Advertisement
Published: November 29th 2009
Bird in JFK
Poor little bird! Look at his widdle nail :(I am officially in Korea. Right. Now.
As you all may know, my flight was on Thanksgiving. I left out of JFK airport in NYC at 12:40 that afternoon. I arrived at the airport with two super heavy roll-on luggage, a duffel bag, and a backpack. Thankfully, the man who helped me with my bags was super nice and didn't weigh them. I proceeded through the metal detector without any problems, and got to my gate about two hours early.
I hung around the airport, had an iced tea, and bought an hour's worth of wireless so I could e-mail Steven and let him know that I survived the departure gate. There was this cute little bird there that I wanted to grab-- I guess living in an airport doesn't allow for the proper wear-and-tear of toenails. The poor little guy had a really long, twisted nail, and obviously wasn't getting out any time soon. 😞 Poor little guy.
I met a fellow CDL-instructor-to-be in the airport. He's a substitute teacher around the city and is hoping to get a job in a Korean school in Flushing. I also met a fellow CDL-instructor-to-be on the plane-- conveniently two
Front Door
The entrance to our Hotel Coatel Holiday Inn seats away in my row. Both of these instructors are slated to be in the Seoul area.
The flight was 14 hours and 40 minutes, and I didn't sleep for more than a 40 minute nap out of the gate. We were slated to arrive at 5:20 PM and actually ended up getting in at like 4:30-4:40 PM on black Friday. Jason and I (the instructor in my row) headed off together and found our way to customs. I got through without any problems-- my line went extremely quickly. Jason, unfortunately, got behind two men who took forEVER to declare their goods, or whatever.
Then we were off to meet Annah, a recruit I met on the Aclipse social site, at the baggage claim. Unfortunately, we didn't actually see her there! I was worried we'd leave her behind, and hoped that she'd just head out to the CAT without us. BUT we *did* get our bags-- and everything looked intact. That's right, folks, all of my luggage made it to Seoul! I probably should have taken pictures because it was truly a victorious moment, but alas, I did not.
We dragged out luggage onto luggage carts which
Hotel Room!
Cool kids get a place to remove their shoes AND a stove AND electric kettle were readily available all over the baggage claim area, and we moved out to the public transportation area. Here, after our 14 hour flight, Jason and I purchased our bus tickets for our voyage to the City Air Terminal.
Contrary to what the ChungDahm welcome packet said, we actually had to buy tickets for the 4A instead of the 3A. So if any of you guys reading this are from Aclipse, please keep that in mind! The ticket price has since gone up from 13,000 W to 14,000 W, but in the end, that's less than 12 USD.
Once boarded on the right bus (which took about 10 minutes to figure out/get to/load our luggage), we sat down, got comfortable and realized just how tired we were. As we talked about CDL training, guess who boarded the bus but none-other-than Annah! She was just as glad to see me! Apparently, when she was looking for our flight, it wasn't anywhere on the boards-- which is what happened when I looked for her flight. Anyway, we all were happy and exhausted and boarded on the bus to the City Air Terminal (CAT).
What should have taken 40-60
Beds!
We had never been so happy to see beds. Seriously. minutes ended up taking us TWO HOURS. There was traffic the entire way from Incheon to Seoul. Our bus driver was daring, but apparently, not as crazy as a few of the other teacher's driver. He turned into lanes without looking at the traffic next to him. The traffic in the other lanes would just shift into the shoulder until eventually, they had to let us go in front of them. Though I tried to fight sleep, I did manage to catch about 5 minutes of shut eye. Eventually, we made it to the City Air Terminal.
Here, we called our CDL recruiters. Annah and I both called Ben-- the entire phone conversation was about a minute long and only costed 100 W (less than 10 cents US), while Jason called Grace. They sent us a cab immediately. It only took about five minutes for the hired taxi to arrive-- it was a small, red and black SUV. We shoved our bags into the back of the van and crunched into the middle seat of the car, unsure of what to expect.
Our taxi driver was insane. Seriously. Insane. He swung the car around like some sort of Coatel Sign
Outside of the Coatel :) RC car. We recklessly cut off some truck (keep in mind, we are not even on a real road yet) and LITERALLY inched past another to get to the exit. Two taps of the horn, and the gate raised. We managed to find our way out onto a busy highway. The next ten minutes was a dizzying array of cutting people off, cussing up a storm, and cramming into places cars really shouldn't be able to fit. People didn't even seem to care as we careened our way down smaller back streets to the hotel; they barely moved out of the way of the stop-and-go vehicle. Annah peeked through her hands, Jason stared agape, and I laughed the entire trip for the absolute absurdity. Welcome to Korea, everyone.
We arrived at the hotel, called "Coatel" (hence the name of this entry). We got out of the van with four bags apiece and were met with a revolving door. I don't know if you know this, but
rolling luggage + revolving door = bad news bears . Jason struggled through the door as a nice older Korean man stopped to help him push his stuck luggage through the
Awesome Annah
My awesome new roomie is normal like I am (i.e. not a lush like some others we have met and totally concerned with passing training) glass door. I stayed with both my and some of Annah's luggage. I guess boys are stubborn. We made two trips to get our luggage safely inside.
Lo and behold, Annah and I were rooming together! At the prospect of sleep, the three of us made our way to the elevators. Once an elevator came down, Annah tossed one of her bags in and turned to grab her rolling bag... and the elevator door closed, sending the elevator car upward into the building. We tried to get it back down, but a different car came down. Thankfully, someone else came down in that elevator car, and we got the bag back! 😊 Annah and I went up in one elevator and said goodnight to Jason. We'd meet up later the next day.
After some mild struggling to get from the elevator to our door-- we collapsed into our respective beds without any serious problems. We threw our pajamas on, decided to shower in the morning, and fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.
More will be in the next installment, but I would like to take the time to say THANK GOODNESS I have such an awesome roomie. 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 18; dbt: 0.022s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
anonymous
non-member comment
She had better not replace me as best roomie ever! :)