Singapore Air and DONGKYU!!!

Sorry if this breaks the sequence of posts, but I wrote this on the plane and forgot to post it.

"Trust me
It's Paradise
This is where the hungry comes to feed
For mine is a generation that circles the globe
in search of something we haven't tried before
so never refuse an invitation
never resist the unfamiliar
never fail to be polite
and never outstay your welcome

just keep your mind open and
suck in the experience
and if it hurts
you know what... it's probably worth it

you hope, and you dream
but you never believe that something is gonna happen to you
not like it does in the movies
and when it actually does
you expect it to feel different
more visceral
more real
I was waiting for it to hit me
Hit me

I still believe in paradise
but now at least I know it's not some place you can look for
cause it's not where you go
it's how you feel for a moment in your life
and if you find that moment
It will last forever" ~The Beach

Day 1 - The Long Voyage

There are approximately 3.5 hours left before I reach Incheon. I have peed 5 times, brushed my teeth twice, and gone up for bags 3 times. I feel very fidgety compared to my fellow passengers. I haven't even see some people get up once.

10 hours ago…

I arrived at the airport and check in went very smoothly. I was very relieved to find out that I was assigned an aisle seat. I went through security which was much smoother than what I'm used to with Holt and O'hare. Must be because it was an International wing.

$320 was traded for 300,000 Korean won. Let's see how long I can live off that.

In front of me in the security line was a group of young Korean children and their chaperones. A couple of the kids were the cutest little Korean elementary-aged children I have ever seen. There was one boy in particular, the smallest of the group, who appealed to me. He looked like a soccer player. He had long curly, light-brown hair and was hugging onto his rainbow neck pillow tightly. After 2 hours of waiting in the gate area, we boarded the plane and I was more excited to find out that he was sitting in the center seat right next to me, along with one of the older chaperones. His name was Dongkyu and we started talking when I helped him find the input holes where the plug in the earphones. I wish I knew more Korean. I really wanted to talk to this dude more. But language barrier aside, he was pretty shy.

I started the entertainment, to curb my madness, by watching the German film The Devil's Kids. It was a cheesy film about soccer and a young German suburban boy. Lahm and Podolski made some cameos; that was awesome. I slept for an hour, then kept cycling through reading Harry and Bertha Holt's book, studying Korean, studying my camera manual, listening to music, playing video games with Dongkyu, and eating. I ended the flight with Unstoppable and 2 episodes of The Office.