July 19, 2012
I arrived in Korea at about 5pm local time (Korea is currently of EST by 13 hours). I woke up at 5am to get ready and do the last bit of packing. I slept on and off and may have gotten 5 hours of sleep if I'm lucky.
Everything was fine in Tampa and had a nice easy flight to Atlanta. I have said it many times, but the Atlanta airport sucks. Anyway, the layover was only 2 hours and went by quickly. The flight to Seoul was on Korean Air and the gigantic airplane was packed to capacity. I had an aisle seat, and was not able to change it because of the full house. The good thing was I was seated next to a couple on their way to Thailand. They flew internationally quite a bit and were fun to talk to and helped me understand the routine on the plane. Korean Air is a great company. I will fly them anytime. And the Korean flight attendants were gorgeous ;-)
The flight ended up being about 14 hours in the air. I was not able to sleep at all. I tried a bunch of times but just wasn't comfortable in my seat enough to drift off. So I watched a lot of movies (all for free). I think I watched 2 Korean movies, 2 Chinese movies, The Matrix (god that movie is awful; I can't believe I liked this when it came out), and about an hour of another movie. The food was quite good on the flight. We had 2 full meals over the whole time, with plenty of drinks and a single hot towel service. I had a Korean meal and a pasta dish and both were quite good.
The landing was fine in Seoul, but we had to wait 15 minutes before we could traverse the runways with planes coming and going before we got to the terminal. The representative from my school (Korea International School, or KIS) was not waiting at my gate. I stood around feeling stupid for 5 minutes and then started walking the airport looking for someone with a KIS sign at the other arrival points. I was dead tired and hauling 150 lbs of crap in my 2 suitcases and 2 carryons. I was at Gate A and walked the entire length of the international section to Gate F with no luck. So, I grabbed a vitamin water and headed all the way back to Gate A. I still didn't see anyone with a sign when I got back there, but was finally approached by the guys from KIS after I stood there for a minute. Then I found out that we were waiting for a family to arrive that would be travelling with us. So I got sit around and do nothing for another 45 minutes.
The family were nice. They are a couple from Monterrey with a couple of kids (1 year and almost 5 years I think). The ride on the KIS bus was another hour to get to my actual apartment. That was after I crammed my stuff and the dozen or so boxes of stuff from the family onto the small bus. SO by the time I got my stuff to my apartment and got settled and oriented it was about 7:15. I took a shower and ate some of the food that had been left as my welcome gift. I was tired as hell but a little wired but I finally went to bed at 9pm.
