Arrived!

7:00: I'm in Korea! Sitting in my dorm, about to walk down to breakfast at 7:30. We'll have a campus tour of the university we're at (Daejin), then we'll take some classes. My roommate is nice and she helped me figure out my new phone.

 I'm healthy, didn't lose anything, didn't meet with anything terribly unpleasant, and I'm so glad to be here! More later--I still have a 13-hour international flight to describe. :-)
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 9:00 update: Breakfast was good. They had sausage and eggs and orange juice, and also kimchi, but I skipped the kimchi because I still see it as a lunch/dinner food. I'm sure that will change quite quickly.

The cafeteria where we eat is in the female dorm, just downstairs for me, but the 7-11 store where you buy supplies is in the male dorm, so I went with one of the other girls and walked for 10 minutes uphill to get to the shop. Inside the store, they were playing obscure English music that gets no radio play, but which I have on Spotify playlists--it made me feel very at home.

Korea is more mountainous than Alabama by a LOT, so the views are beautiful, but the walks are steep. I'm never leaving my sneakers behind. Here, you need lots of foot protection and cushioning.

There are 120+ people at this orientation, mostly Americans, but I've met a few Canadians and South Africans, some Brits, and there's supposed to be an Irish person here, but I have not yet hunted them down.

Met one other Christian so far. She and I discussed where we might find a church service nearby, but we might not get to go during orientation.

Met one girl going to my city--Sejong. Our orientation name tags have the city we're going to printed on them, and I've seen 20 people going to Seoul, 20 for Gangwon province, and a few for Cheongbuk and Jeju Island, but Sejong must not be a commonly assigned city. Since it's a new city and hasn't been around for very long, I'm just assuming that there aren't many foreigners there. Which is fine!

Our elevator is very polite. It talks to you as the doors close and ends all its sentences in "imnida"(입니다), which is a very respectful verb ending. Thank you, nice elevator.
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11:00 update: I live on the surface of the sun. We went for a walking campus tour, and everyone was inhumanly warm and sweaty. But I met lots of cool people--the fiery walks were worth it for the chance to move around and meet new people. Inside the building, there's AC in my room and in the cafeteria downstairs, but not in the hallways or elevators. So. I'm trying to stay very well hydrated.

I've already been buying little things with Korean won, and it's fairly easy to calculate won because the 10,000 won note is roughly $10, the 5,000 is roughly $5, etc. The coins are cute and look like game tokens.

The EPIK staff have been super nice and helpful, so far. They're really thoughtful and patient with us as we figure everything out.

Talked to some girls who watch the same K-dramas I do. It was fun sharing this particular bit of geekery with people who knew what I was talking about. Met a few people who have already done taekwondo, and the more I hear about that sport, the more I want to try it. we're supposed to get a taekwondo lesson in a few days.

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1:00 PM update: Napped a little, had lunch: beef, veggies, rice, kimchi. Kimchi's already growing on me, which has got to bode well for the future. Feeling a bit of a headache, but we have medical exams tomorrow morning and they said that taking pain reliever can give you a false positive on the drug test, so I don't want to take any yet. Drinking lots of water, and preparing to go to the Opening Ceremony at 2:00.

My roommate likes John and Hank Green's "Crash Course History/Chemistry/Literature" videos on Youtube, like I do. We're talking about how to get streaming movies on our laptops since Netflix and a lot of other video services don't work overseas.

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