Welcome to Korea

"Ladies and Gentlemen, you have now arrived at Incheon International Airport."

Those were the words that were music to my ears. After a long 10 1/2 hour flight, I had finally made it to my destination of South Korea or better yet know as the "Motherland". This is technically my 2nd trip to South Korea, but the first trip that I am actually going to remember. The first time I came to Korea was when I was 5 or probably younger...

The flight seemed shorter than expected, but then again I was sleeping half the time. I learned before I boarded the plane that there were around THREE HUNDRED people going on the same flight as myself, which I consider nuts and amazing; just to picture all those people trapped aboard a large plane traveling across over 5,000 miles of water to finally arrive in Korea. Now imagine three different airplanes doing that same journey in a single night. WOW.

The food on the plane was great, and so was the service provided. All the flight attendents look like the one pictured in the Asiana commericals, all put on a smiling face, ready to serve the customer; now that is great training. In my opinion, the service provided on Asiana Airlines seriously puts American commerical airlines to shame. Moving along to the food, all the customers had a choice of foods: bi-bim-bap, traditional Korean dish or a more western type food, Steak. Both looked delicious, but I opped out for bi-bim-bap, yum. :]

After an hour of waiting to go through customs and getting my luggage I was finally in Korea at 5:25 am. Incheon Airport is amazing, it's so technology savvy and the architecture is very modern; I love it. *Random tidbit, Incheon airport was named the #1 best airport in the world, I guess it was all understandable once I arrived.

The first thing I noticed and is very apparent about Seoul is all their apartment buildings. I was talking to my uncle in the car because he was showing and explaining the different things about Seoul, he said that all the concrete, the buildings that are designed for apartment living has become a culture in Seoul. A good majority of the buildings we passed by on the freeway were all apartments. When I saw my first set of apartment buildings, I thought they were like corporate office buildings the ones I am used to in downtown L.A., but boy was I wrong.

With a little jetlag, I basically stayed inside my uncle's house the whole day, no exploring done whatsoever. I have yet to experience their hot humid weather that everyone has been telling me to look forward to...but even though my uncle does not have air conditioning, I survived day one. What I thought was the most interesting is that while I was reading my book I smelled the different Korea foods that were being cooked inside the different households, I thought it was fasinating and funny. They were cooking some type of fish and what I though smelled like kimchee chi-gae. I would never get to experience that living in Northridge, the only time we would smell other families' cooking is if people were BBQing. Not here.