Getting to Korea
Saying 'Good Bye' to my family was the hardest leg of the trip. After being "that bawling girl" in the security line and the security workers being nice enough to give me just enough shit to remind me that I was only going to be gone for one year, we boarded our plane from Minneapolis.
One uneventful flight to O'Hare and a nice woman that tried (unsecussfully) to get our overweight carry on comped from the airline and we were on our Boeing 777 destined for Korea.
Let's just say, the excitement wore off about an hour into the flight. (Especially when your flight buddy is sleeping mouth open the entire flight... I wish I would have taken a picture!)
The nice thing about the flight to Seoul, any white person was pretty much going there to be a teacher. I think they even sectioned out the back 1/3 of the plane for all of us white people! We met a lot of nice people taking on the same adventure as us, which was reassuring.
On the flight we were served two decent meals. I, of course, had the Western meals (steak and then chicken), I thought of them more as my "last meals." Scott, of course, had the Asian meals! Bimbim Bop (which is a spice rice with veggies) and then........ OCTOPUS as his second meal. I was very glad I opted for the chicken = D
Four in-flight movies (all of which have not come out in the the US yet, celebrating the small things), and an infinite amount of attempted naps and watching the distance, altitude and time tracker to near insanity and we were in Seoul!
We sat ahead of a guy from Michigan named Marshall, going to be a teacher as well. Together we lead each other astray as we made it through immigration, baggage and customs (in less than 30 mins!!).
We were met by our shuttler, Mr. Joe. He hurriedly drove us through downtown Seoul to the bus depot (nearly didn't make it on time), bought our tickets, put our luggage under the bus and told us, "Geoje, 2 stop." A five hour bus ride and the second stop later, we were in Geoje (Ko-Jay).
We were picked up by our recruiter, Thomas, from the bus terminal at 11pm (we had been up for 26ish hours) and taken directly to our academy to met our director. THANK GOODNESS I brushed my teeth once at O'Hare and once on the plane!! The meeting was brief, Mr. Gwak showed us our rooms and offered to take us out for lunch the following day (Sunday).
FINALLY, we got to our apartment around midnight. We showered, brushed our teeth and climbed into our rock solid bed and slept clear until 7am....
I will post my pictures in my next couple of blogs. Scott and I have been sharing an SD card so we need to split up the pictures.
I want to thank everyone that came to my going away part and everyone that has given me support through this process. There is no way that I would be sitting here on a Sunday afternoon typing this blog if it wasn't for all of you. You mean the world to me and I hope that you are making your own great memories to share with me when I get home!!
Love,
-C
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