The End of the Journey - Day 12

Day 12 is Monday, June 4.  It is our last morning in Korea.  Mistie and I woke up around 6:45 a.m. and got ready.   Around 8 a.m., we walked to Dunkin Donuts with my mom and Gina for breakfast.  I had a couple of munchkins, 1/2 a bagel sandwich and got another iced caramel latte.  My mom told me she slept great all night.

Dunkin Donuts had some cute donuts.  The donuts below in pink box were smaller than the size of your palm.  If I thought I would get those back without getting smashed, I would have purchased them.  My kids would have loved donuts from Korea.   

It was nice to eat somewhere familiar for our last breakfast.  No rice.

We did not have to check out of our hotel until 12 p.m. so we walked around for a while.  We decided to go to Lotte Mart.  My mom hadn't been yet.  I purchased some pink rain boots with frogs for my daughter.  I think everyone purchased a couple of small things. We were trying to get rid of our wons.

This is a pharmacy.  It was nothing like CVS or Walgreens.  I wanted to go into it, but I didn't have my coupon book with me.  :)

 

Gunsan is the fifth largest city in Korea.  I thought it would be much smaller.  There were still a lot of tall buildings and large crosswalks.  Not nearly as many people as there were in Seoul.

After shopping, we went back to our hotel to check out.  While Mistie and I were in the lobby waiting and man said, "I just saw you at Lotte Mart!!!" He rode the shuttle with us to the airport. 

When we got to the Seoul airport, we were on the hunt for the Harley Davidson shop. I don't think any of us had purchased much for our husbands.  Mistie's husband and Gina's husband own street bikes, so we all wanted to get a Korea Harley Davidson shirt for our husbands.  Gina finally found the shop.  Their t-shirts were expensive, but we were all happy to finally have something besides toothpicks to give to our husbands.

We had to wait a while to check in.  When it was time, there was some nervousness about the weight of our luggage (and when I saw "our" I mean Gina's luggage).  It seemed to be twice her weight.   Mistie's suitcase was fine.  Gina checked her suitcase and found out it was 14 lbs. over the limit.  She took some stuff out and put some in my mom's suitcase.  She put the rest of her stuff into an extra backpack.  My luggage and my mom's were under the weight requirement.

When I got up to the check-in counter, the nice United lady told me I would have to my passport stamped at the immigration office.  She kept my boarding pass while I went to the immigration office to get it stamped.  It was no problem, but just one more thing you have to do when you lose your passport.  Wear it as a necklace when you travel people!!!

 After we check-in, we had time to eat lunch.  There was a restaurant  called Global Chow Buffet in the airport.  Hopefully everyone would find something they liked at the buffet.  I was fascinated by the napkins, so I took a picture of them.  There's nothing really fascinating about them except they were so small.  Everything was small.  The bowls rice.  The drinking glasses.  We are used to Sonic Rt. 44 drinks in America.  The glasses at Global Chow Buffet were juice size.  Three drinks and you needed to refill your glass.  The napkins were so small that you could probably only wipe your mouth twice before you'd need another one.

The buffet was amazing!  They had many toppings for your steamed rice.

 

Several different types of salads.

  

Spring rolls - our favorite at our table.

 

Sushi.  My mom was the only one who tried it.   She will try anything.  She said it was okay.

 

 

All the fixins for noodle soup.  I thought it would taste like the kind of noodle soup we our first night in Gunsan.  It didn't have as much flavor, but it was good.

One of my favorites, besides the spring rolls was the zucchini.  It was cooked with a little bit of sesame oil.  Delicious.  I tried a new fruit too.  When I had gone through the buffet, I had seen the fruit in a bowl.  In the picture below, it's round reddish hairy looking thing at the top of my plate.  I had wondered what it was, but was too much of chicken to pick it up.  When my mom had gotten her sushi, she brought one back on her plate.  She tried it first.  It totally grossed me out just looking at it.  She said it was citrus-y. 

I thought, "Okay, it can't be that bad."  I broke it open and juices spilled onto my plate.  Gag.  It looked like an eyeball.  It felt like an eyeball. I almost couldn't do it just because of that. 

 

I broke open the white "fruit" and there was a seed/pit inside. I ate the fruit and it wasn't bad.  It tasted a lot like an orange.  Our waitress told us the fruit was a rambutan.  I have never seen anything like it in America. 

