Korea... Chapter 1 - Pete Wentz

Ok, so my freak out session started about 48 hrs before I had to leave. I've never been so ill-prepared for a trip in my life. (And the worst part is I've had 2 years to prepare for this.) So, this morning/yesterday morning, I said goodbye to Nana, Petunia, and the rest of the boys and headed to Pusan. Now, its about 11:00 pm and I'm sitting in my hotel room in Pusan, sweating my ass off. Its not really hot, but its got to be 150% humidity. Seriously, there will be no hope for straight hair here. I guess I'll talk about my plane ride first.

I flew from Boise to San Francisco. I was just walking along to my gate in the international terminal, and I have Alysia on the phone. I'm just walking and talking and the guy in front of me stops and turns around and I go "WHOA.... PETE WENTZ" He turned and looked at me and then the guy right behind me goes... Pete Wentz! and Pete says "hey man".... I'm not kidding, I was right next to him... I nearly ran him over. Anyways, he was rolling through the airport with his body guard. No sign of Ashlee, but like I told Mary on facebook, I think they are getting things patched up. He's really tiny in real life... Seriously tiny. Oh, and Mom... he was wearing an Ed Hardey hoodie. Alysia told me to get a picture with him, but I was too embarrassed. So I took a picture of him after he walked past me.

Well, I get to my gate and wait for my flight. It wasn't a bad flight. I guess we had some rough weather because we had a little more turbulence than I usually have. I think at one point it was really bad, but I had drugged myself with Tylenol PM's and champagne and I was knocked out. But, I did have a dream that we fell straight down and were doing really tight flying circles around this dragon. I'm pretty sure in my dream we were over Japan. It was actually really scary because I hate that dropping feeling that you get on carnival rides and this felt exactly like that. I was so drugged that it was hard to open my eyes, but I did get them open long enough to see that we weren't crashing and that the Dragon Ball Z movie was on. That might have had something to do with it. Anyways, I got to Seoul in once piece. There were a lot of military people on my flight. God bless em! I wanted to shop at the Seoul airport really bad, but it was kind of overwhelming and I had a bunch of people trying to help me so I decided to check in and get rid of my bags before doing any shopping.

I checked in, and then went to Dunkin Donuts and got a coffee and a donut for free with my business class coupon. I like that. Dunkin Donuts is amazing... and Koreans love it too. After that, I didn't have any time to buy anything as the shops were all the way on the other side of the airport. I jumped on my flight and it was only 45 minutes to get to Pusan. I gathered all of my bags and went to find a taxi.

A nice man in a nice black suit was like "taxi?" and I'm like "taxi!" and he says "taxi?" and then I go "taxi?" and he says "Taxi! 50,000" and I say "lets go!" This taxi driver was extra special with extra special driving privileges. He didn't have to stay within any kind of lane boundaries. He was allowed to drive anywhere on the road that he liked... apparently. There were also a lot of other people with this special privilege. But, overall, its pretty civilized driving here. His GPS was amazing, as everything was in 3-D and it showed buildings - much more advanced than the GPS's we have.

I arrived to the Commodore Hotel and got checked in. I was kind of hungry because all I had for dinner was a donut and coffee. By the time I got in the room, it was about 10:30 and the restaurants were closed in the hotel. I journeyed across the street and there are a few little restaurants open, but I'm scared. Its so overwhelming to be in a place where you don't know anything. I can't read anything, but so far people have been pretty helpfull. Anyways, I was too scared to eat so I came back to the hotel and found some dried strips of some kind of meat, some dried anchovies, and a can of pringles. I went with the pringles and a coke. I'm sitting here eyeing this bottle of Hennessy, but I think I better not. Anyways, I'm freaking out about what I'm going to do for breakfast. I wish I would have learned a little bit more about Korea. Gaw! Also, I noticed a lot of racks for shoes in the front of the restaurants. I think I"m supposed to take my shoes off to eat.