:: Live from half way across the world
Well, here I am. In South Korea. I'm going to keep this short and sweet because I'm direly exhausted.
Basically, I flew to Montreal on Monday and spent the night downtown at the Holiday Inn. It was splendid. Montreal is a great Canadian city: its like a cleaner, larger, more avant garde version of Halifax with way more goings on, yet at the same time you don't feel small. I found the streets even were less crowded than Halifax's streets. I guess thats what good city planning does.
The next morning, Wednesday, I went from Montreal to Japan. My flight was an hour late, and a flight that was supposed to take 12 hours and 50 minutes ended up taking something more like fifteen hours. The plane was brand new though, shy of six months old, and it had fancy gizmos that kept me entertained for half the voyage anyway (on demand movies). The food was good too, but the piss off was when they made us shut our windows for the duration so people could sleep. I love looking out the window! Oh well, I was over the wing anyways.
Then Japan. I landed today at the Norita airport in Tokyo. When we were pulling in I got a good glimpse of rice paddies, farms, and countryside that looked in some way (Japanese) alien to that of what you'd see flying over Nova Scotia. Strangely enough, being stuck in the Norita airport for four hours wasn't that bad. I found it reminded me of the Japanese version of Halifax's airport: very small, very friendly and relatively easy to find your way around in. I actually had to keep reminding myself I was in Japan because of all the Westerners walking around. I talked to people from the States, and a few from Canada as well. The things that did make it seem less, well, Western, naturally, were semi-casual Geisha-ish girls walking around (I think maybe just a stunt for tourists: why would they be in an airport?), Japanese school girls going on trips, toilets that were literally holes in the ground (but they had stand-up ones nextdoor), and of course, the fact that 90% of the people there were Japanese. In either case, felt right at home. I think Montreal could learn some lessons from that airport, the woman at the information desk there couldn't speak a word of English yet everyone in the Narito airport spoke English as well as I.
From there I flew directly to Incheon, Korea. The Asiana flight I got on was nothing short of terrible. The flight attendants were nice, but the plane was digusting on the inside. You could tell everything was once white twenty years ago, but is now brown from years of non-cleaning. Once we got seated, the video screen in the center aisle started playing "Korea Sparkling" commercials, which reaked eerily of propaganda. Then there was a ten minute interview with the infamous Rain, and for some random reason after that, they started playing "Mr. Bean" episodes. When the plane took off it resembled something between a Metro Transit bus and a Cessna, with all the random noises and creaking you never, ever want to hear from a plane that holds 300 people.
At least I got in Incheon safe and sound. Customs was no problem, ran into my room mate and the school's boss outside of baggage and we drove from Incheon to a restaurant in my new hometown of Anyang to grab some very-interesting-food-that-will-take-me-awhile-to-get-used-to. After that I got back to apartment (which is nice) and started unpacking.
I'm going to go to bed now, sorry if this entry wasn't the clearest. My brain is literally fried, I flew... so... far today. Its unbelievable. I guess jet lag is the word.
Anyway, yes, there will be pictures. I have a few already and I'll take some more soon. Everything around here is picture worthy: all the shops on my block with the hundreds of neon signs in Korean, the rows upon rows of skyscrapers heading from here to eternity... wow. Yeah, I need sleep. It'll be hard to believe when I wake up and I'm here.
Basically, I flew to Montreal on Monday and spent the night downtown at the Holiday Inn. It was splendid. Montreal is a great Canadian city: its like a cleaner, larger, more avant garde version of Halifax with way more goings on, yet at the same time you don't feel small. I found the streets even were less crowded than Halifax's streets. I guess thats what good city planning does.
The next morning, Wednesday, I went from Montreal to Japan. My flight was an hour late, and a flight that was supposed to take 12 hours and 50 minutes ended up taking something more like fifteen hours. The plane was brand new though, shy of six months old, and it had fancy gizmos that kept me entertained for half the voyage anyway (on demand movies). The food was good too, but the piss off was when they made us shut our windows for the duration so people could sleep. I love looking out the window! Oh well, I was over the wing anyways.
Then Japan. I landed today at the Norita airport in Tokyo. When we were pulling in I got a good glimpse of rice paddies, farms, and countryside that looked in some way (Japanese) alien to that of what you'd see flying over Nova Scotia. Strangely enough, being stuck in the Norita airport for four hours wasn't that bad. I found it reminded me of the Japanese version of Halifax's airport: very small, very friendly and relatively easy to find your way around in. I actually had to keep reminding myself I was in Japan because of all the Westerners walking around. I talked to people from the States, and a few from Canada as well. The things that did make it seem less, well, Western, naturally, were semi-casual Geisha-ish girls walking around (I think maybe just a stunt for tourists: why would they be in an airport?), Japanese school girls going on trips, toilets that were literally holes in the ground (but they had stand-up ones nextdoor), and of course, the fact that 90% of the people there were Japanese. In either case, felt right at home. I think Montreal could learn some lessons from that airport, the woman at the information desk there couldn't speak a word of English yet everyone in the Narito airport spoke English as well as I.
From there I flew directly to Incheon, Korea. The Asiana flight I got on was nothing short of terrible. The flight attendants were nice, but the plane was digusting on the inside. You could tell everything was once white twenty years ago, but is now brown from years of non-cleaning. Once we got seated, the video screen in the center aisle started playing "Korea Sparkling" commercials, which reaked eerily of propaganda. Then there was a ten minute interview with the infamous Rain, and for some random reason after that, they started playing "Mr. Bean" episodes. When the plane took off it resembled something between a Metro Transit bus and a Cessna, with all the random noises and creaking you never, ever want to hear from a plane that holds 300 people.
At least I got in Incheon safe and sound. Customs was no problem, ran into my room mate and the school's boss outside of baggage and we drove from Incheon to a restaurant in my new hometown of Anyang to grab some very-interesting-food-that-will-take-me-awhile-to-get-used-to. After that I got back to apartment (which is nice) and started unpacking.
I'm going to go to bed now, sorry if this entry wasn't the clearest. My brain is literally fried, I flew... so... far today. Its unbelievable. I guess jet lag is the word.
Anyway, yes, there will be pictures. I have a few already and I'll take some more soon. Everything around here is picture worthy: all the shops on my block with the hundreds of neon signs in Korean, the rows upon rows of skyscrapers heading from here to eternity... wow. Yeah, I need sleep. It'll be hard to believe when I wake up and I'm here.