The First Day

Here follows an account of my first day, my commute to korea if you will. Forgive the lateness of this post as i've been having troubles with my camera. I've also just been really busy. Ken's gonna help me fix my camera when he gets back from work, and then i'll post another blog with all of those.

So. I got up about 8am on sunday, barely aware of what was happening around me, aware only of the nagging dread i felt. i don't like flying. got to the airport about 9:30am, said bye to my folks, checked my shit, and headed off to the security check. emptying my pockets, i was surprised to find my cellphone in there. it had been my intention to leave it at home. apparently mornings are not my thing. I get into the terminal and settle in to wait a couple hours for my flight... might as well turn on my phone. ken calls. he tells me that a thai flight just went down and everybody died. what an asshole.

i get on the plane, a regional jet. small. very small. to the point where i walked out on the tarmac and climbed stairs into the plane. we take off. its very shaky. inwardly i panic. short, rather choppy flight. land in minneapolis, grab a pizza (the place was called godfathers... should have been called godawfuls. i know that's a bad joke) and realize i need to be boarding in exactly five minutes ago. so i run. i run so far away. luckily since a 747 can seat approximately 7.4 million people, there was a big line and everything was okay. again, i boarded and took my very small seat. the takeoff, and really most of the flight was quite smooth. was i any less terrified? of course not. i know what you're thinking and yes, i'm a completely pussy. I'll admit it. feel free to refer to me as mingey if you feel so inclined.

finally, after an eternity (12 and a half hours), we started making our descent (good movie by the way) into tokyo. as soon as we came over the coast we banked and i was able to look across the aisle into that rows window and i remember thinking "huh... well... i'm in japan". keep in mind that i was rather disoriented as i'd been up for nearly 24 hours at this point, and, as i'd been flying west and chasing the sun, the sun had been up the whole time. the tokyo airport was hotter than a demon yak's anus. so i'm trying to find where to go, eventually realize that i have to go through another security check as apparently the japanese don't trust me. get through there and go to try and locate my gate. i notice on the screen that they've changed the flight and its leaving twenty minutes earlier. awesome that means i'll be safe in ken's arms twenty minutes earlier. not a problem at all cause i have an hour layover to get on the plane. "last call for flight 29 to busan". what the fuck? so i'm running again. drawing looks. "who is that fatass white guy? he's running so fast! is that donovan bailey?!". again, i just make it onto the plane, which is fairly small, and predominantly korean. my flight attendent looked like a rat. albeit an anthropomorphized rat (incidentally, anthropomorphizing is HUUUGE here in korea. most restaurants have cute little cartoons of the animals they butcher and serve... and the animals look soo happy). the takeoff was rough. the flight was rough. the girl sitting next to me had a rough disposition. landing was fucking horrifying. and this time its not just me. most of the passengers were looking around, looking scared. one started praying. even the flight attendants looked rather nervous. the captain (cap'n) comes on the intercom and informs us we'll be landing momentarily. i look out the window. there is no land in sight. just the black pacific beneath me. i continue to fret. its raining in busan. we're flying through it. the pilot is taking us down, faaast. the plane is rocking side to side roughly. when the city did come into sight, it was quite beautiful, and there was neon everywhere. thirty seconds later we touched down on the runway. one second later we bounced off it. finally we land and come to a stop. i thank jeebus. the plane doors open and i step onto the giant staircase they've wheeled up to the plane ("you have to keep an eye out for hop-ons", what's the tv show? ten points to whomever gets it) which is thankfully covered, as its pouring rain. i board the bus (i just keep commuting) that will take me into the terminal. i get into the terminal, pass through customs very easily and very quickly grab my bags and head out to the meeting area. and there, for the first time in 8 months i see my old friend ken. he's got a sign. it features a huge blownup pic of my face (my passport picture actually), and my name colourfully misspelled. we go outside and he's packed a bottle of whiskey. alcohol is a religion here, so no one even batted an eye when we took a few good swigs. and i smoked a cigarette for the first time in probably about 26 hours. we just hung out there catching up for about an hour when we realized that all the cabs were gone, all the people were gone, and the airport was shutting off the lights and closing for the night. at this point the local time was about 10pm. eventually we got a cab and sped off towards haeundae-gu, which is the district of busan (riiight neah da beach, boyee!) where ken works, lives and loves, and i got my first good look at the city. you could see the dark masses of the mountains all around, big dark shadows. awesome. we got to ken's building, had a quick look around, and though i was thoroughly exhausted, decided to walk around and see some of the city.

wow... this blog just keeps going. i'm trying to wrap it up. we walked down to haeundae beach, most likely the most popular beach in the entire country. we continued drinking (as we do...) and waded into the east sea (also known as the sea of japan... to the japanese). this went on for some time. then we walked through a little fish market. THEN i realized i had left my dad's camera at the beach. we raced back and luckily it was still there. did we hit mcdonalds? ofcourse we did. my favourite part was the korean businessman passed out at a table. that's very common here for the record (a bottle of soju is only a dollar!). we hit the red light district and went hooker watching, a common pasttime from our days in toronto, as ken lived at jarvis. shortly after that we went home and went to bed (passed out).

okay. the carpel tunnel is setting in. so i'm gonna stop. tomorrow we head to china, so i don't know if we're gonna be online... i will try and upload some pictures tonight.

please tell toronto i say hi, and give swiss chalet a call and tell them i'm still alive. they're probably worried sick.

So, apparently I'm going to Korea...

I remember talking to ken and saying "yeah, 59 days till i show up in korea". back then it was just a dream. i'm now 34 hours till my departure and its actually becoming real. frankly, i'm terrified. terrified that something will go wrong. terrified that i'll be landing in the midst of a typhoon. terrified that i'll be crashing into the pacific. that said, i'm incredibly excited. i feel like Red at the end of Shawshank Redemption. I hope i won't have any troubles with customs. i hope i won't get a bloodclot during the flight. I hope the pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I just want to see my friend and shake his hand.

I hope.

... and that's most likely the cheesiest i will get on this blog.

Tomorrow, saturday, will be filled with the minutiae [mye-noo-shah?] of last second travelling plans. i need to go tanning one last time. visit my sick-ass brother, and get my financial affairs figured out. stay tuned for my "omg, i'm getting on a plane and going to asia" blog... i'll write something before i leave my house... after that, it may be a day or so before i update. talk to y'all soon!

This is more a test than anything else...

I have just opened this blog account, and am feeling my way around the interface, or something like that.

the only really important thing to post right now i suppose is backstory. My name is Court, i like to consider myself rather awesome when i can, and i'm heading to south korea to visit my good friend ken. the plan is also to hit china and japan.

i'm not feeling very creative right now, thus the lack of any kind of entertaining commentary. the only other thing you need to know is that, though my grammar is generally pretty solid, i don't do much capitalizing. i'm glad we got that out of the way.

anneyonghi kaseo!