Disclaimer: despite what I'm about to tell you, I have to admit that although traveling to Korea seemed rough, all in all considering our circumstances, things went pretty smoothly.
Let me tell you though, moving across the globe is no walk in the park! This is a summary of what happened the day we moved our lives to Korea.
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| Squished in the back of the car on our way to Las Vegas |
2. We arrived at the airport around 7:30 Vegas time and our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:15. This gave us plenty of time to check in, go through security, and get to our gate. We had no problem with with any of these things which made me feel at ease. Since we had planned ahead to get there early, and since things went so smoothly at the Las Vegas airport, we had plenty of time to kill until our flight.
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| Bored in the airport |
4. We run all the way to the end of the airport (because of course our gate is the farthest one away) and sit down just in time for them to call our row to start boarding. We get to our seats and people continue to file in. It is just Trevor and I in the row of 3 and I start to get excited that nobody is coming to sit by us. They start making announcements that we are about to depart and I rejoice in putting our extra pillows and blankets as well as a jacket on the seat next to me, symbolically claiming the empty seat.
There is an Indian family in the row next to ours containing a mom, dad, toddler, and baby. I personally think they are crazy taking such young kids on one of the longest flights. Anywho, for the first part of the flight I snuggle up with Trevor and we both start a movie. Shortly after, the first meal is brought out and we finish that and then finish our movies. By this time, I'm ready to stretch out and lay my head on Trevor's lap. The very moment I start to do so, the mother of the Indian family sits her daughter down in the seat next to me, removing the extra pillows and such from the seat. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (http://nooooooooooooooo.com/).
They then proceed to hand her a tablet that has all sorts of kid games that of course make every annoying noise you can think of (full brightness and full volume too). Trevor was mad at me for not guarding our precious seat. By this time, my legs were already getting quite restless and that laying down on Trevor's lap idea made me loathe the family across from us for bringing this upon me. I mean really, that flight wasn't very full and Trevor and I were one of the only people who had 2 out of the 3 seats taken. Why not put her in any of the seats that had only 1 other person in the row???? I guess I'll take it as a compliment that we look like the nicest/most tolerant people on the plane but it wasn't good enough of a compliment to have to sit there for another few hours. Luckily, the baby they had laid in the seat previously occupied by the toddler woke up and they moved the toddler back after which I quickly very prominently re-claimed our extra seat.
5. The flight to Seoul from San Francisco is about 12 hours. This seemed to me an eternity and I got extremely sore despite my efforts to move around and shift positions frequently. I'm not sure how everyone else managed to stay in the same spot for so long! Magically, however, we finally make it to Seoul (even ahead of schedule if you can believe that). After the flight we have to go through customs and although I thought I never wanted to sit ever again, that quickly changed to never wanting to stand ever again. Going through customs took FOREVER! There was also some confusion after that as to which carousel our luggage would be on. We finally find it and proceed to the next step in our journey.
6. From the airport, we have to take a subway to the train station. This takes about an hour and causes a bit of a hassle considering the large amount of baggage we had to haul around. We both had 2 large check bags at almost 50 lbs a piece plus a carry on bag as well as a personal item. Keep in mind that we stuffed as much in all of these bags as possible since we were moving our whole lives here.
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| Crazy Korean man "helping" us with luggage |
So, after we finally get to where we need to be in the train station, Trevor (bless his soul) hits up the McDonalds (bless their souls) to get me a hot fudge sundae (bless it's soul!). He is gone but 3-5 minutes. Meanwhile, this little Korean man about 50-60 years old comes over with a dolly and starts putting our luggage on. I don't know what to do or say and I'm trying to stop him and he keeps repeating "I help, I help". I'm trying to tell him my husband is coming back, pointing to my wedding ring. He persists in saying "I help, it's ok". So then I try to help him get the rest of the luggage on since there's obviously no stopping him but he just shoo's me away and won't let me help either. Trevor finally gets back holding an ice cream which looks like the finest manna from Heaven I've ever seen. He has a look on his face that says "what in the world did you do while I was gone?!?" and he starts speaking to this man in Korean. The man continues to try and use broken English even though Trevor is speaking perfect Korean to him and ties our luggage down and starts hauling it away. I don't understand anything that's happening or anything Trevor has been saying to this man but he is a man on a mission and there is no stopping him. I've heard of the helping nature of many Korean people but I thought this guy was definitely going above and beyond. He takes us down to the train platforms and takes us to where he says the our car is going to end up. He explains he will pack our luggage on while we find a place to sit. I'm still skeptical of the whole ordeal and for the next half hour, my nerves are about to burst. Turns out the guy had us at the wrong platform so I had to run ahead while Trevor said he would get our luggage.
It was a mad house when the train arrived and everyone tries to cram in all at once so they aren't one of the ones who have to stand up. I get one of the last seats and not wanting to give it up and not knowing where Trevor is, I just sit there knowing he'll know better how to get to Ulsan than I would so at least I got on the train and he can figure it out if he didn't make it. I know it seems selfish but it was complete chaos this whole ordeal with the crazy man packing up our luggage. After the train had been going for a few minutes, I'm still in stress mode wondering where Trevor is and not knowing what to do. I can't call/text him because we can't use our phones here. He finally finds me and relief fills my soul. Turns out that the little Korean man was pushing people around with our luggage trying to get it on the train and then he's saying to Trevor "Hey you! You sit here! You sit here!" providing a seat for him while others have to stand. He then of course says "you give me money give money" so Trevor does just to get rid of this man who had embarrassed him in front of everybody. The train ride took about 3 hours and we were finally in Ulsan!
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| Suuuuuuuper tired |
8. The final step was to get to our apartment. The taxi drivers didn't want to deal with us and all our luggage all in one taxi (even though I think we could have fit it all) so we ended up taking 2 separate taxis which made me nervous in case my taxi driver took me somewhere different for some reason. Let me just tell you things didn't get much better because they drive like maniacs over here and I was pretty sure I was going to die in a car accident. We finally make it to the "foreigners compound" which is where our apartment is located. The taxi drivers have some difficulty finding our specific building but we finally figure it out. A worker from the compound was there to explain everything to us and make sure we got situated for the night (mind you, it's around 2 am now) and Trevor and I explore our new home before finally getting to bed.
Trevor's work had asked him if he could come in to work the next morning to get him settled in and introduced to everybody so instead of being able to rest, we got to get up early the next morning. I slept hardly any that night because the bed is extremely hard and the pillows were like giant rocks. To top it off, I'm convinced that our comforter is made out of magma. It seems like a regular comforter but once you get under it, it turns to 6 million degrees.
We wanted to start getting on schedule according to Korean time and ended up making it to about 7:30 pm until we went back to bed. I was so tired it was unbelievable but we finally got a full night's rest and I'm doing much better now. We've already done some exploring and picked up some groceries but I'll save those details for a later post.
All in all, our tale of going from St. George took about 28 hours and became a nightmare because of about 250 lbs of additional weight to worry about.
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| Most of our luggage |
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