Arrival in Korea

Hello there. The trip to Seoul went quite smoothly. Korean Airlines was great - great service, nice clean plane... I liked the uniforms too!

I ate 2 meals, watched 2 movies and even slept for a few hours! The time change is quite interesting. We left Toronto at 11:50pm on Wednesday, July 15 and arrived here 13 hours later. The time in Seoul when we landed was 2:00am on Friday, July 17!

At the airport, we were checked for swine flu - they have little devices that they press to your skin behind the ear to check your temperature. I was fine - Korea doesn't want any one bringing in the swine flu!

We were met at the airline and brought to our accommodations. Unfortunately, we had to stay in one place for this first night and were moved to our permanent accommodations on Saturday night.

The accommodations for the first night were clean, neat, efficient but tiny. The room was 2m by 2m. I will upload photos of the room soon. We arrived at these rooms at about 5am - the airport is about 1.5 hours outside of Seoul. We were given a blanket and a pillow (very small) and had a free day. Our group leader said that we could meet for breakfast at 6am and lunch at noon and dinner at 6pm. We went for breakfast - sadly we ate at McDonalds as the Korean restaurants were not yet open. I'm sure you're curious - an egg mcmuffin tastes the same here!! Our group decided not to meet for lunch. I am including a few photos of our rooms. If you look closely at the photo of Joann, you can see both back corners of her room. Also note the width of the bed!

Joann and I slept for a few hours and then took the subway to a place that Estelle had talked about from her trip to Korea a few years ago, Cheonggyecheon. It is a small stream that flowed through the downtown area of Seoul. It had been hidden beneath a truck bypass for decades. In 2003, it was uncovered and walking paths were opened. It is below the city level and has nice trees and plants along the water. It is 11km long so we had an ice cream and went for a long walk. It felt great after the long flight and the tiny rooms where we slept! Here are a few photos that I found on the internet to show you how nice it was!

We visited a few markets - big spaces where vendors have spots to sell their wares. There were many (30-40) vendors all in the same area selling the same items! There were hats, shirts, ties, suit jackets, vests galore!! Most items were quite shiny, glitzy and not appealing. The Korean population, though, dresses very well - we didn't find the stores where they shop!!

It was funny when we first got on the subway, the weather was hot, overcast and very humid. I noticed that everyone was carrying an umbrella! This did not bode well...rain will come out of no where and pour for several minutes, off and on through the day. It is the rainy season!! We survived by staying in the markets (in buildings) until the rain stopped. We quickly learned, my umbrella is now always with me.

We found the Korean people to be very friendly and helpful. Every time that we stopped to decide which way to go on the subway or which way to turn, someone stopped and asked to assist us!

We had dinner in a noodle place - we sat on the floor at a little table and had noodles in a bowl with some veggies and broth. I can use chopsticks but have you ever eaten noodles with them?? We managed but it wasn't pretty!!