Korea

The first official post from China in this chapter of my blog! Welcome to China, everybody!

I have been here in Shenyang now for less than two days, and I have enjoyed every minute of it, but it has really struck me that my dad was right when he visited this city a year ago: China is a place of over-stimulation. So having been over-stimulated by everything that's happened since arriving here, and not knowing quite how to process things enough yet to write something coherent for you, I've decided to stop delaying on my blog and just tell you about my night in Korea while en route here.

But don't worry, you'll get to hear more about China itself soon enough.

My travel itinerary took me from Seattle directly to Seoul, South Korea, where I had a 14 hour overnight layover. Bright and early the next morning, I got on a second plane that flew directly into Shenyang. I've done this exact itinerary before, while en route to Shenyang two years ago, and that night in Korea made for a good story... For those of you who haven't heard that one, it involved getting on a bus to go to a hotel in the center of town, missing my stop since I know a grand total of 2 words in Korean (hello and thank you -- neither of which were the name of the stop I needed), and having the bus driver eventually stop the bus, come talk at me in a completely foreign language, look at my printed out reservation form with the address of the hotel, and walk me off the bus to grab me a taxi and tell the driver where to take me. Very kind of the nice bus driver, since I don't have any idea how I would have figured out how to get there otherwise!

But that's an old story. I have now officially spent not one but two nights in Korea, and this second one was far more exciting than the first! A friend from college, who I actually studied with in Beijing for one semester, is currently living in a city two hours from Seoul. When she heard I would be in Korea, she offered to take a train up to Seoul for the night to see me! Of course, no way I was going to turn something like that down!

Certainly, this girl is American and doesn't speak fluent Korean either, but she can get by just fine. So after meeting up in the airport (which involved having my name called across the loudspeaker! woot!), we took the subway out into town a ways and grabbed a delicious meal -- pieces of meat cooked at the table and then eaten wrapped in lettuce with garlic, onions, and a sauce of red pepper paste mixed with something else. Yum yum! Definitely beat the street food I managed to purchase for myself the first night I was in Korea, which I threw away after one bite because it was disgusting. Still don't know what that was, actually...

After dinner, we went to a jjimjjilbang or bathhouse. I have heard of this phenomenon in Korea but never expected to experience it since, again, I don't speak Korean. But it was wonderful! For 8,000 won ($7 or $8), we could shower, enjoy several different sauna rooms, sit in a variety of hot baths, and finally sleep for the night. Sure, the sleeping is on a mat on the floor in a room with other people sleeping, but that certainly beats any amount of sleep I might have gotten in the uncomfortable chairs at the airport! (And since I spent two years sleeping on the floor in DC, I felt quite at home.)

So it was the absolute best layover I have ever experienced. In fact, it didn't even feel like a layover. It was relaxing and refreshing to enjoy the saunas and spa, fun to sleep in a famed jjimjjilbang, and most of all incredibly encouraging to catch up with an old friend and have her be just as (or more) excited as me that I will be back in China for a while.

All that said, it was also great to get on that second plane to come back to China. As soon as my plane hit the ground in Shenyang, I was flooded with excitement and joy. It is wonderful to be back, and awesome that the journey over could be as encouraging and fun as it was!