We finished our lunch and shopped a little bit more in the airport.  Not at the all the stores we saw though.  Gina went into Tiffanys, but we didn't go into any of the others.

While we were shopping, a parade came through the airport.  There were beautifully dressed men and women.  I thought maybe it was a wedding.  Leaving the airport the day before we saw many cars decorated with paper flowers.  Daniel had told us for people who had just gotten married.  We asked a worker what it was the parade was for.  She told it was the King's Parade.  They do it twice a day in the airport and we were very lucky to get to see it.  Aren't they beautiful?

We got on our last subway to get to the our gate.  I don't think Gina was too sad it was our last ride. 

 

We went through security.  When I put my backpack on the belt and walked through, they pulled my backpack to the side.  A TSA lady opened the backpack, got my cosmetic travel bag out, and pulled out some small foldable scissors.  She knew exactly what she was looking for.  My mouth dropped open.  I had forgotten to put them in my checked luggage.  I had brought them to make the gift bags for all the students we were meeting.  I had just put them in my travel bag without even thinking.  They told me I wasn't allowed to have them on the plane and confiscated them.  I know - it doesn't seem like a big deal.  However, they weren't my scissors.  They belong to the officer.  He got them when he was 17 years old when he went to boot camp.  He's kept them for that long.  In fact, I'm not really even allowed to have them or use them.  He's afraid I'll lose or break them.  I couldn't believe I had gotten them taken away.  I was actually a little more nervous to tell him I had lost then than to tell him about my passport. 

We tried to spend the last of our wons.  I kept a few wons as "souvenirs".  Mistie had purchased a bottled water and Vitamin water for the plane ride.  However, when we went though the line to board the plane there was a second baggage check.  They took her drinks away.  Not a big deal, it's not like it was a pair sentimental foldable scissors that are over 20 years old.

We were all very excited because we were sitting in row 49 just below the television screens.  There was not a row in front of us so we had extra leg room. This made a huge difference in our comfort on the flight home.  Plus, the flight home was only nine and a half hours long as opposed to the 12 hour flight to Korea.  

Between all the movies and television shows, a screen would pop up that would tell us how far we had traveled, the temperature, how high we were, and how much further we had to go.  It was pretty neat to see the progress.  The dotted line depicted how far we had to go.

We watched Journey 2:  Journey to Mystery Island, The Office, There's a Rhino in my House, This Means War, One for the Money, and Adele at the Prince Albert Hall.

At the beginning of the movies, Gina turned to me and told me she had a problem with her earphones. She couldn't hear the video.  They weren't plugged in.  I think my mom did that on the flight over.  Maybe they are actually blood-related.

For lunch we had our choice of beef bulgogi or chicken and noodles.  I choose the bulgogi.  My mom actually got her choice this time. 

This flight home is a piece of cake.  I didn't sleep at all because I was trying to reset my internal clock.  It's very strange to fly from Dallas, Texas to Seoul, Korea, traveling for 24 hours without it ever being nighttime.  It did make it a little easier to not sleep on the flight home.  We traveled over 4,900 miles on the way to San Francisco and arrived at 11 a.m. (Monday morning) California time. 

When we arrived in San Francisco, my mom went to meet Angela, the other girl who was adopted the same time as Gina and me.  Angela lives in San Francisco so my mom was excited to get to visit her.  Our flight was scheduled to leave at 2 p.m. for Dallas.  However, it had been raining all day in San Francisco and all the flights starting at 6:30 a.m. were delayed because of it.  We were delayed two hours and left at 4 p.m.  Those two hour seemed longer than the nine and half hours flight to San Francisco.  I think the jet lag was already catching up to us.

Just before we were going to board the plane I called Andy.  I told him we were rain delayed.  He said, "Do you want me to tell you a surprise?"  I said, "Is there a  new motorcycle in the garage?!"  He laughed and said, "There is a new motorcycle sitting in the garage!!!"  I knew he had been looking but I didn't know he found one and had purchased it.  As he laughed, I blurted out, "Oh well then this is perfect time to tell you I lost your army scissors!!!"  He immediately groaned, "OHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!  You should have folded them up!"  "I did, and they still took them!", I replied.  He was not mad at me, but it bothered him more that I lost his scissors than my passport.

