Day One!

I got in at about 5pm Korean time yesterday (may 22) and finally got to Mel's apartment about 8pm. It was a long wait for her at the airport and a LONG bus ride to her apartment. We were in traffic for a long time. It was nice. i got to see parts of rural Korea and it reminded me of the movies I watched in my chinese history class. there were city buildings and then 2 miles up you see some people out tending to their farm... definitely something you don't see every day. I didn't get to take photos on the bus because it was moving and there are shades on the windows and i think it would have blurred things just a bit.
I had McDonalds for dinner lastnight. We were going to go to this local restaurant but it was already closed by the time we got there. I ordered a bigmac meal. The interesting part is that the beef is peppered. Like if you look at the beef, you can see the pepper flakes and it had no flavor at all. Oh well. The interesting part is that the cashiers knew English and in the US you rarely find a cashier that knows something other than English.
The Koreans that I have met so far have been amazingly nice and willing to help with anything. I was offered the use of a cellphone to call Mel and several people asked if I needed help getting somewhere. I've not felt like I was stared at but Mel says it happens a lot because there aren't an awful lot of foreigners in her town. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.
I only got 4 hours of sleep.. my body apparently thinks its wakeup time at 4:30am. ugh. Maybe tonight I'll get better sleep. Mel is still snoozing but has to get up in about an hour to get ready for work. I'm going with her today, so that should be interesting. Then we are going to get some Korean dinner and then maybe take a walk around the area. The weekend will be full of museums and other things.

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Now for photos..



this is where i exchanged my dollars into won and Mel used the Woori ATM

this is a gas station. it looked interesting


a statue outside of Mel's apartment building


this is near the cityhall. a fountain advertising Bucheon


this is blurry, i know. this is on the walk home from Emart (the everything you ever want, WalMart sort of place)


this is the fountain machine inside of emart



our groceries - chicken breast, chicken fingers, bananas, pepperoni sticks, yogurt, water, velveeta, potatoes, mango popcicles