I'M HERE.

YESSSSSS. I'm so excited! I chronicled my plane ride there just so you guys could witness my cray. It gets progressively more ridiculous the closer I got to Bangkok, it seems, haha. Enjoy~

So this morning before I left, my aunt (mom's younger sister) called and told my dad that she was essentially creepin'. She said that she went to the Viengtai hotel (my orientation hotel while I'm in Bangkok) and somehow extracted the information that we would be staying there for 3 days and that the rate per night at that hotel was 1200 baht (maybe $40) per night. She also got the phone number of the program director and my address in Khon Kaen so she will be able to contact me whenever she wanted. My parents and I had a good laugh about that one; my aunt has always been pretty nosy. Just thought that was a funny little situation.

(10 hours, 45 minutes until Incheon) If I ever travel to Asia again, there's no way I'm not going to use Korea Air. First, there are individual touchscreen consoles installed to the backs of every seat, complete with remote control. On it, you can watch tons and tons of movies (so far, just watched Date Night and How To Train Your Dragon for the second time). Most of them are Hollywood-based with many language options, but they also have some Korean movies (English subbed!), Chinese dramas, and some European movies I've never heard of. You can also play games (Tetris, of course, chess, lots of other random sports-y games) and listen to their huge collection of audio. And yes, since it's Korea Air, all of my favorite k-pop songs are here! Currently listening to Super Junior's 3rd album, Big Bang's 2nd album, and 2PM's DSCS. Do I have all of these albums? Yes. But it just makes me happy that they offer them to everyone on this plane. Am trying out a few albums by Wonder Girls, 2NE1, and KARA, too. They also have old school k-pop (Seo Taiji and the Boys, anyone?) and a huge collection of trot and traditional Korean music. And the "recent" music is a few months old, which I was okay about; featured is Rain's "Back to the Basic," SNSD's "Run Devil Run," and even KARA's random cheer song for the World Cup, "We're With You." But overall, this is awesome. For dinner, I had a delicious make-it-yourself-style bibimbap. Yum! Though the gochujang in a tube was kind of a weird concept to me, I'll be honest. Now I'm about to settle into either a nice nap or continue my orientation readings while my laptop still has the battery.

(~5 hours until Incheon) I'm sitting in between two children crying. I mean, seriously, when one stops, the other one starts. It's ridiculous. Watching Iron Man 2 didn't help; it was a pretty horrible film. I'm really surprised that my dad was able to fall asleep.

(Incheon) The flight was delayed, so my hour-long layover time, in which I was planning on looking through the stores and buying cheap kpop-related merchandise, turned into a 10 minute layover. Sad.

(~3 hours until Bangkok) Just had dinner and had an awkward 2 sentence-long conversation with the flight attendant who spoke Thai. And so far, I've been mistaken as a Korean, Japanese, and native Thai. Awesome. On a completely different note, I really don't understand Korean airplane food and odd packaging. I just ate a Thai-style seafood curry with some rice, and on the side, they gave me a pudding cup filled with... silken tofu. Served with their oddly thick soy sauce and sesame seeds, it's delicious, if you were wondering -- but very strange. I was expecting, you know, pudding. Or at least yogurt. But then they gave me some cheesecake-flavored ice cream, and thus, I'm on a sugar high... Which doesn't make sense, since it's about 5 AM in the US right now. Man, I'm looking forward to that jetlag in the morning.

(~1 hour until Bangkok) I'm pretty sure I just got molested by an 85 year old white woman. So first, I was sleeping, and she was apparently trying to reach across me to grab some headphones that the flight attendant was handing out and definitely whacked me in the chest. Hard. And just now, she tried to get up and my bag was in the way.. So she kicked it across the aisle and then tried to lift my foot off the ground. Like, literally... Was bent down on the floor clawing at my feet to try to get me to move. I mean, she could have tapped me or something so the situation that happened wouldn't have happened -- that is, almost connecting my knee to her face. Oops. Yay, sleep deprivation.

(Bangkok!) I'm all settled into my hotel room! I'm an absolute cray at this point, but I have a roommate that is supposedly coming in soon.. And I don't want to creepily be asleep when she gets here. Anyway, so at the airport, my dad and I exchanged some of our money and got our baggage from the baggage claim. Unfortunately, one wheel of my suitcase was apparently knocked off en route, so my dad really wanted to switch our stuff. So on the way to meet the person from CIEE that was supposed to pick me up, we ran into my uncles on my dad's side who were there to pick us up too. Cue awkward car ride to the hotel where the CIEE coordinator was trying to explain the schedule and program to me while my dad was catching up with his brothers. But at least on the car ride, I got to catch a glimpse at the King's Palace and a few wats (Buddhist temples). My hotel is on a street that was meant for tourists; in fact, the whole time we were driving on the street, I don't think I saw a single non-white person... Except for the waiters and waitresses that were serving food to the tourists on their restaurants' outside patios. At.. 12 AM? Okay, tourists, whatevs.

But oh well, now I'm here!! Using grossly overpriced wifi, yay!! Tomorrow, I have workshops from 9:30 until 5:30, and then I'm going to meet with some Thai Club ladies for dinner. After that, I'll hopefully get to see my grandmother and aunt on my mom's side (the silly creeper one). Woohoo!