So, I'm back in the States. I've been home since Saturday afternoon. Wow. Uh. Everything.
Right now it's 6:53am [aka almost 8pm in Korea/me time.]
Yesterday, I went to sleep around midnight and was dead to the world until 3:30 in the afternoon. Last night I think I slept about 2 or 3 hours? Tops? And it doesn't look like I'm going to be going back to sleep anytime soon, so I thought I would check in. I only really plan to continue with this blog until school starts/hopefully the shock wears off. Until then, here we are...
Coming back here was intense. I thought going to Korea was crazy. I was wrong. My flight schedule went like this: 10:30am departure from Seoul/Incheon, landed in ATL Georgia I think... 11:30am local time? Something like that? Then we had a small layover until we came to Detroit. Crazy. It was crazy. I was SO OUT OF IT already by the time we got into the Atlanta airport. Everything felt surreal from the moment I stepped off the airplane. I remember really clearly everything I was thinking... It was insane. When we left Seoul it was morning -- then on the plane, we went through "night" when it got very dark, then on to the next day... Except when we landed, it was yesterday morning again... And no matter how much I kept telling myself that I understood the time difference and there was nothing odd about it, there was... Definitely a lot odd about it...
My first impressions at the ATL airport...
1. Everything looks less nice here. And it did. And it still does, in every public place I've been. It's just the bottom line. I kind of went back in time in the airplane; that's what every one likes to say. Except when I was in the airport, it felt like I had for real. ATL looked like the 90s. The 80s. It looked ancient. Dirty. Doors didn't open by pressing a button. Everything wasn't shiny and clean. I was like :O this is unreasonable. The USA has to catch up a little in more ways than just getting awesome-er phones.
2. English overload. I guess I got used to tuning things out because I knew I wouldn't understand them, or having to take time to read signs/figure out packaging. My first hour or so in the States was incredibly disorienting because suddenly everything made sense to me. I could understand passing conversations, read t-shirts, comprehend lyrics in songs. I knew what the news announcers were saying on the three televisions in my vicinity. All at once. It was too much. I felt like I was dreaming. I still have that feeling a little bit in the couple of times I've gone out in public. It's crizazy
3. Cleavage. Women show off their cleavage here. I took one look at some of them and I was like woah, I can't believe they're wearing that in front of people. Oh... Wait. Oh yeah, that's totally fine here.
4. I felt small. In Korea, I am average size. I can fit into clothing fine (except for shoes; none ever fit me) and nobody thought I was fat or anything. (I would know if they had; Koreans I knew had no qualms about telling anyone they were, regardless of situation.) In Korea, I'm slightly taller than a lot of the women, though, and eye to eye with a lot of the men. Some guys were taller than me, sure, but never more than an inch or two. The majority I was at a comfortable level with. In the airport, I was really like... Surprised?... By how large everyone looked to me. And still looks. Men are tall here. Like... Tall tall. I have to look up at them kind of tall. Also, a lot of people are... You know... Big.
5. I can't stop nodding/mini-bowing to say thank you. I do it without thinking about it. I felt like an idiot yesterday with the cashiers. I'm already starting to miss people yelling hello and goodbye whenever I leave a store. :C
In general, a lot of things the past couple of days have really felt totally unreal. It feels a little like I just dreamt that I went to Korea and it didn't actually ever happen. Before I came back, I did have a dream where I got back to the USA, but then everyone was telling me that I'd been back for a year already and kept asking why I didn't remember anything. It's like that, except not as horrible. (: So yeah. Hopefully my sleep schedule will even itself out soon. I do feel tired, but I just can't put myself down. It's so dumb.
You know what's not dumb? Real showers that aren't just attached to the wall above your sink. I can't get over it. Also, real cheese.
