Trip Updates #2--Thursday/Friday

My first flight! When we all met at the airport and Todd handed me my ticket, I asked my mom if we could put it in my baby book with my other firsts. :) My sweet parents stood outside the security gates and watched and waved until they couldn't see us anymore. And Karen, wow, she brought us each a bag full of our favorite homemade treats and a card of encouragement. I was at the airport with people from church, but really it just felt like family.

So I really enjoyed my first flight. It lasted all of 25 minutes. I was amazed at how slow everything seemed to go by. You know in the car how everything is just zooming past? I just kept thinking about perspective. How the higher we climbed the more we saw and yet the slower it moved and more controlled it appeared. Our perspective on the ground is so small, but God has it all under control. (A little Twila Paris anyone?)

As we were getting ready to land, the lady I sat with and I started talking about our destinations. When she heard what we were doing she pulled out some paper and wrote "Erin-Korea" and told me she would be praying for me.

The Atlanta airport was cool. Our layover was less than an hour, but we rode the "airport subway"--I don't know what it's really called. FYI: when the announcer says to "hold on" you should.

There were many Asian families waiting to board our flight. I don't know what I expected our flight to be like, but for some reason I was surprised by how many Koreans were on the flight. As we were waiting I thought how it could be possible, and so like God, that we could be flying with people we will talk to in Seoul. We could possible share the gospel with someone from the flight days after we land. The announcements and menus were in English and Hangul. The only Hangul word I picked out the whole flight was the word for "thank you" (calm salm nee dah). But I was still proud. "Hey! I know that word!"

The flight from Atlanta to Seoul was completely different than the flight out of Knoxville. The plane was huge! Three aisles of three seats and I was right in the center. Luke on the right of me, sleepy-drooling-likes-to-lean-over-boy on my left. (He woke up about 10 hours into the flight and turned out to be a really cool guy.) Each seat could start and stop the movie of its choice whenever or even play computer games on the touch screen. The food was good and the flight attendants amazing.

When we weren't watching movies, we could watch the progress of our plane on a map. I thought we'd fly across the states, but instead we flew north through Canada. We watched our plane on the map as we entered Manitoba--"Hello Leah!"--and even took pictures of the screen then. About 4:30 pm Knoxville time the coolest thing happened--we flew over the Northwest Territorities close to the North Pole. The shades on the windows were pulled down by our seats, but we walked to the window at the back kitchen and looked out at snow, ice and clouds for as far as you could see. It was amazing!!

About 6:30 pm Knoxville time we crossed the Beaufort Sea and again went to the back window to take pictures. You could so clearly see the ice floating in the water. And again, amazing! Most of the team was crowded up to a window that is about 4 inches wide and 12 inches high. People seemed confused that we would be so excited about the view and take pictures and video, but how could you not be amazed by the diversity, originality, and just "bigness" of creation?

We had our snack on the plane--a boiled egg-cucumber-cream cheese sandwich. Sounds weird, but it was pretty good.

Side note: the Miami Heat dancers were on our flight.

About 8:15 pm Knoxville time we flew over the Siberian Sea into Russia. It is so incredible to look out and see a place you've only before seen on a globe. Later I got the most amazing pictures of mountains in Russia.

I was finally able to fall asleep at 10:15 pm Knoxville time. I slept less than an hour and woke up as we were flying into China.

Even though it feels like all you do on an international flight is eat, I realized when we were eating dinner at 11:45 pm Knoxville time (12:45 pm Seoul time) that with the time zones we completely missed a time for breakfast.

We landed at Incheon Airport at 2:45 pm here. (1:45 am Knoxville.) Pastor Won, his family and some men from the church me us there. They had a van waiting for our luggage and taxis waiting for us. We drove to the church and so many people were waiting for us. They stood in front of the church and greeted us almost like celebrities, shaking our hands and hugging us. One girl said, "I've seen your picture!" and hugged me. The church has a cafe upstairs and auditorium downstairs. We sat down at the cafe tables and immediately people were asking what they could get us. We went downstairs and Pastor Won had us introduce ourselves. We took turns walking from our seat to Pastor Won; he would hand us the microphone and have us introduce ourselves. Then a child would bring us flowers, gorgeous bouquets. They handed out schedules and then we met our host families. Samantha and I are staying with a sweet couple (who speak English!) and their two amazing little girls who are letting us sleep in their princess bunk beds and use their Little Mermaid bathroom-a bathroom just like ours, but with a fancier toilet. Isaac, our host "dad" even gave us key cards to the house to use this week. The "houses" are what we would call apartments. We are on the 22nd floor. We can walk to the church in about 2 minutes and Todd and Leeanne are on the 20th floor. After getting situated in our host homes, Pastor Won's family, Isaac and two other men from the church took us to eat at a traditional Korean restaurant--"the Tree"--take off your shoes and eat with chopsticks. If I had to eat with chopsticks everyday, I'd starve. Ms. Won asked the waitress to bring forks for us, but mainly I think she was worried I wouldn't get any food. Isaac told us to expect appetizer, main dish and dessert. Food was continually brought to our table, one dish after another, dishes taken as soon as they were empty to make room for the next. We thought we were almost done--we were full--and we heard it was time for main dished. We lost count. We had, I think, four soups. I ate two or three kinds of kimchee. I have now tasted sushi. I still haven't swallowed sushi.

After dinner we had a short meeting as a team and then went back to our host homes to get ready for bed. (At that point we had been up for about 25 hours and had eaten the biggest meal of our lives at what was 6:30 am to our bodies.) Samantha and I were getting our pajamas out when Isaac yelled "Erin! Samantha! What do you think?" And then he came to our room wearing University of Tennessee pajamas.

The girls are precious! Even though they mostly speak Hangul, they want to play with us and have been bringing us stickers. The youngest is maybe three years old. We played for a few minutes before bed and it was just neat how she didn't seem to notice I was different or spoke another language. Smile--and Disney princesses--are pretty much universal. Before bed the girls came in and told me in English "Good night. God bless you. We love you."

So, our first 28 hours or actually covered 2 days and was very eventful and interesting.

More later...