Intro: I know, I know, it’s been a long time…I’ve been ridiculously distracted (not to mention exhausted, sweaty, and busy) ever since I got here and the times I DID try to write a blog post it was just a jumble of…mess. I swear I left half my brain back in the states. I don’t know how I’ve made it this far. Isn’t there some saying about God protecting idiots?? And if not God, then at least, kind strangers. So here we are with a big’ol JUMBLED MESS of playing catch-up. Sorry, it’s the best I can do right now. ALSO: the camera has not seen the light of day since i left Florida, so prepare for crappy cell phone pictures. 

We got to Tampa Airport at 2am for a 4am flight…

Has it been a month already? Has it only been a month? It feels like I just got here…and it feels like I’ve been here forever. (Note: I started writing this after a month…it’s now been 7 weeks. This is just how it is now.)

It certainly has been one of the most…challenging, stressful, confusing times of my entire life.

Got to Dallas just as the sun was coming up. I had like a 2-hour layover here before heading to Seoul.

If you’re hoping to read about how I’m living my dream, maybe move along because this is not exactly that. My mantra has been “it will get better.” In the beginniing it was “in a month it will be better.” It’s been a month. Now I’m pinning my hopes on SOMEDAY it will get better.

Slippers on the plane! I meant to take them with me but couldn’t find them at the end of the flight, sadface.

Without going into every little detail (and believe me there are a gazillion details), I will try to just recap the highs and lows.

Leaving Katie after spending almost a month with her was hard. I know we live apart anyway, but still I know that we’re just a short flight from one another. If I HAD to get to her quickly, I could. And walking away from her and into the unknown…was much harder than our usual goodbyes.

But once I got on the plane I had the feeling that…I’d done all I could to prepare for this trip…if something was undone, oh well, it was too late now. The flight was pleasant enough. It was long – 20 hours from the time I left Katie in Florida to landing in Seoul – with one brief layover in Dallas. I’m glad I paid the extra little bit to get premium economy, it was well worth it. The seats were large and comfortable, I was almost at the front of the plane, and they served us lots of good food. It was a brief moment of being suspended in relatively comfortable limbo.

Seriously.

So the flight itself was interesting. I left Dallas at 10am local time, Tuesday, Aug 22. I arrived in Seoul at 2pm Korean time, Wednesday, Aug 23. So, I left in the morning and arrived the next day..but we had no “night time” because I was (and please don’t ask me to explain time zones or physics) I was actually traveling into the future, staying just ahead of the night the whole way!

They fed us. And fed us and fed us. This was “dinner before putting us to bed at night.”

On the flight, they simulated night by darkening the windows with this like blue vapor stuff inside the double-paned window glass, and turning out the lights. Of course, it was like 1pm MY TIME when they did that, so they were not fooling ME and I just really never slept. They kept us “in night” for oh gosh, 8-10 hours? Then started serving breakfast foods and bringing up the lights…when it was really now like noon on Wednesday, Korea time. It was a very disorienting thing. But interesting.

Breakfast.

And then we landed. And while I have watched So Many “How To Navigate Incheon Airport” YouTube videos over the past 18 months, and literally had  a page and a half of notes…it was still stressful. First, I haven’t looked up this fact to verify it but I would bet that it is The Largest Airport in the World. I think I walked a mile and a half just in the airport. Second, shockingly (#sarcasm), EVERYTHING WAS IN KOREAN. The people, the signs, all of it. I saw very little written English. So thank goodness I HAD watched those videos but they still didn’t prepare me for every contingency. Like the video that said “do the thing on the right,” but when you got to the thing on the right, the airport employee was waving everyone on, DON’T STOP HERE I imagined they were saying. So…now what?? So I essentially just followed the crowds. I got through immigration, which FELT scary but really…there was nothing scary about it.

How to Incheon Airport

I have seen this breezeway thing at Incheon Airport SO MANY TIMES as BTS members fly in and out of the country. It was hard to get a good picture cuz people were right behind me and I’d hurt my wrist getting off the plane (of course I did).

