Day by Day with Gina

Back to the Future, Part I

UPDATE FROM SOUTH KOREA
Hey, everyone! We made it safe and sound to Seoul, South Korea. It's officially our second day here, and we have already had several pleasant adventures.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2005
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
We spent the morning packing and getting our myriads of items together and making sure they would fit in our suitcases. We went to lunch at Figo for Jason's graduation party with his family, which was very enjoyable. Later that evening, Ben's parents drove us down to the airport and we made our way through check-in and security.
And so our travels began...
We waited at the gate for our first flight to take off at 9:45pm. Night flying is so cool.
Atlanta is such a pretty city at night. Well, any city is really pretty at night, no matter how ugly it is in the day. The lights are just gorgeous. And, I had the window seat. :)
We flew for a couple of hours and kept awake by reading on the plane. Once again, the night flying proved beautiful as we circled around the city of Chicago, passing the Sears Tower and John Hancock building, then descending toward the ariport. The most interesting thing about Chicago's layout (besides the tall buildings) were the perfectly straight streets with house after house in perfect squares and rectangles.
We landed in Chicago at about 11:45 (GA time). Transferring in airports is always interesting. Local time in Chicago was 10:45 pm, so there was nobody there to help us when we got off of the plane. We followed the crowd until we saw a friendly custodian that pointed us in the right direction. After asking directions a few more times, we finally found our way to the train that shuttled to different terminals. O'Hare airport is interesting. It's really spread-out, so when we went to our terminal, it was literally a mile away. It's a totally separate campus from the other terminals.

After arriving at our terminal, we went to check in and get our boarding pass. We walked up to the Asiana airlines counter, which was staffed, thankfully, and showed the nice man our tickets. A look of concern shot across his face and he called his manager over. At this moment, I am trying not to think too seriously about what may have gone wrong. He looked at us and said, "I'm sorry, the economy section of the plane was full. We had to bump you to business class." SCORE! I tried not to look too excited as I said, "That will be fine."

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2005
In transit around the world...
We waited for our plane to take off at 1:00am Chicago time, 2:00am GA time. In the waiting area at our gate, there were three kinds of people. Most of the seats were filled with trendy Korean guys and gals and their electronic gadgets. Since there was a flight to Guadalajara leaving from the gate next to ours, there was a large group of Hispanic men wearing cowboy hats. There must have been Hispanic women with them, but I didn't notice them as much. The cowboy hats were too distracting.

When they start boarding the plane, ya know how they always call the first class and business class first? Ya know how those people always make you jealous because they get to go first? Well, we were those people. Oh, yeah we were. We boarded our plane, which was two stories and gi-normous. And we, the privileged ones, got to go up to the second floor.
By my amazement of it, you can tell I had never been on first class before. It was sooooooo nice. Every aspect of economy class can be doubled to demonstrate the utter cool-ness of business/first class. Booty room- doubled. Seat reclination- doubled. Viewing choices- doubled. Service, leg room, and food quality- probably quadrupled. There were probably 30-40 people in business class, and about 5 or 6 ladies serving us. They were super nice and either were extremely excited about serving us or were really good at faking it. They wore these really cool silk apron-kimono things. I want one. They also served everything on silver trays with little doillies and tiny glasses.
Our flight took off (again, about 2am GA time), and our goal was to stay awake for about three hours more before we slept. In such comfortable seats, this was very difficult. Just when I thought I couldn't make it any longer, they served dinner and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came on. I fell asleep after the movie was over (about 5am GA time), and fought to stay asleep for the next 6-8 hours.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2005
South Korea
Almost there!
We woke up a couple of hours before our flight ended (about 1pm GA time) to eat a delicious breakfast and enjoy the descent to Incheon, South Korea. We landed in Incheon at 3pm GA time, 5am Korea time. After a frustrating hour going through customs, we picked up our baggage and found the McDonald's where we were supposed to wait for Becca. We had planned to wait an hour since she was going to ride the bus to get to us, but we were in for a surprise! About five minutes after we sat down, Becca, Micah, and Britt walked up! Britt had an unexpected day off from school, so they were able to drive the van to us and get there about the same time we were ready. We ate some KFC for breakfast and piled in the van for the 2-hour ride back to Songtan, where Britt and Becca live.
We met our nephew, Micah, in person for the first time, and he was such a trooper all day long! He was very patient and sweet...and super cute.
We arrived at Britt and Becca's apartment, which is really cozy and just the right size for them. They live above the Hospitality House, which is the location for their ministry to the military personnel on the base just down the street. We took some much-needed showers and went to Chinez2Go, "New York Style Chinese," for lunch. We visited Emart, Korea's version of Wal-Mart, came back to take a power nap, and went out to see King Kong so we could stay awake until bedtime.

King Kong was good, by the way. Special effects and action were excellent. Some parts were a bit over-the-top, we all agreed. I was about sick of watching people being chased by large, prehistoric creatures by the time the three hours were over. Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Naomi Watts, and Andy Sirkes were all great.

We got back to Britt and Becca's about 8:30pm Korea time and ate a quick dinner, then got ready for much-needed sleep.
We actually were able to sleep most of the night- about 8 or 9 hours, which was really good.
And that ends our first 48 hours of our traveling.
To be continued!

posted by Gina @ 8:26 PM