From Ann Arbor to Seoul

I've never been one to blog or follow other people's blogs, but if anything warrants a blog it's a year of teaching English abroad. So, here it goes....

On February 22, 2010 I embarked on my journey to Seoul via the Detroit Metro and Chicago O'Hare Airports. Naturally, it snowed 6 inches the day of my scheduled flight. I spent the night before frantically calling the airlines to figure out what would happen if one or both of my flights was delayed and/or canceled. Fortunately, my flight was at 8 PM, so the roads were all cleaned up by the time I headed out. I spent the morning helping my dad shovel and spent the rest of the day relaxing in anticipation. After scarfing down some monster cookies (which I thought would be my last for a while, but my mom smuggled some into my luggage) and taking one last look at home, we headed to the airport. We arrived about 3 hours before take off, so my parents and I had a chance to snap some last pictures together before I walked through security.

Upon getting through security, I went right to the gate even though it was so early that there were two flights scheduled to depart from that gate before mine. When I'm traveling I'm always extremely paranoid that something could go wrong, so it was very comforting just to sit at the gate for two hours and watch TV shows on my laptop. I did grab a sandwich because I had no clue when the flight from Chicago to Seoul would serve its meals. There were some delays at the airport, but the flights to Chicago were so empty that they bumped me up to the flight before mine which actually left 15 minutes ahead of schedule. I read the entire flight and it was pretty uneventful, which was a good thing.

O'Hare airport was busy, but once I got to the international terminal it was empty with the exception of passengers taking the same flight as me. I had a long layover because the flight didn't leave Chicago until 1 AM. I spent the time talking with another English teacher and an American woman heading over to marry a Korean man. The American fiancee warned me about eating dog and freshly killed octopus that wiggles in your mouth as you eat it, but I have since forgotten what both were called. Hopefully neither will wind up unexpectedly on my plate during my stay.

When you fly to Korea, the first meal is served as soon as the plane stabilizes. You get to choose whether you want a Korean dish or a Western dish and our choices were bi bim bop (rice, veggies, meat, spicy sauce and egg) or beef. I went with the Korean food and this was a good choice. It was by far the freshest, most delicious meal I've ever had on an airplane, and, like every Korean meal, it came with several side dishes (kimchi, cold dark noodles in sesame oil, and a fishy broth that was the only thing I was less than crazy about). The man sitting next to me had the Western meal and the portion of beef was small and the veggies were overcooked. I flew Asiana Airways, and the plane had several cool features. Each passenger has their own screen on the seat in front of them which can be used to watch movies, old TV shows, play games, or track the flight. I watched Where the Wild Things Are while eating my meal and dozed off while the aircraft was over northwestern Manitoba (interesting fact: flights from Chicago to Korea fly up through Alaska and Russia then south again). Upon waking up, I glanced at the monitor to see where we were, expecting to be somewhere over Alaska. To my surprise, we were above Russia heading south. There were only about 4 hours left on the flight; I had managed to sleep through 8 of the 14 hours. After listening to some podcasts and starting another movie, breakfast was served. Once again, I went with the Korean dish (in Korea breakfast food is no different than lunch or dinner) and was impressed.

I was the last of the three teachers from GDA to arrive in Korea, so after collecting my bags and exchanging a few bucks, we headed for Seoul (the airport is in Incheon, a suburb). There are five new teachers at the school and three that are staying on. The two I arrived with were both girls from California. The other two new ones are a couple from Vancouver. One might think they would have given us some time to clean up and change after being on a plane for 14 hours, but that was not the case. We were dropped off at the school to observe classes. The journey begins...