This is NOT Seoul. This is Flushing.

Queens is one of the most diverse counties in the United States. Once, in the NYTimes, there was an article about it, with the dozens of flags representing the myraids of nationalities in the shape of the borough.

Astoria - Greece
Woodside - Ireland
Jackson Heights/East Elmhurst - Colombia, Ecuador, India

etc. etc. You get my point.

Of course, the above said places are obvious in their ethnicities, but no place is Queens is more obvious in its nationality than Flushing. That place is Korean, right down to the local McDonald's that serves rice in addition to French Fries.

This past Thursday, I didn't fly to Seoul. I went back to Flushing, and it only took me two hours.

Of course, I went to Seoul. What I am saying is that Seoul is eerily like Flushing, from the office buildings covered in signs from top to bottom to the trash in the street because there are simply just too many people.

The kimchi is a wee bit too spicy for me - I prefer the Japanese version. I left my apartment at 12:35pm and went to the airport via the MK Sky Gate Shuttle anf didn;t get to Deena's apartment unti about 10:30pm because of traffic. That is a bit pathetic, considerting that the flight was only 1 and a half hours out of that 10 hour haul. This is what you get when you live really far from the airports. The bus was quite comfy though and really cheap - 11,000 won which is about $11.

We met up with her friend Geraldine and then went to get dinner at this Korean place and had chicken ghalbi. So I have eaten actual Korean food by now, but I am totally unfamiliar with it so I am a bit wary. To top it off, Deena actually lives near a restaurant that specializes in DOG meat. Oh, gross and poor dogs.

On my first full day, we went to Insadong, the old neighborhood in Seoul and walked around. Before we went to a palace (I forgot the name but it was really long and ends in "-dong") we had lunch at a McDonald's. In Korea, they actually charge you more if you take the food out, use plastic bags at the supermarket and take out coffee and other drinks at places like Starbucks, because they actually use real cups in the places. At McDonald's we had plastic cups that have their own special garbage can. There are so many Western chains here it's ridiculous; according to Deena, there are probably more Starbucks in Seoul than in NYC. I just checked on the Starbucks site: 200 about give or take in NYC proper and 135 in Seoul. Pretty close if you ask me. There are only about no more than 10 Starbucks in Kyoto. Crazy.

Before the tour of the palace, Deena and I walked about. I borrowed her Converses becasue I wanted to wear sneakers and I didn't bring my Asics because of fear that my suitcase would go over the 20kilo weight limit. I ended up with a huge blister on my right pinky toe and very achy legs and feet becasue the tour of the palace was a 2.5km hike. And it was not flat.

By the end of the day we got so exhausted we decided to head on back to Suji where Deena lives, an hour outside Seoul. Not even halfway through, the bus stopped and the driver ordered us all to get off. Turns out there was some sort of emergency and the driver called another bus on the route to pick us up. The bus was so crowded, we ended up standing for another hour and a half in the traffic. I was so exhausted, I was ready to drop. There is a;ways traffic going into Suji. Luckily, there was a Korean man who spoke English and explained the situation to us since we were totally clueless.

To be honest, I was ready to go into a panic; going to Korea was my first time travelling or living in a country where I knew not one shred of the language, not even how to say hello. I can say hello in Chinese, for crying out loud. Add to the fact that the streets in Seoul are even crazier than Japan's and it makes for one rather nervous traveller. People have come up to me to just say hello - they don't do that in Japan and it sort of caught me off guard. Plus, I think I stick out even more in Seoul than in Kyoto; one can chalk it up to that there are alot of tourists in Kyoto, but there are also ALOT of foriegn students, since Kyoto is like Philly - it has the highest concentration of students per square kilometer. And to top it all off, I was homesick.

For Japan.

That totally took me off guard. I got this nagging feeling during my first day in Seoul, and was totally shocked. Whou would have thought? My previous experience living abroad sort of ended in a bit of a disaster, so I wasn't really expecting much in terms of "missing the place" for Japan. But wow - I am homesick for my teeny little apartment, my bike, riding on Kyoto streets along the river and everything else in Japan. And that is just after living here for five months. I can only imagine what the feeling will be like in 13 months from now.

Oh. Holy. Crap. I ONLY have thirteen months left.