Gina and my mom were in one row.  Gina was by the window.  Mistie and I were in the middle row.  Gina was trying to get some sleep, but her window shade (which pulled downward) kept falling.  She had to stuff paper into the shade to keep it from falling.  It worked about 3/4 of the time.  

We arrived in Dallas, Texas around 10 p.m.  We were all exhausted!!  Somehow, Mistie still look cute after all that traveling. 

We piled all our junk into my mom's van and headed to Oklahoma.  We dropped Gina off around 1:30 a.m. about 45 minutes from her house.  Glenn and her two kids picked her up.  My mom and Mistie dropped me off at 2:30 a.m. My mom took Mistie home and then made it home a little after 3 a.m.

When I got home, the officer woke up to helped me get all my stuff in.  He told me the kids wanted to be woken up when I got home no matter the time.  My son requested to be sprayed with water to help him get up.  My daughter requested to be woken up with kisses.  I obliged them both.  

They woke up and I gave them their presents.  My son opened his wooden samurai sword and loved it.  My daughter loved her tae kwon do socks and rain boots.  I told them a little bit about my trip and we had to make them go back to bed at 3:45 a.m.  They were very excited I was home.  The officer and I stayed up until 5 a.m. talking.  It was good to be home.  There's no place like home (even if the officer woke me up at 9 a.m. the next morning to run errands all morning with the family.)

I had to take a nap from 1-5:30 p.m.  It took me at least a week and half to get over the jet lag.  I had no trouble adjusting in Korea, but back home.  I went to sleep every night and slept all night.  I woke up pretty easily - well as easily as I ever did, but I had to take a nap every afternoon.  I'm sure my mom had another great night sleep.  :)

Journey to Korea - Day 11

Wow.  It's almost been a month since I last blogged.  My sister, Gina has been asking me when I am going to finish.  I guess after I completed the orphanage post, I lost a little steam.   Back on track now though.

Day 11 is Sunday, June 3.  Gina had woken up at 4:30 a.m because she's crazy like that.  She took her shower, got ready and was reading her email by 6:30 a.m.  I woke up when she left the room.  I got up and took a quick shower.  I didn't want to flood the bathroom on the last day.  I packed my stuff and left to check my email around 7:40 a.m.  Mistie came down to breakfast around 8 a.m.

Breakfast wasn't fantastic the last day.  There were no green leafy veggies.  I just ate toast, rice, pears, a few sad french fries, and some bacon.  I did; however, drink maybe two - or three - of the little yogurt drinks.

After breakfast, we finished up with the last minute packing.  Mistie and I went to the GS25 to purchase some Cokes.  When we came back to the hotel, the hotel man waved me over.  He told me I had a phone call.  Strange.  I picked up the phone and heard my brother-in-law, Glenn, say "Hello?"  It was Gina's husband.  I guess when Glenn called for Gina, the hotel man told him she left.  When I walked in, he thought I was Gina.  I guess we Asians look all alike.  I told the hotel man he had the wrong person and to transfer the call up to our room, but I guess he couldn't do that.  He told me to tell Glenn to call back in five minutes.

We left around 9 a.m. My mom and Gina took one taxi back to Illmagwon Orphange.  My mom wanted to give them some other things.  Mistie and I wanted to take a taxi to the police station.  We asked the hotel man to tell the taxi driver we wanted to go to the police station.  The hotel man laughed. I wonder what he thought.

Even though the police station is not the one I was left at, it was the only one in Gunsan so I wanted a picture on the steps.  The taxi driver just parked quickly by the curb.  We got out and took a few pictures and hopped back into the taxi. 

On the way to the train station, I saw these two little boys riding their bicycles waiting to cross the street.  I was struck by how young they were.  There were not parents around. 

 

We arrived at the Gunsan Station about five minutes before my sister and mom.n  We had about a 40 minute wait until our train departed.  We partook in a little bit of Korean television game shows.  We never did figure out what the objective was for the game show.  There was a lot of being splashed with big, blue bowls of water.

I loved all the flowers that were everywhere in Korea.

My mom insisted I go see/take a picture of the squatter potty.  They had regular toilets but I suppose they wanted you to have options.  I did not use it.

  

With about 10 minutes left, we went outside to the platform to wait for the train.  We were taking first class back to Incheon.

 

First class meant red seat and more leg room, not that it mattered to me.  My feet still didn't touch the floor.  I'm sure it's helpful to people who are taller than 5 ft. 3 in.  

