to Mars will be difficult; 'Smart People' is interesting; '21' has an interesting ending. Needless to say, I didn't sleep on the plane more than about an hour (I never can for some reason).

My transition in Atlanta was better than I thought (and I got Starbucks, so that made it ever better!) My plane from Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham took off without a problem. The best part of this was the my parents were there to greet me when I arrived at RDU. It's nice to be home!
Stay tuned for the rest of my journey above!


1 comment:

Lynn said...

Christie---9 flights in 11 days in a kazillion time zones is just crazy!!! Glad you are safe, and SO glad we were able to see you.