Made it!

Hey, everybody!

Writing to you now from the great Korean peninsula.
I made it to Korea and am pleased to be in my own comfy zone. I made it without any issues or events to write home about.

My flight from Dallas to Seoul was 13.5 hours, and I think I slept for 8 of those hours. Not too bad. I have this strange ability to sleep in nearly any condition at any point of the day, but sometimes the extra noise and people make it a little more challenging to actually fall asleep. Once I'm asleep, I'm asleep - there's no issue there. So, I took some Benadryl with my two meals. Out cold 40 minutes after lunch/dinner/4ambrunch/whatever meal that was. I'd definitely recommend that.

Not a significant story, but one I find amusing:
Arrived at Incheon. Went through immigration, claimed by bags, went through customs, and out the arrival gate. I was squinting to find an ATM of my bank against the back wall and a Korean man approached me, asking "Where are you going? Taxi?" and I responded "Aniyo, kansahamnida" (no, thank you) and he started laughing and walked away. BOOOOOOOM! Waygukin success! (waygukin is Korean for foreigner, we often shorten it to "waygooks")

I've been back for just over 24 hours and it's been nice. Walked around to get to the bank and my favorite produce stand - it's strange how comfortable it is compared to exactly a year ago. When I got off the plane and went through immigration the man stamped my passport and I mumbled my 감사합니다 (kansahamnida / thank you) very uncomfortably. It was a serious process of adjusting when I moved here, but it seems I've slipped back into Korea easily and calmly (not at all like my initial transition, hahaha).


Now, I'm off to BBQ with Charlie in order to stay awake. What I've experienced is that evening time is the roughest part of jet lag.... the trick is to power through and stay awake the first two or three nights until a reasonable bed time. If you go to bed before 8pm, you're sunk for the next week.