"We welcome you aboard our Air Canada flight..." blah blah blah. Same old, same old  I thought. Heard it a 100 times.. Now what WOULD be interesting would be something like - Oh my! The wings of the plane are breaking down! I'm really too evil.

I buckled my seatbelt and waited patiently for the flight to take off.. Now that I was leaving the city I grew up in, and the fact that my mom cried her eyes out at the airport, I was feeling kinda sad leaving it all behind. Strangely, I didnt feel at all nervous about moving countries.. Just dont think about it, and you'll do fine I thought to myself. Thinking about things makes you nervous. And I dont need to be nervous right now.  I need to keep my mind blank. I felt the plane begin to move. I smiled and looked out the window. Wooo, bye bye Canada!

I sat back and got comfortable in my seat... 17 hour flight... no joke.. loads of jetlag... I switched on the TV monitor thingy in front of me.. Watched a movie about some crazy Canadian lady blackmailing her American employee into marrying her, to stop herself from being deported.. Oh yeah, thats how we Canadians roll! The word deported made me think of something... If I did something kinda stupid... would it be easy for Koreans to deport me back? I wondered... Well, my friends kept on joking about how I'll be back in a week... Korea wont be able to tolerate me! My best friend, an Indian girl called Sneha, was pretty shocked when I told her I was leaving.. Been with her since elementary school, after all..

After a while, the airhostess came with some food for the passengers. Thank God for that! I was pretty hungry... These peple take too long to serve food I swear. It'd been like, two hours into the flight or something...

The airhostess came over and smiled at me. "Would you like vegetarian or non vegetarian, miss?"

"Non-vegetarian please." I smiled at her. She smiled back nicely and gave me my tray of food. Oh my! Chicken, my favourite!

I ate my food, fell right asleep, and by the time I woke up we had landed.. The airhostess was anouncing something about being careful while taking out overhead baggage.. tell me something I dont know..

30 minutes later I had picked up my luggage, and was pushing it through the exit on a trolley. Somebody tapped my shoulder. I turned around to see a sweet looking Korean girl bowing to me. I bowed back and smiled. I still kind of found bowing odd, though I'd been practicing for a couple of weeks now. Bow down, get up, bow down get up.

"You are Park ______, yes?" she asked in English.

"In the flesh." I smiled.

"Well, annyeong! I'm Jung Nicole, you're roommate at the SNU dorm. We talked via email remember?"

"Oh Yeah! O wow, annyeong! I didnt know you were coming to the airport to pick me up! I thought the student coordinator was coming!" I said.

"Yeh, well he was busy, so I offered to pick you up." she laughed. "Actually he's just really lazy.. he ."

I laughed. "Men!"

"Follow me.." She lead me to a car and helped me put my bags in. I sat in the passenger seat and she took to the steering wheel. I do hope she drives well..

"So..You drive?" I asked.

"Yeh. Dont you?" she said, taking the car out of parking.

"Nope. Never learnt!" I shrugged.

"Why not?"

"Didnt need to! My mom had a driver back home."

"Nice! Well maybe I'll teach you sometime." She said. We were driving on the main road now. She's a good driver... Doesnt LOOK like she's going to kill me..

I stared out the window. Wow, Seoul seemed so different! Everything was written in Hangul.. I could read everything, albeit slowly.. But atleast I could read it! And I could understand the words if I thought enough. Aah, those Korean classes are paying off now!

"Okay SO!" Nicole chirped "This is the plan. Lets go home, get you settled. Unless there's something you have to do on the way or something. Do you know there's a  party tonight for us new students?"

"Nobody told me there was a party!" I frowned. I just realised - I brought no party clothes, can you believe it? I had filled my bags with so many casual clothes and winter clothes.. I'd just told my party wear to  go to hell. Uh oh.

"Me has no party clothes!" I frowned.

"Hah!" Nicole laughed. "You know what that means?"

"Shopping?" I gave her a broad smile.

"Oh yeh sister!" Nicole said, nodding her like a gangster.

ONEW

"Thats it, I'm taking you shopping!" That stylist Noona was hovering right in front of my face. To a third person, It would almost looks like she's hitting on me, I thought. "Eww" I said out loud.  Oops.

"Did you just say "eww" to my clothing?" She asked threateningly. "You yourself have NO taste in cloth-"

"Oh, N-n-no Noona. I love your clothes! I love everything you wear!"

" Oh really? What am I wearing right now then?" she asked pointing at her shirt.

Oh thats an easy one... I thought."You're wearing a shirt."

She raised an eyebrow at me. What? Wasnt that the right answer?.. "Whats on the shirt?" she asked me.

"Spots?"

"They're called POLKA DOTS!" she cried exhasperated with me.

Why does all this make a difference to ME? I thought, yawning... "Okay. Sure. I dont know polka spots. Big deal!"

"Polka dots."

"Whatever." I was in no mood for shopping today.. I was just really cranky since morning.

"You need a makeover Onew!" I pouted. Wow, this is just plain insulting.

"Why?" I whined.

"You look... like a boy! Too.. sweet!"

"And thats a bad thing?"

"We're not GOING for Sweet this time.. We're going for the edgy, Bad boy!" she said clicking her tongue. She waved her arms in frustration and pulled me by the arm. She looked me up and down.

...I decided to have some sympathy for her..

"Fine. It better be worth it!" I muttered like a kid. I hate shopping!

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