Well the flight went well. The World class business pods were pretty cool to travel in with the lumbar messaging seats that fully recline into bed positions and the personal 14" screens that you can watch movies or play video games on. Not to mention the leg room that was pretty awesome. I had brought a water bottle since I thought I would be neglected like most other flights I had been on but I was wrong. It seems as though you can have pretty much whatever you want and are fed quite well.
The flight got in late because of a thunderstorm in Japan. Chris met me at the airport and we stayed at the Hyatt at the Airport. The airport is located on an island on the west side of the country.
Today we drove down to Daejon. Chris said it should have been a three hour drive but was more a five hour drive.
The way they drive is highly entertaining. Merging in the middle of the freeway for no apparent reason within six inches of your car is typical. Traffic near Seoul was bumper to bumper.
The rest stops are pretty entertaiing. They serve mainly soups. The Koreans are not a throw away society like the US when it comes to fast food. Real china and stainless steel silverware are used at the road side eateries. This includes stainlees steel chopsticks. Eating noodles with stainlees steel chopsticks is it's own adventure.
The rest stops are cafeteria style. I would equate these rest stops similar to service plazas on the toll freeways in the US.
The interesting thing is that the cars over here either use gas or liquid propane gas. The freeway signs appear to be a merger of US and European signs. The interstate marker equivalents use the same shape and colors as US interstate signs. The road signs are a combination of Hangul characters and romanized characters, this provided Chris and I an oppurtunity to practice our reading of Hangul.
The car ride down was a bit of an adventure in the fact that the window of the car on the driver's side got stuck in the down position. It is Monsoon season here and a fully open window was not going to cut it so after a little Magivering with the Hyatt employee a sheet of plastic with packing tape was placed on the window. This made the toll booths entertaining but kept chris mostly dry.
Nothing like driving a getto mobile in a foreign land. It's not like we don't already stand out as Americans, but now we stand out even more. Thankfully, Chris got ahold of his boss who had our permanent car ready for us. So I got to see Kamco, where Chris works and we got to upgrade to a Hyundia Santa Fe that runs on LPG.
On the way to Kamco, Chris and I were both amused by the agricultural crops that are wedged between industrial businesses. As Chris put it, if there is even a couple of square meters they will plant a crop. There are lots and lots of rice fields. The interesting part of it is that in the small dirt mounds around the rice fields they even manage to plant crops of beans or corn.
The fruit trees are another intersting thing to see. Apparently, they wrap the fruit in paperbags before it is even fully ripe on the tree. As you drive along the road ways there are these trees with white or yellow bags hanging down. Apparently it is there way of protecting the fruit from insects.
The apartment buildings are clustered together. Although they are not that great to look at, it appears as though they attempt to make them appear nicer on the outside by painting pictures on them. I have seen everything from advertizing to cartoon like characters.
Anyways, that's what I have for now. It's 10:30 pm and I am still adjusting so I will update more in the next few days.
Monday we get the apartment. It sounds like our air freight will be here this week but can not be delivered until we get our resident alien visas.
Take care everyone,
H
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