Day 1-Korean Adventure...

I'm keeping a pretty good journal while we're here.  Though I'm not a diligent journaler in real life, more sporadic at best, when we travel, I'm pretty detailed; learned this when I was in Russia and had to do it as part of my class requirement, but realize now how valuable that is to me now 7 years down the road.  So here's my entry from this morning...

"Arrived Busan, S. Korea last night after about 12 hour flight from MSP to Tokyo, Japan, and about 3 hour flight from Tokyo to Busan; it's about 5pm MN time, so needless to say, we're a little messed up.  Heather met us at the airport, and after getting thru immigration and customs surprisingly fast, changed some $$ (about 1010 Korean won to $1 USD) and ran to hug my sweet crying sister.  After a crazy taxi ride to her apartment, driving fast, no usage of turn signals whatsoever, we arrived at her perfect little two room apartment.  (Here I drew a little map of her apartment in the journal...)  Tiny but great!!  Mike conked out pretty fast (he didn't get much sleep on either flight, but Heather and I went for a little walk.  "Market Street" is almost literally outside her door, with shops, lots of "walk up" food vendors, a pharmacy, the King Market where she gets groceries, fruit and vegetable stands, several restaurants and bars, and probably lots of other things that I just couldn't process on such little sleep and on sensory overload.  Everything is different here.  The noises, the voices, the smells, tastes, faces, everything.  We walked into the King Market last night, and I recognized the slightly sour smell that we Americans associate with uncleanliness, but is most likely the absence of DO and overusage of bleach, esp. in this warmer time of the year.  I remember this from Belize and Russia.  Heather's apartment, on the other hand, clean as a whistle.  Funny, she's been warning us of mold and bugs for months, but I think we have more of both in our apartment.  We walked, looked, greeted several people who seem to know Heather; I felt a little bit like I was with a celebrity.  Maybe it's our strange faces, so obviously alien, but people greeted us everywhere, from the stores and shops, walking along the street.  I've had Heather phonetically write a few things in Korean that I will struggle thru.  We walked back with a few groceries, sat and split a beer, and just talked for another hour.  It's funny, all of a sudden, I wasn't that sleepy.  My body was tired, but I was awake.  Probably the adrenaline and excitement of being here and seeing Heather.  We talked about family and boys and what we would cram into the next few precious days.  After midnight, we decided we should try and get some sleep, so Heather rolled out her yoga mat, bless her heart, and I crawled in next to the softly snoring Mike.  Wow, we're here..."