The long day

Intercontinental traveling always makes for long days, and today was no exception.

I left Seoul at 11:00am, got the "airport limousine" (it's really just a coach bus) to Incheon Airport, and left on the 3:00pm flight to LA. I then transferred again in Atlanta to go to Columbus, and arrived at 11:00 pm -- a 15 hour journey.

Normally, people rest after such a long flight, but not in the Army. As soon as I arrived, I had to get in-processed along with with the rest of the recruits, and this went on until past dawn. This included completing paperwork, teaching us how to respond ("YES, DRILL SERGEANT! or NO, DRILL SERGEANT!"), getting issued some Army clothes, getting bunks and sheets, and handing out "Camelbaks."

You've probably seen them before -- they're like 3-liter water backpacks. It's kind of funny -- we can't go anywhere without those, and they tell us we're supposed to drink three per day. Nine liters of water a day. (Of course, then they get mad at us when we've got to pee every 15 minutes.)

We then had breakfast, and it was surprisingly good -- pancakes, bacon, cranberry juice, and an omelette. It was better than Denny's in my opinion, but then again, I've been out of the country for over a year....

And that went on for pretty much the entire day. Move, stand in line, wait, get yelled at to be quiet, stand in line, move, eat, stand in line, wait, move, wait, get yelled at to be quiet, and so on.

Needless to say, I was glad when I finally got to sleep at the end of July 4.

Happy Independence Day. I just lost every shred of mine.

[On a personal note, the flight had a couple of pretty interesting movies I may have to watch later: Outsourced and 江山美人 (Empress and her Warriors) were two of them.]