25/ Guest Bloggin'

Hey, it's Harrison.

I'm in Korea visiting Kat, so I thought that as long as I'm here I'll update with my thoughts on things, and post interesting pictures (unlike kat).

First Impressions: Dang, everything is spick and span. Literally as soon as I got off the plane, I noticed that the airport was shiny clean. Like, no dust anywhere. Anyway, that may or may not be that amazing. The next thing I noticed was pretty startling though. In the bathroom on the hand dryer was the name of the guy responsible for cleaning the bathroom, but that's not all--his PICTURE was on there too. So if the bathroom wasn't clean you could go hunt this man down and pin him for the blame.

Inside the airport (and as I will soon discover, all around the cities) there was a Dunkin' Donuts and 7-Eleven.

Luckily, I have seen no more Kraze Burgers. Their motto says it all.

The Dunkin' Donuts was different than the US in that you had a tray and grabbed your own donuts, but it was also different in the flavors of donuts that they had.

Such as green tea, and tomato&carrot.

The 7-Eleven proved to me yet another reason beyond self serve donuts and clean facilities as to why America has some catching up to do with the Koreans.

Behold: Pineapple on a stick (I'm neglecting to mention the strange meats on sticks).

Ok, so leaving the airport we took a bus to the city where kat lives, which is about 3 hours south of Seoul/Incheon/wherever the hell the airport is (the pilot didn't even really seem to know, so Im guessing it was somewhere between the two cities).

(this just happened: I was like SEE BLOGGING IS HARD HARRISON and he was like YEAH ITS ESPECIALLY HARD WITHOUT A CHAIR. well welcome to my apartment :p) /end kat

Back to the bus ride: it was very pleasant. Lots of leg room, leather seats, and big windows through which you could watch the small mountains (/big hills), sea, and cities roll by.

Cue picture with sea, mountain, and city

So on our ride we went through this one city (which I think they mean to connect to Incheon at some point) where they're basically building all skyscrapers right now. And that by itself wouldn't be that weird if not for the fact that its super strange to see giant towers next to vacant dirt lots. Here in the US cities spring up rather naturally, where the city center slowly gets larger and larger buildings, and the population density (along with the building heights) taper out from there. But not in this city. There are completely empty apartment buildings because no one has come into the city yet. It basically seems like they're constructing a strange ghost town. Except the town is a city. And there are no small buildings around it.

Here's the city

Dirt... dirt... dirt... HIGHRISE

What's that line running up the 70 story skyscraper?

Oh, that's just a gap where they haven't finished the interior of the building yet

These are the only people living in this city

On one side of the stream, monolithic apartment buildings...

...on the other side shacks and fields.

And there was a tomato savings bank

 When we finally got to Gunsan, we walked to kat's apartment. Motion sensing lights under her building turned on while we were coming up to the door. She waved a card infront of a panel and the door slid open. The inside of her building is as clean as the airport. Her door is opened by typing in numbers on a keypad, but without using a card, which means that if someone is watching you they can break in pretty easily. But the building isn't crowded or anything, and its pretty obvious is someone is around you, which is why they probably dont have a more thorough means of entrance.

Phew. Well, that was my first day here. Today we walked around a bunch of shops, and saw a boatload of engrish. I'll try to post all that by the end of the day tomorrow.

-Harrison