 

After being in Korea for 10 days, we are finally getting the hang of giving the "peace" sign in our pictures. 

 

I kept seeing passengers come back with food and drinks.  I wanted to find out where they were getting it.  I walked back out of our car to the next car.  It had this sign on the door.  "Free Space:  Enjoy! Delicious time!"  I love their descriptions.

And this is delicious time......

Just to the left of the food counter, there were arcade games.  I had not idea what any of the food was.  They would microwave food for you, but I didn't know what any of it was except the Pringles, so I didn't purchase anything.

The train ride isn't bad.  It's a 3 1/2 hour train ride with stops a long the way.  However, it went relatively quickly.  We saw many of the same beautiful countryside.  This time I saw several people out working in the rice fields.  I wondered what they did.  Do they work it all by hand?  I never saw any machinery.  You know they are hard workers. 

 

I can't remember where I saw this.  Mistie took this picture.  I am pretty sure it was at the Yongsun Station.  It says "We Trust You.  (Only paid customers can cross this line)".  It was on the floor right before you enter the platform area.  I wonder how this would fly in New York.

  

We arrived at the Yongsun Station and met Daniel.  He was going to escort us to the airport, where we would take a shuttle to our hotel by the airport.  As we were walking through the airport, we saw an ice skating rink.  There were little kids ice skating with little walkers.  Loved it.

We took the subway for an hour to the airport. Then we got into a shuttle to the Hotel Sky.  This hotel had a completely different look than the other two we had stayed at.  Mistie and I shared a room and mom and Gina were in the other room.  This is what our bathroom looked like.  My mom's bathroom was exactly like this but in green. 

We dropped off our luggage and asked the hotel staff for a recommendation for a restaurant.  We walked to the restaurant.

This food was so good.  Gina ordered bimbimbap.  Noodles with veggies and topped with a fried egg. 

We had some great sides.  My favorite was the zucchini in sesame oil.  Daniel told us the brown jello substance we had seen at the orphanage was acorn jelly.  I tried it.  It didn't really taste like anything.  It was just gelatinous.  

The rest of us ordered a beef bulgogi hot pot.  It had clear noodles, onions, long, skinny mushrooms and beef.  This was Mistie's favorite food of the trip.  I loved the bulgogi too.  I was surprised I like the long, skinny white mushrooms.  I am not a mushroom person, but it's more about the texture of the mushrooms than the taste.

Mistie tried her hand at using chopsticks.  She did pretty good.  I never mastered it.

It's been almost two months since we've been back and I miss this food!

 

It was good to eat with Daniel one last time.  I love this picture of us.  We are actually all smiling - big - even my mom.  Love it.  Great memories.

As we walked out of the restaurant we noticed this completely random brown recliner set just inside the door.  I have no idea why it was there.  Maybe it's a smoking room. 

After dinner, it has dawned on us that we have not eaten kimbobs once.  We look for a place that sells kimbobs.  Daniel find a restaurant that sells them.  We are all very excited!  There was a lady that just made made-to-order kimbobs.  They were $1.50 each.  

 

My mom and I purchase some kimbobs.  We will eat them for a bedtime snack and for breakfast the next morning. :)

We walk around a little bit more.  It always feels good to walk off the meal.

  

We found a grocery store.  We wanted to get some snacks and spend some of our last wons.  I loved all the noodles they had.

 

I have no idea what this is.  I don't know if it is a vegetable or fruit, but I thought it looked cool!  I also took a picture of the mushrooms I ate at dinner.

However, my favorite was the huge green onions.  Actually they were probably leeks.  Don't care, they were huge and I got goosebumps just looking at them.  If I could have purchased them, and gotten them through customs I would have.

While we were shopping, we kept hearing someone yelling over the loud speaker.  It sounded like an auction.  I found out he was just trying to sell meat.  They really work it in the meat department.  I purchased some cup of ice for my coke.  It was .50.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by Dunkin Donuts.  I got an iced caramel latte.  Mistie got an apple coco coolatta.  We made plans to come back and eat breakfast Dunkin Donuts on our last morning in Korea.  We said good-bye to Daniel.  He made so much of our trip easy and comfortable.  Won't ever forget him.

We went back to our hotel.  Mistie and I watched the rest of Armageddon and fell asleep pretty quickly.