Arrival in Seoul!

We're here! We're staying in a (very) cozy little cabin that's about 7 minutes driving from the center of action in Gangneung. We passed by the well-lit Heineken House on our drive here, which we'll be hitting up tonight, hopefully in the company of some Dutch medal winners!

My flight over on Asiana was pretty comfortable for economy. The cabin was toasty warm, which I appreciated. I chose both meals Korean, so I had some bimbibap with my very own personal tube of gochujang to put as much hot pepper paste as I wanted! My "breakfast" was some kind of chicken stir fry. It wouldn't make the top 5 foreign breakfasts for me, but it was edible. Everyone took off with bags on their laps (uh, is that safe???), and the lines for the bathroom were 25 minutes long the whole flight. These people love to brush their teeth and do a beauty routine while 10 people wait on them.

The Incheon airport was super modern and we were able to collect all three of our group easily at a Jamba Juice, which was not far from a Shake Shack. (Which country are we in again?) The fact that the Korean alphabet looks like characters made it hard to find the bullet train (KTX) for me at first, so I don't think this will be the first time I have trouble with the Korean alphabet on this trip! I didn't, however, have difficulty finding my sister, who was in a USA hat made by my mom and screamed JESSICA!!!!! at me across an airport.

We had a nice Korean dinner at the airport. Lara had spicy cold noodle, Lesley had a beef broth with noodles, and I had a crab thick noodle dish. I couldn't eat it all because we had metal chopsticks and I got worn out trying to collect my food onto them and ate my sister's food instead. #family

The bullet train had these really cool seats that flipped around so we could sit facing each other. We met some Americans on the train, including someone working for NBC. The train wasn't exactly fast, though, or at least not by European standards. And we were all pretty tired. By the time we finally passed the Jinbu station all decked out in Olympic lights, we were excited, but ready for bed.

Gangneung station is COOL. They have videoscreens, places to charge your phones, and most important, snacks. I see this place being very useful to me in the next week. It's also where we met out shuttle driver/host, Josh. We stood next to him for 5 minutes before we approached him. We thought he would know us because we had USA flags all over us, but he thought we would be British because of my phone number! Our hotel was about 15 minutes away, and we passed a pretty happening area with some Korean barbecues and the HEINEKEN House! We've heard this is the place to be right now, so I look forward to checking it out tonight!

This morning is our first event, Alpine Combined!! Updates later on our FIRST day of Olympic action at Pyeonchang 2018!!!