WCC Assembly - Sunday, October 27

Arrived at the Tokyo Airport

I arrived safe and sound at my hotel in Busan late on Saturday evening after an incredibly long day of traveling. Never before have I done international travel so this was a very new experience. I am very grateful that airports in Canada are like airports in Tokyo and Busan and I'm even more grateful for English being spoken in the airport and on flights.

The shuttle bus trip from the Busan airport to my hotel was significantly longer then I expected it to be. Although it did provide some time for me to get to know the delegate from the Episcopal church in Hawaii who sat next to me. Jasmine, also a young person (any one under the age of 30 is classified as a "young person" at the WCC Assembly), is also attending her first Assembly and we both were experiencing many of the same feelings of anxiety, fear, nervousness and excitement. It was helpful to connect over these feelings in such a mutual way.

After checking into my hotel room, catching up over tea with my friend Nick (here also as a Canadian Anglican delegate), I unpacked a few items took a long awaited shower (why do long travel days always make you feel like "ick"!?), post on Facebook and message my mom so everyone knew I was alive and well and then I crawled into bed looking forward to a long nights sleep.

Buildings along the oceanside 

I woke up at 1:45 more confused that I've ever been before. I was fully convinced that it was 1:45pm but couldn't understand how that could be, but it couldn't be 1:45am because I felt like I had been asleep for much longer. Checking the time back home just confused me even more! It wasn't until I noticed that it was still dark out that I was relieved to realize that it was indeed 1:45am and I still had hours of sleep time left! And so I slept until 9:30am (after waking up briefly at 6am and 7am).

I spent the morning and early afternoon with Nick and a few of the people he's already met and worked with here at the Assembly. I discovered that I'm really not an adventurous food person (it probably didn't help that I had no idea what time or day it was, where I was or what meal it should be time for!), I'll figure out a way to work around that! We all sat at the beach and enjoyed conversation, the sunshine and shared moments of laughter and stories. My, I love the ocean view and smell!

Rocks and ocean waves!

Mid-afternoon I was ready for bed but determined not to sleep until bedtime... so Jasmine and I met up and did some Busan city wandering. We had lots of fun, us two nervous directionless young females in a large foreign city! The ocean became our direction point... if we could get to the water we could get to our hotel (so we told ourselves). We had three goals: find a grocery store so that fruit and a few other breakfast/snack type stuff could exist in our hotel (really, who has time to find breakfast when you have to be on a shuttle bus between 7:30 and 8:00am in order to get to your meeting?!); find dinner; and see the city without getting too lost! We managed all three... in the midst of accomplishing those goals we saw street-side insect or small ocean creature roasting; walked down market ways filled with fish, eels and more fish for purchase; encountered a massive crab and explored different stores.

Massive crab... yes, it was in a tank!

I think I can say that by the time we got back to the hotel we both felt very empowered in our ability to spend some time in the city without getting too lost or frightened and without knowing the area or the language! And now we even have breakfast food and have enjoyed a very non-Korean-traditional meal (we just wanted to eat something we knew would not be spicy or filled with fish) consisting of pizza and salad at pizza hut.... and the fact that the menu came to us in english was a very welcomed surprise at this point in the evening!

City street market

Tomorrow the Youth Pre-Assembly begins and now that it's coming on 10pm I'm looking forward to a shower and bed!