After almost 24 hours of flying and layovers I finally made it to South Korea’s Inchon airport in one piece. The flights themselves went fairly smoothly…it was just a long trip.

The plan was to take the 45-minute bus ride into Hwajeong (Seoul suburb) and meet Clay at the bus stop close to his place. Obviously my cell phone wouldn’t work in Korea, so Clay had sent detailed instructions for how this would all work beforehand. The instructions did in fact work, and I got where I needed to go, but apparently Clay had left his cell phone at the airport the night before when he’d gone to pick up Elliott and Hannah. Clever boy that he is, he decided to pick up his phone and meet me at the same time. I was too quick for him and high-tailed it out of there just as his bus was arriving we found out later. I ended up having to borrow a random guy’s phone to call Clay (there aren’t many readily available public phones) so it all eventually worked out.

Today (Monday) was another experiment in planning. First we breakfasted at the McDonald’s downstairs. The menu looked mostly familiar. I got an Egg Mcmuffin, but they only had bacon and sausage versions (no ham). Hannah wanted hers sans meat which turned out to be an ordering fiasco…the staff found it odd that you’d want a Mcmuffin without bacon or sausage.

Further inspection of the menu yielded some interesting observations. Besides the usual McFlurry desserts there was a kiwi concoction (maybe to go along with the Shrek promotion?). Kiwi seems to be big here, but its prominence is nothing compared to kimchi, one of the Koreans’ proudest accomplishments. Basically, it’s spicy cabbage, but don’t tell that to a Korean. The National Folk museum in Seoul has a large section devoted to the origins and history of kimchi and all its myriad permutations (fascinating stuff to be sure).

Clay just got back from work which means we’re about to go eat. That’s all for now.