Have you ever been on a 13 hour flight across the Pacific? Did you leave at 1:00 PM so you were pretty much seeing sun the entire time? Yeah me too... sure is fun huh?

So here you'll see our plane. It was pretty awesome because it was one of those fancy 2 story planes. Since we are so rich and everything I'm sure you would just assume we were on the top floor in first class, but we decided we really wanted to see how the locals lived so we slummed it in coach.

See the two jetways there!
 They gave us 2 meals on the plane and to be honest I don't remember if this was "supper" or "breakfast" but they both were something like this. I was slightly confused when they said "breakfast" and I got something similar to what I had for "supper" but when you're trapped for 13 hours in a steel tube hurdling across the ocean with a bunch of Koreans you just smile and say thank you.

It was airplane food, but to be honest it wasn't HORRIBLE... in fact, now like 2 weeks later I could really go for it
 We had a layover in Seoul Korea. For those of you who watch everything I post (and why wouldn't you??) You might recognize this picture from Facebook. This was taken in Korea and we successfully navigated a very weird second screening process in Korea. The line was super long but then some employee looked at me and said "Come this way" and took us down what looked to be a pretty 'employees only' type of place to a significantly less crowded screening room. The 'screening' consisted of passing our bags through what I assume to be x-ray machines (though we did not have to remove any liquid - like our waterbottle - nor computers), and pass through a metal detector that beeped indiscriminately at everyone because we were discouraged from emptying our pockets. We didn't complain, but I seriously was ready for a platoon of Korean guards to come tackle us and put us in a holding cell till our program director noticed we were missing and made inquiries.
At this point we did not feel very social and even though we were surrounded by the other teachers who flew in from UT we didn't really acknowledge them... yeah we are rude like that
 Our flight from Korea to Beijing was actually a little too short for my liking. That is because I did not get to finish my movie, 42. Will people ever accept Jackie Robinson?!?!?!?! I may never know. We also got a very odd meal I did not take a picture of, one of the "dishes" was a big block of tofu with soy sauce. I was so hungry I ate it, but I definitely had to suppress my gag reflex a bit. Chad decided he wasn't hungry enough for that.
Here's a section of our declaration form we filled out to get out of the airport. We thought it was funny. I look now and I realized MAYBE we were just a bit punchy.


Settle down.... hahaha..yeah...
 I started taking pictures of funny signs I saw around town, but with the "Chinligish" here (yikes that word just feels really racist... is it?) I would have been taking pictures all the time. I forget what this was on but we thought it was funny and I see Chad's bag on it, so maybe it was a bench?

No sleeping or jazzercising!
We really liked this one from the escalator and it made us think of the fantastic Nic Kirkham, whose love of Crocs would be cherished here. Seriously everyone in Asia wears them. I saw a girl who was a little fashionista while still rocking the Crocs.

 Mind your toes... in your foam shoes
 This is a picture of our hotel lobby. I *think* I just took it to show the lobby, but there might be something humorous in the picture. If you see it, let me know! The hotel wasn't too bad. They said "hostel" on the itinerary so we were expecting much worse. We did have 2 twin "beds" in our first hotel room, but then our toilet broke (pretty sure it wasn't us...) and so we got upgraded to a big "bed". I put bed in quotations because they do beds a touch different here... as in they only have box springs. So you have to adjust to it. I have not yet adjusted....

lobby and more??
All in all the first day (two days, thanks international date line) was pretty easy. 

PRO TIP: Instead of staying up the entire flight watching free movies (Iron Man 3, Mud, Admission, The Big Wedding) sleep when they darken the cabin, because if you watch all those movies then decide to sleep it's right when they decide it's time to put the cabin lights back on. Also, bring a dart gun for the people who open their window shade when it's dark in the cabin and then go to sleep. Or take their passport so they're never allowed to fly again. Up to you...