On Korean Air

Tallahassee, FL

After eight of the 15 hours of being on the plane from Atlanta to Seoul, I am convinced that the only entertainment on this plane is food.  WE have been fed, it seems, nearly every hour. First with the peanuts and choice of drink.  Wine anyone?  Anyone?  Koreans must be big on wine, because everyone seems to be drinking it and the flight attendants have tried to pour me some with insistence multiple times.  Then at two thirty in the afternoon, a meal was served.  Mom and I asked for the "American-style" chicken dish, which turned out to be conspicuously Asian style.  We received a bowl of rice with chicken, cabbage, and scrambled egg, all spicily seasoned.  Beside it on the tray was a steaming bowl of seaweed soup, which wasn't half bad if you ignored the fishy-seaweed flavor.  In another dish sat a small pile of vegetables covered in a red sauce which, upon further investigation, I found to be spicy, pickled slices of yellow squash and zucchini.  I even liked it.  It was weird, crunchy, and tasty.  In yet another dish was a small amount of pineapple and melon chunks.  Also on the tray, I discovered a small tube resembling super glue, but containing spicy red pepper paste.  Everything was already spicy to me,, so I wondered if it was for squirting over the fruit.  I decided against it.   Beside the spice paste sat a packet of sesame oil, which also seemed superfluous considering the oil content of the chicken dish, but again, I thought, maybe for the fruit?  And if you were still hungry after all that American-style goodness, there was a whole wheat roll, and a little dish of butter.  That, I knew what to do with.

A little time passed on the plane and apparently it was snack time again.  Ice cream.  Haagen Daaz vanilla bean ice cream.  Mom and her lactose intolerance forced me to eat two servings.  Darn her.

I tried watching a movie for a while, but the cage, er, I mean the plane, was having technical difficulties with the movie service on our row and the row behind us.  Consequently, I heard only every other sentence from the actors.  This is not exactly my favorite way to take in a movie.

It is hot on the plane, the dry winter heated kind where you are sure you are cooking from the inside out.  This surprised me, considering we are traveling over the arctic circle, and last time I made this flight I was freezing like a popsicle the entire time. Even the ice cream did nothing to help me out.  Thankfully, I wore a tank top under my layers to strip down to.  Ah!  What's this?  As I write, the flight attendants are passing out hot, wet towels to wipe your face.  Yay.

Snack time has come around quickly again, and now it is two little pre-packaged brownies.  I probably don't need the calories, since I haven't moved since the last snack, but hey, what else is there to do for 14 and a half hours?

Not much.  Watch a choppy, jerky movie.  Check. Knit a scarf. Check.  Play tetris. Check.  Read a book.  Check.  Take a sleeping pill and half-sleep for an hour here, thirty minutes there.  Check.  Write a blog post about how fun airplanes are.  Check.

Not if you'll excuse me, it's time for my sixth meal of the day.

Atlanta, GA

Seoul, South Korea