Inbound to Inchon

Korea welcomes before you land. Before you leave the ground, in fact. We learned from our last trip how a national (if privately owned) airline impresses a sense of hospitality on visitors. National pride expressed with grace. This time is no different.

Leg room. Comfort essentials like slippers, toothbrush and famously soft merino blankets. Real meals (even in economy). Clean bathrooms 15 hours into a 16 hour flight. That new-plane smell.

Inbound to Inchon airport we are all excited, without the nerves that usually accompany long-haul travel. Even US security was painless. Thanks to TSA Precheck we avoid the full body scan and keep our shoes on.

But what calms our nerves the most is knowing a bit about what awaits us. Kindness of strangers. Tolerance of our ignorances. Being welcomed, despite our cultural failings. And, after two diligent years of lessons, a translator in Izzy.

But for now we are still grinding out miles, 38,000 feet above the Bering Sea. Seated adjacent the busy galley where flight attendants tend to the comforts of a wide-bodied jet full of needs, a curtain meant to shield the area from seated passengers is left open by a steady flow of passers-through seeking the bathroom (and snacks). A thousand times the attendants pull that current closed, but seemingly never in irritation. Sixteen hours of hospitality flows patiently as we stretch a never-ending day beyond the horizon