I'm here! I am currently sitting in a dorm room in Jeonju University waiting for my medical check. This is day two of orientation, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with packing and the trip over.
Packing actually went pretty well. I had a baggage allowance of two 50 pound bags to check, one carry-on, and one personal item. I rolled all my shirts and folded my pants together, put my PS3 in my carry-on, my laptop in my laptop shoulder bag, and all my climbing gear in my backpacking pack. Once I got everything in my luggage, I ended up with a carry-on that weighs 27 pounds, two bags that are 48 and 45 pounds, and my laptop bag. The great news is they never looked at my carry-on, so I got all my luggage for free. Excellent! The one issue at check-in was some bad news. My flight was delayed up to an hour due to weather in San Francisco. My layover was two hours though, so that should be fine.
So after saying goodbye to everyone at the airport I went through security. That was painless, but I did have to take my PS3 out of my carry-on as if it was a laptop. I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. I went down to my gate. There, I checked in and found out it was possibly a longer delay but they weren't sure. So I waited around. They finally boarded us and we were on track to land with about an hour between flights. Shouldn't be a huge problem, just have to hurry. Then, once we're all on the plane, they tell us it will be another hour. Uh-oh.
We finally take off and have an uneventful flight. We get into San Francisco at 2:10, five minutes after the Singapore Airlines flight was scheduled to depart. At this point I'm resigned to the fact I will be staying the night in Cali, and I'm not the only one. There were several other people scheduled for the same flight. We figured we'd go down to the gate anyway on the off chance the plane was delayed and we could still make it. Naturally the departure gate wasn't on the boards or on our tickets. So we made our way to the International Terminal. On the way, I hear an amazing thing: they call me on the intercom and tell me to get to a gate. Does this mean the plane is still here?? I start jogging.
I get to the gate and it's great. There are a ton of people in line to get on a plane, and there's a jet sitting outside. I check in and get a boarding pass. We barely made the flight, but we did all get on. That's the good news. The bad news is our luggage did not have time to make the transfer.
The flight to Korea took roughly 11 hours. It was actually very nice. I had a window seat and was next to a kid about 7 years old. He was very quiet the whole trip and just watched tv or played games. His mom was in the isle seat and she didn't speak English. I spent the trip watching movies from the on-demand system. It had quite an extensive collection, including Iron Man 2. I had also called ahead and ordered the vegetarian menu, which turned out to be the same as the Indian menu. They brought out my food (along with the other veggies) before everyone else. All in all it was a good flight.
Once we landed there was no trouble getting through customs or anything. As expected my bags didn't arrive. I met up with a few other EPIK teachers and we filled out paperwork to get our bags delivered once they arrived on the next flight from San Francisco. I changed money at the airport, with the standard rate at about 1180 and the booth buying dollars at 1131. Then I went out of the secure area and met up with Gregg! We found the EPIK booth and I got a number for check-in, then Gregg and I walked around.
I ended up finally getting on a bus at about 9pm. The bus ride was pretty laid back. It was dark so really hard to see anything that was outside, so most of us slept. I met some cool people though. We finally got to the dorm at about 1230 am. I met my roommate and after figuring out how to get the AC working went right to sleep.
That was the end of day one.
No comments:
Post a Comment