South Korea is a long way away

I figure that my brother is probably just about starting to regret his idea to go to Korea about now. He left NW Arkansas at 7:30 this morning (after getting to the airport at 5:30 and being up all night because he was so excited). He had a 5 hour layover in Minneapolis and then went from there to Tokyo (who knew they flew direct from Minneapolis to Tokyo???) and then from Tokyo to Pusan. So he was going to leave Minneapolis at about 1:30 or so, I would estimate, it's 12 hours to Tokyo from there so that makes it 1:30 AM now, and then 4 more hours to Pusan. So he should get to Pusan at about 5:30 AM our time. My brother seems to think that he'll be able to sleep on the plane, even though he's got about 4 inches and a few pounds on me and I feel like a sardine in those tin cans. I didn't sleep a wink when my wife and I flew to Tokyo so I wouldn't imagine he will. But maybe. I hope he does. I'm excited to hear what he has to say about the trip and the city.

For some reason his departure is having more of an effect on me than I expected it to. It's kind of like I'm in a glass case of emotion. We aren't like some of those super close brothers, but we get along fine. We just have way different interests in our lives so it's hard to have things to hang out and do. My buddy at work is always hanging out with his brother, and I'm not sure if that's because they are interested in the same things or just because they are brothers (they do have the same interests mostly) About the only things we have in common are our interest in all things food and our relative girth because of this love of food. He likes sports, I can take them or leave them. He's more like my dad, I'm more like my mom. It doesn't help things that we basically haven't lived within 7 hours of each other for going on 10 years now. That's a lot of time to develop other interests and find less and less to have in common. For some reason the idea of not seeing him for 2 years is really weighing on me. I guess because I just figured he was always going to be around. You kind of take it for granted.

Oh well, enough whining. The Stuart Smalley hour is over. I hope he makes it safely and isn't too shocked by the size of Pusan (6M or so) compared to the largest city he has ever lived in before (20K or so).

FGLB