Hello friends and family!
I have safely landed in Asia! After over 20 hours of traveling, It was such a relief to finally get here! The flights all went well, and I slept a lot on the plane. Write now as I am writing this e-mail it is almost 5:50 am but I’m wide awake. My body still needs to adjust to the time zone here and last night was pretty difficult trying to force myself to sleep because I’m so used to the time zone in America! After I finally left the airport that’s really when reality set in for me. I immediately thought wow. I’m on foreign soil. I’m a minority here. This will be my home for the next nine months! AHHH! It’s kind of crazy but kind of amazing at the same time. After we settled in our hotel that we’re staying in for the night, we were able to walk around and we went out to eat and I got to try some authentic noodles with meat and vegetables. It was extremely delicious. If just that one dish is any indication of how the food is going to be here, I consider myself a lucky man. The people here are all super fascinated that we’re foreigners. Driving down the highway in the bus to get to the hotel was hilarious because I had a window seat and was looking out of it and waving at all of the people in cars and they were just so incredibly happy waving back! I thought that was really cool.
Today we have a couple of different things on the agenda. We’re going to finally move into our apartments that we’ll be staying in for the next 9 months, and also pick up our phones that we’ll use over here, and a bicycle. Then later on in the night it will be our first time exploring the college campus (which I’m really excited about).