Journey to Korea - Day 1 & 2??

Is it sad that I'm excited to finally start posting about my Korea trip?  Maybe not, but it's probably sad that it took me two days to upload all my pictures to Shutterfly and Facebook.  Of course, I've taken over 1,000 pictures and my mother has taken over 550 so that could explain it.  Be prepared because I journaled almost every detail of this trip.  In the end, my journal was over half-way filled.  Put that together with the 1,000 picture I took and you could get bored pretty quickly.  If you do get bored, just skim it and skip to the food section that I will put at near the bottom of each post. :)

My sister, Gina, and her family arrived at my house around 5:30 p.m.  My niece had gotten her driver's permit that day so she drove the officer and my brother-in-law to the Olive Garden to pick up dinner for everyone.  She did great.

My mom, Kathryn, picked up my other sister, Mistie, and came over to my house around 9:30 p.m.  We did a last minute check on what we had packed and we ready to go about 11 p.m.

We were all very excited to be on this journey together.  We stopped by our local 7-11 for some Big Gulps and we were on our way to Dallas.

We arrived at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport around 2:30 a.m.  We had the usual potty stops (even with no kids present) and the "Are we there yet?" questions.  Mistie and I took the car to park in long term parking.  My mom and Gina stayed with the luggage. 

Mistie made me realize I was going to have to repack my suitcases.  I think this is the only time I've flown on an airplane besides my honeymoon almost 13 years ago.  A lot has changed since then.  We had taken lotions as part of gifts for the international students we would be meeting.  I didn't realize I could only have one quart size Ziplock filled with liquid items.  I shuffled all my stuff around.  This would be the third time I repacked my bags in three days.  We laughed because we had all purchased new underwear.  No one wanted the customs people to be pulling out old underwear if they had to go through our suitcases.

At 4:30 a.m., we checked in for our flight.  All our luggage met the weight requirements.  There was only one hiccup while checking in.  We had to give the United airline lady all our passports.  She looked at them all and said, "Treasure XXXX, your passport is invalid!"  My heart stopped.  NOOOOOOOO!!!  What in the world could be wrong.  I just got it the passport. Then she said, "You  need to sign your passport." and handed me a pen.  My mom and Mistie had to sign their too.  I'm pretty sure there's another way to tell someone they need to sign their passport without giving them a heart attack.  Maybe this was just her 4:30 a.m. humor.  

We boarded our flight to San Francisco around 5:45 a.m.  It was almost a four hour flight.  There was a man seated between my mom and I, but he was nice enough to switch with me so he could have an aisle seat.  We got to know some of the other passengers. One girl was headed to see her boyfriend in Tokyo, Japan.  He was in the air force and she hadn't seen in five months. Another lady was headed to Vietnam to bury her grandfather.  

While we were on our flight to San Francisco, I dosed off.  I remember a flight attendant saying they were going to bring the food cart around.  If we were hungry, we could purchase various food items.  When he came to our aisle, I told him I would like to purchase a ham sandwich.  I don't even know why.  I was out of it.  He took my credit card (they don't take cash) and swiped it in his handy dandy credit card machine.  Then he did it again.  Then he did it again.  Then he handed it back to me and said, "Your credit card is expired."  WHAT?  That's my back up money.  What do you mean expired?  Sure enough it had expired in March 2011.  Nice.  No problem though, my mom and Mistie told me they had me covered.  They really had no idea what this would mean two days later.

I've only been on one airplane in the last 13 years.  Turbulence is to be expected.  I understand this.  Bumps here and there don't really make me uncomfortable.  However....  it did make me uncomfortable when the pilot came onto the loudspeaker and said:

"Please fasten your seatbelts!"

Two seconds later, "Please fasten your seatblets!" 

All the while bumping is bumpier and two seconds later, "Flight attendants please take a seat!"

Two seconds later, "Please make sure your small children are strapped in tightly!"

Obviously nothing came of it, but it was a nice re-introduction to flying.  I did feel a little queasy on the flight, but nothing big.  They played the movie The Vow (actually on two different flights) and I never saw the end of it because I was asleep.

We arrived in San Francisco and found ate some amazing breakfast burritos in the airport.  Our flight for Seoul, Korea was scheduled to leave at 10:59 a.m.  There were mostly Koreans on this flight.  It was interesting to be in the majority instead of the minority. I didn't understand 98% of what people were saying.  It's a little unsettling at first, but I got used to it.  The flight was 5,644 miles.  It was a 12 hour flight.  All four of us were seated together in the middle row, one row behind a the television screen.   Between each movie or television show they would show us a screen to let us know how far we had traveled and how far we had to go.

On this flight, I wore a motion sickness bracelet (really it's a band) around my wrist.  It's just a knit band with a knob that pushes down between two tendons on my inner wrist.  My friend, Jill, told me about it.  She's been a world traveler so I took her advice.  It worked wonderfully for me and my sister, Gina.  Although I felt my stomach flutter when the plane was going through turbulence, I never felt nausea.  Gina wore it in the subway, the buses and in the taxis too.  I highly recommend it - even if you don't think motion sickness will bother you it's a good thing to have just in case.  

The flight was long to say the least. They served us lunch, beef bulgogi, a light snack, and then dinner, hot turkey sandwich.  They showed us four movies (all movies currently in theaters) and six hours of television.  The rows in the coach class are so close together.  I have short legs and this was uncomfortable to even me.  We would get up and walk around.  There were people hanging out by the bathroom.  Once when I went back there, there were 4-5 older Korean men and women all laughing looking out the window.  They all had drinks in their hands, which explains the giggling. 

