Korea!

Landed in Korea at 10:15 p.m. local time on Saturday, February 13.

I rather dislike the fact that I lost an entire day in transit- I had left the house at 8:00 a.m. on February 12!

I got to my cousin's house around midnight. My mom's younger sister and her husband had picked me up from the airport in their spiffy little Peugeot. And I saw snow for the first time this year, hooray!

It is super cold here (I'm in Seoul, in the Anamdong neighborhood, just near Korea University, where my cousin goes to school).

And also, it's past 3:00 a.m. and I can't sleep because I slept for a whopping fifteen hours when I got here. Went to bed around two, woke up around five in the afternoon. Another day, gone!

Happily, I did manage to go eat dinner with the cousin, then we had coffee at the biggest Coffee Bean I've ever seen in my life. And then, my cousin being who he is, we conducted a fast-paced walking tour of his school. A small portion of the campus, but still- to have an LA girl traipsing about at nighttime in a Korean winter is a bit nutty.

It wasn't as cold as I thought it would be, though it's well below freezing. And windy. And I had a 돼지바, possibly a bad idea but really delicious.

So concluded my first full day in Korea- one meal, one coffee, one dessert, and countless hours of conversation about Korean history, the philosophy of history, moviemaking, and plans for my next two days in Seoul.

Off to 강남 (Gangnam, Kangnam?) tomorrow to see my great-aunt!

William, Diana, I am hoping to go to Daegu next week to see you. Will you be around??

I think this is the first post I've ever written on my iPhone- not as bad as I thought it would be, though correcting spelling is a pain.

Last thing- The Konglish here is awesome. I'm going to try to take as many photos as I can!