Travel Day

What an unbelievable roller coster ride! My fiancée Matt and  I started our journey by picking up my  VISA from Korean Consulate literally 2 hours before our flight departed I'm Chicago.  Why the timing was so tight is another blog story that I really want to procrastinate telling..... it sucked. We are from Louisville, Ky, but we flew out of Chicago, IL to San Francisco, then straight to Soul South Korea. We had an overnight layover in CA, which left us  with a very big decision; Do we splurge on a hotel, pr camp out in the air port? Matt, genius that he is, books a hotel for a great deal (117$) for our last night in America. Looking back, THANK GOD he did. That has been my best night sleep so far. 

At this point we are already feeling jet lag and we haven't even boarded for 12 hour flight to South Korea. Boarding however went well despite the feeling, 'oh sh** are we really dong this??' moments. Before we boarded we decided to go ahead and change our currency over. This was a good move because it was one less thing we had to worry about in Korean airport. No surprise, the flight to Korea was long and threatened my sanity hourly. We were exhausted, and nerve's kept appetites low. We were both experiencing moments of excitement and sheer terror. 

When we arrived at the airport, still exhausted, we had to go through immigration (wow, I'm the immigrant now), baggage claim (thank you Korea for making luggage carts free!), and customs (we were waved right on through). Employees had badges that said "English" on them, which was most helpful when searching for assistance. We easily found everything we needed and everyone was so nice and helpful. From here we purchased bus tickets to our new home in Gyeongju. 

Of corse, our bus was 45 minutes early and my boss who was scheduled to pick us up was not there yet. We were standing there with a truck load of suit cases, pitch black, and had no idea on earth where we were. Matt was freaking out, and I was too darn tired to care about much at this point. We stood there maybe 10 minutes before a van speeding out of the darkness rushed up to our side. Out jumped 4 Koreans with big smiles and warm welcomes. Thank You God. They loaded all our stuff, like a bat out of hell, drove us to our new apartment. 

Matt and I requested a one bedroom (to Koreans this is a two room) apartment. Since we asked for more space, the place was not fully furnished. When we saw how nice it was, we didn't care. It's is a great location near food, markets, coffee shops, gym, and more. The 4 people lugging our crap up to the second floor were my boss, two supervisors, and a co teacher. They showed us how all the apartment controls worked, which I just pretended to understand since all my brain cells were currently sleeping. Much to Matt and I's chagrin, they said, 'Let's walk to the Market and get you some food'. While this was very nice and thoughtful, I would have rather dug my grave and fell in. Instead, I dug deep into those Kentucky roots and said 'sure' with a big smile. 

Korean hospitality is a lot like Southern hospitality. They will go all out to make you feel welcome and have all you need to get started. We had our first culture 'WHAT' moment there in the Market. It seems toilet paper is used as all forms of tissue paper. Yep, no paper towels, napkins, kleenex, etc. They use toilet paper for EVERYTHING. Anyway, back to the day that never ends..... So, we go to check  out, which went well considering  we had our Korean saviors there to supervise. We hauled our truck load of toilet paper and food to the apartment and packed it away. Finally, I repeat, FINALLY, we were alone and in our new place. Did I mention earlier that unfurnished means... no bed? Well apparently the living dead can pass out on anything cause that's what we did.