We arrived in Korea at 4 p.m. Friday afternoon (Korea time) which was 2 a.m. Friday morning (Oklahoma time).  The plane was an hour late.  One of the strangest things I experienced is when we got off the plane and made our way to immigration, no one talked.  More than 100 people rode up the escalator, and no one talked.  There was no overhead elevator music playing.  It was quiet and hot.  Maybe we were all tired and moving like zombies.  It was weird.  At immigration, they took our pictures and fingerprints.  I thought they would go through all our bags at customs, but a dog just sniffed our luggage and we were shuffled along.  Over to the side, there were a couple of people whose bags were open and being rifled through.  

Daniel, one of my mom's international students, met us when we were finished with all that.  He waited around for us even though we were an hour late.  He was going to escort us to our hotel and eat dinner with us.  We rode the subway about 45 minutes to Seoul.  We got our first look at Korean on the subway.

There were large apartment buildings everywhere.  I mean everywhere!  This is our very first look at Seoul when we stepped out of the subway tunnel.

Our hotel was just one block from the subway tunnel.  Which was good because we were carrying a lot of luggage. 

When we walked up to our hotel, we noticed some buses.  Parked on the sidewalk.  They really meant front door service.  This seems unusual, but the longer we stayed in Seoul we realize there's not a lot of parking available so people just park up on the sidewalk.

We were happy to see some familiar things.  TGI Friday's was right outside the subway tunnel.  Papa John's, Fed Ex and a 7-11 were right next door to our hotel.  Sometimes it's nice to see a familiar thing when everything else is unfamiliar.  Mistie said, "This must be what it feels like for a person who cannot read." 

At our hotel, we also met us with another of my mom's friends, Jung Hwa and her son, Minsu.  We checked into the hotel, put our luggage in our room and left to find something to eat. 

Here comes one of my favorite sections:  food

Jung Hwa, Minsu, Daniel, my mom, Gina, Mistie and I went to a local bbq place.  We told Jung Hwa what we wanted to eat (beef bulgogi - this is just marinated beef) and she ordered and interpreted for us. 

Most Korean meals come with a lot of sides.  They are different sides depending on the restaurant you are dining in.  There's usually always kimchi (spicy pickled cabbage).  I had decided that while I am on this trip I will be open to trying new things.  I do not like hot/spicy foods or seafood.  These would be my only limitations.  My mom said, "Just don't eat anything red.  Red usually means hot."  This is very good advice.  One of the reasons why Daniel was such a great host is because he would taste almost everything before we did and tell us what he thought of it.  He would also tell us the names, although I don't remember most of them because it was stuff I'd never heard of.  So you will get my names.  So here are some sides we had with our meal:

This was pumpkin.  I am not sure what was drizzled over it, but it's topped with almonds.  It was okay, not bad, but not amazing either.

Did not even try this salad because you can see the little specks of red.  Daniel said it was hot.  However, Gina who loves spicy food, said it was great.

This looks like a soup, but it wasn't.  The onions were a side.  The broth was used to dip your beef into.  I just put the onions in it because what isn't made better by adding onions?  It was very good.

 This was a Korean pancake.  It was cold.  I wasn't a fan of this either, but more because it was cold.  If it had been hot or warm, I might have liked it more.

Steamed rice topped with dried seaweed. I moved some of the seaweed over.  I like it, but that was a lot.  We were surprised that rice didn't automatically come with every meal.  You had to order it.  Also, rice always came in a small side bowl.

This was one of our favorite things at this restaurant.  The best way to describe it was an egg souffle.  We added it to our rice.  It was very yummy!

Another salad.  This had a yellow dressing on it.  It was good. 

Since this was a bbq place, they brought the meat our raw.  They brought us beef and pork.  You had to cook it on a little bbq grill in the middle of the table.  Daniel cooked the meat for Mistie and me.  Jung Hwa cooked for Minsu, my mom and Gina.   

 

It was all very yummy.  It could be that our last two meals were airplane food, but I don't think so. 

Mistie, Gina and I ordered Sprites.  We had read online to not drink the water because you could get sick.  I saved my first Korean Sprite bottle to bring back home.  However, when I left it out on the dresser in my hotel room, the maid threw it away thinking it was trash.  :(

At the very end of the meal, they brought us these little  yogurt drinks.  I felt like a giant drinking them.  It was very tropical tasting and good.  I ended up drinking these a lot on the last half of my trip for breakfast.

After dinner, we pretty much went back to our hotel room and went to bed.  We were all tired to say the least.  My mom and I were in one room and Mistie and Gina were in another.  When I got into my luggage to get ready for bed, I noticed one of the locks from my luggage was gone.  I guess TSA went through one of my checked bags, which is to be expected.  However, I was bummed because they didn't put the lock back on my suitcase.  That lock cost me $7 and I didn't have a coupon for it. 

I think it was 9:50 p.m (7:30 a.m. Oklahoma time) when we went to sleep.  The beds were hard.  It felt like I was sleeping on a boxspring.  Also there were only feather pillows.  I do not like sleeping on feather pillows.  I was awoken sometime around 1 a.m. because my mom couldn't sleep.  She turned on the bedside lamp to read for about an hour and then went back to bed.  It was a rough first night's sleep.  I woke up every hour or so.  However, I never had a hard time going back to sleep.  I woke up at 6:30 a.m. the next morning.
 
That's the wrap up for the flight to Korea and our first night.  There are 11 more days of our trip.  :)