My luggage was at the FUUUURTHEST carousel. It was there by the time I got there (of course it was, it had taken me almost two hours to get there!), but if it weren’t for the help of a young Korean soldier I never would have gotten all my luggage (3 pieces – one of which was large and HEAVY + 1 tote + 1 purse) on the cart. Then I knew to follow the green arrows on the floor to Customs. Follow Follow Follow….Follow Follow Follow…then followed them through a right turn into a wide hallway with nothing except doors at the other end. So I went through the doors. And found myself outside of the “internal” part of the airport and in like the entry area with people people people food concessions currency exchanges etc. Did I miss Customs? Wasn’t I supposed to go through Customs? Am I supposed to be out here?? I tried to ask several security guards outside the doors I’d just come through, but they didn’t speak any English and all I could say was “Customs??” to which they stared blankly at me.

This was the only English I think I saw in the whole airport.

Eventually when I didn’t leave and just kept saying “Customs??” one of them went and brought back a manager (I guess) who spoke a LITTLE English and he just kept responding to my “Customs?” query with “No need, no need.” No one would let me back through the doors, so….eventually I proceeded with my journey…nervously…as I was pretty sure I was supposed to go through Customs and eventually the immigration police were going to come and drag me off to Turkish prison.

I managed to exchange $100 for Korean won at the currency exchange counter. I had to trust that she gave me the right amount of Korean money cuz what do I know?? And I managed to find the shuttle for the hotel and get on it just in time to not have to wait an hour for the next one.

Lotte Tower and World Mall are places I’ve seen a LOT on kdramas.

Throughout all this I was just DRIPPING with sweat (which pretty well sums up the last month to this day). But finally I was sitting on the air conditioned shuttle and could look outside at my first views of Korea. Oh – the whole plane ride was cloudy so I really saw nothing of the landscape til we were landing. And now it was raining. Anyway. Other than the signs being in a different language and the cars somehow all looking more modern somehow…there was not a lot of difference between here and driving on the Cross Island Parkway along…well, whatever water that is there.

There was some kind of temple through that gate but we stopped at a bad place for a picture. There are palaces and temples all over the place. It’s really cool, the traditional architecture right next to the modern buildings.

The trip from airport to hotel was 90 minutes. After about an hour we started making stops to let people off. And the stops were just like at bus stops on the street, not like we were going to actual destinations. Which was making me increasingly nervous as the hotel is at the top of a big hill…and I thought if they drop me and my 3 pieces of luggage (+ 1 tote and my purse) I will NEVER make it up that hill. So then THAT anxiety began and lasted for about 20 minutes til they drove up the big hill and left me near the doors of a hotel that did NOT have the name of my hotel on it. PANIC PANIC PANIC. The bus driver assured me (well, he nodded emphatically when I asked Vista Walkerhill Seoul?). He drove away leaving me and all my worldly possessions on the sidewalk.

PANIC PANIC PANIC.

I really had no recourse but to lug myself iand my bags inside and hope that someone could help me.

It was. Heavy. I was lucky that there was almost always someone around to help me lift it when necessary.

And once inside…the angels came to my rescue. Literally. A young woman swooped right down on me, took all my luggage out of my hands and guided me down the corridor to the CORRECT part of the hotel and to the check-in desk. Where, amazingly, my reservation actually did exist, my credit card actually WAS accepted, and two other staff took me to my beautiful room. Newsflash: Money DOES buy happiness.

The wonderful room. Why can’t I just live there???

I stayed two nights there, really never leaving the room, just enjoying the bed and the shower and tub and the room service and the view. The view of the Han River that I had only seen in pictures and videos and seems to be so much a part of Life in Seoul. It’s sort of like The Central Park of Seoul. So…I was excited to see it in person.

Room view across the river. I’d hoped for a clear night with a sunset, but it mostly rained the first few days I was there.

While still in the safety of the United States, I had all these plans – the first thing I’d do in Korea, the first place I’d eat, I was going to get my hair analyzed and cut the first week, I was going to get a facial…I was going to do ALL THE THINGS. Instead, I was just afraid. I was afraid to go out. I was afraid to get lost or stranded (a little foreshadowing there). I was AFRAID. Not of like bodily harm or afraid for my safety. Just…disoriented and so afraid to leave the safety of my little home for two days. So I didn’t go ANYWHERE. I stayed in and slept and ate room service.

And stressed about the next step when I would have to LEAVE my little safe place and figure out where I was going to live and how I was going to get around, eat, communicate with people, get to school, etc.

It.

Was.

A.

Lot.

Stay Tuned for The One Where I Find a Home in South Korea.

Note: the keywords for this period were #stressful, #panic, #anxiety, #whathaveidone.