Korea!

2 weeks ago

My bags were packed:

Vincent's room was cleaned:

The guest room (my room) was cleaned:

And I boarded a flight to Incheon, South Korea.  It's hard to believe that it's already been that long but so much has happened since then!  When I arrived at the airport after an almost 15 hour flight I had 7 hours to wait until the buses would start taking EPIK teachers to Jeonju University in Jeonju.  Thankfully, the Korean airport (unlike the Atlanta airport) has free wifi and I was able to tell my parents about my amazing 15 hour flight to Korea.  It was definitely amazing.  I love Korean Air and their service.  From the moment I walked on the plane as part of the last flight leaving Atlanta's awesome and incredible new international terminal that night, I knew my flight would be good.  I walked onto friendly service and when I got to my flight my seat had a pillow, slippers, toothbrush and toothpaste, and a water bottle.  Seats near me had a blanket and so I asked the fight attendant for one and promptly got a blanket that is warm and that covers me completely.  Then I waited for the flight to take off and for the rest of the plane to board.  What made my flight even more amazing though was that as well pulled away from the gate I realized that the 2 seats beside me were not occupied!  Yes, for my 15 hour flight I had row entirely to myself :)  My mom laughed at me as I carefully choose my seat for this flight.  I have a lot of criteria after my several years of flying.  It must be a window seat that is not an exit row or row before an exit row.  It also cannot be a bulkhead seat or the seat before a bulkhead seat.  I also always try to book a seat where the middle seat is currently not filled in the hopes that it doesn't fill.  This time I choose the window seat on the empty row instead of the window seat with just the middle seat empty.  It was definitely a good choice.  Not only was the rest of my row empty but the row in front of me had 1 seat empty as did the one across from me.  The 2 seats behind me were also emptied but were used frequently by a family during the flight.  The row across from that row also only had 1 person in it.  So lots of empty seats on my section of the flight.  It was wonderful.

During the flight, I stretched out and slept in all 3 seats.  I also enjoyed the peanuts, juice, 2 meals, and snack that was served by Korean Air.  Towards the end of the flight I was feeling very dehydrated so I ask for more water. The flight attendants gave me 2 water bottles at a time.  They were each 0.5L.  I ended up drinking 5 water bottles plus some cups of water on this flight.  I calculated that I drank at least 2L of water!  I rarely drink that much in a day!  But I felt rested and semi-hydrated by the time I landed at 4 in the morning Korean time.

After talking with my parents, I met other EPIK teachers and got money exchanged.  After a lot of waiting we finally were on buses to Jeonju.  The university was very nice.  I have some pictures of my room but didn't get a picture of the lock on the door.  It's an electronic key pad.  All the rooms were set to the same number for our arrival and then we were able to set it to whatever number we wanted to after that.  It was wonderful!  No keys to keep up with and never getting locked out!  Oh and in this bathroom there was a separate area for the shower but the toilet and all still got wet when showering.

We were also given some goodies when we arrived.  The brown towel is a Jeonju University towel.  We had 4 of them each but we didn't get to keep them.  The wrapped packaged is the EPIK towel that is more to US standards that we got to keep.  The T-shirt was used on our field trip and we also got to keep it, the bag, and the coffee mug from Jeonju University.  

My arrival took some time but it was relaxing and well organized!  I'm very excited to be here!