So, this is how my journey began! I got up at 4:30 in the morning and my family, including my sister, who was able to take off work, drove down to Philly together because my first flight left from there. After saying goodbye to everyone and waiting at my gate for a long time and eating a pretzel, I got on my first flight, which was to Washington Dulles. It was the tiniest airplane I have ever seen! There were only three seats in a row! I didn't like it because I could really feel every time the plane turned or wobbled. That flight was only about half an hour long. That was also the last time I slept that day.
After we landed in Dulles I had my second lunch, which was pretty horrible sushi. My layover was only about an hour and a half. I hung out near my gate and was reading. Another girl who is doing EPIK, Sonya, had messaged me on Facebook earlier when we realized we were on the same flight, and I met her at the airport. She said she recognized me because I was the only white person there. That was definitely not true! There were like 4 other white people on our flight! We talked for about 10 minutes and then our plane started boarding.
If you are ever flying to Asia you MUST fly KOREAN AIR. My flight was pretty much horrible since I couldn't sleep during any of it and I was horribly uncomfortable after the first 5 hours, but everything else was great. For example, the flight attendants:
That picture is actually misleading, because Korean Air flight attendants are not that ugly. All of my flight attendants looked like super models and were the prettiest people I have ever seen. Plus, they all spoke English and Korean and Tagalog and who knows what else and were really nice. They also have really pretty uniforms. They have really pretty hairpins, too:
This is exactly what my plane looked like:
You could watch movies and TV shows and documentaries, play video games, and shop online with the little consoles. Since I failed to sleep for even one minute on my flight, I spent a lot of time utilizing the console. I watched Date Night, which was a really horrible movie, and American Beauty, which I think made the older Korean couple next to me uncomfortable, and Wedding Dress, a horribly sad Korean movie about a mother dying of cancer whose only wish is to make a wedding dress for her little daughter. I also set the in-flight records in both Space Invaders and Tetris. I spent more time playing Tetris than I had slept the night before. By the end of my flight my eyes and head were throbbing.
I met up with Sonya and we decided to navigate Inhceon International Airport together. It was actually very easy as everything was in English in addition to Korean and Chinese and Japanese. Look how cool the airport is!!!! (Don't think we were actually in this part, oh well.)
We got our visas and passports checked and then claimed our baggage. I was worried some of my suitcases had gotten lost during my layover but they were like the first ones out! Then we went through customs, which was easy because we didn't have any firearms or illegal drugs to claim, and exchanged our money for won. EPIK recommended that we bring over $1000 USD in cash because we wouldn't be getting paid until the end of our first month so I spent my entire flight with $1200 stuck to my body in a little fanny pack thing that went under my clothes. It was not very comfortable. Korean won is really cute and the 50,000 bill has a woman on it!
We found the EPIK check-in desk which was very close by and they told us to get some food at the airport since we were late and dinner was no longer being served at Kyung Hee. We were pretty excited to buy some stuff with our pretty new money. We got sandwiches as Paris Baguette . There are Paris Baguette shops everywhere here. The sandwich was okay. I also bought a couple of things at a drugstore but I don't remember what. Water, probably, and soap, which they ended up providing us with anyway.
We signed in and waited for the next EPIK bus that was taking EPIK people to the University. There were a lot of people from California and New Zealand and Australia who were way less disgusting-looking than we were but people still talked to us anyway. I got a free cell phone because I applied through Korvia Consulting. Having a phone is nice but it's a used phone and probably from like 2002 and only came with an extra battery and not a charger so I have turned it on once since I've been here. I'll get a cool phone once my alien registration card has been approved.
Our bus came in at 7:50 and EPIK staff kindly loaded all our luggage into it. An EPIK photographer kept taking pictures and videos of us. I really hope those pictures do not end up in the final slideshow because I looked like a walking corpse. The drive to Kyung Hee University Global Campus took about an hour. We were all glued to our windows. The topogaphy of Korea is so much different than in Pennsylvania: lots of mountains and water everywhere. Plus, there are neon lights EVERYWHERE! Everything was so beautiful, and we were just driving on a highway! Plus, our driver got lost and we ended up driving along a side road that had a cell phone store with a big poster of Big Bang in the window! I took a picture for Maria. OK, I took a picture for myself.
We got to Kyung Hee around 9 PM and the first thing anyone entering the campus sees is a humongous glowing French neoclassical arch that is really big and really awesome. We drove through it and stopped outside the Multimedia Education Building, which is where the EPIK Office is. We located our luggage and picked up our name tags and orientation bags. There were some fun goodies inside like orange juice and a croissant and an EPIK alarm clock and EPIK Post-Its and EPIK towels and maps of Seoul. And, most importantly, our orientation handbooks. Sonya and I decided to room together which ended up being a good decision after we saw some of the other people that ended up here :). I took pictures of our room and will put them up once I have a card reader, along with all the other amazing pictures I have taken! We basically passed out as soon as we had showered (Best. Shower. Ever.) and woke up well rested for our first day of orientation!
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