Welcome to THE Korea....

Thursday February 7th Seoul, South Korea (Glynis's dictation)

Been traveling now for almost 24 hours now and am feeling pretty good. I'm so excited to see Nicolette. I'm on the bus now, and must admit I was a little apprehensive about this bus ride....but it's a pretty luxurious ride. And so far everyone I have encountered has spoken English. My phone died in San Francisco, and because of a break on our plane "OVER HEATING" (surprising), we had a slight delay disembarking. --sidenote: the plane's tires overheated and three firetrucks escorted us around the airport making sure it cooled down. This took about 20 minutes, and with frequent encouragement from the captain I somehow did not lose my cool. The only worry was that time was ticking for my next flight as my layover before my flight for Seoul would be leaving in only 1 hr and 15 minutes.....tick tock -- So, it became a bit of a sprint to the International terminal in San Francisco once I was off the plane....about 1 mile to run. After checking in with my boarding pass, I tried charging my phone but it would not respond.....oh well...."Ce la vie."

Arrived in Seoul after a 12.5 hr flight (20 hrs total from NC), and got on the bus to Gangnam where Nicolette would be waiting for me. No problems getting this bus ticket, but traffic was a huge problem due to the holiday weekend which is the Lunar New Year. As I was sitting on the bus and the time was ticking, I was concerned that Nicolette would be worried where I was, and I could not call her as my phone was dead. What to do? So I looked around the bus, thought WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH , and then proceeded to ask a nice Japanese man if he could call Nicolette's phone for me so she would know I was OK  Thank goodness he spoke English and was so kind as to do this for me. Once I knew that Nicolette knew I was alright, it was more or less smooth sailing from there.


I was shortly reunited with Nic; amazing!  She asked me how I was feeling, and I said 'fine', so we went out for Korean bbq at the local joint around the corner! So much fun! We drank So-make. This is beer mixed with Korean vodka, a traditional drink that people have with their meals here. We ate kimchi and pork and yummy veggies I could not pronounce, and it was all grilled in front of me. Piping hot, just how I like it. I then got to meet Nicolette's two friends, Kyle and Trista, and we laughed for hours! It was a fantastic first night in Seoul!

February 7th, Seoul, South Korea (Nic's dictation)

I was SOOOO excited and nervous all day knowing my Mom was flying across the world. During my lunch break I was trying to google where her flight was and being on a Korean website I clearly was reading it wrong, and for a moment I thought she was stuck in San Francisco! My poor friend Kyle who was trying to change the site to English for me got the brunt of my frustration as we tried to figure out WHERE IN THE WORLD WAS GLYNIS! Luckily, we found her, finally, right over the ocean on her way to Asia. Throughout my classes I told my kids that my Mom was coming for the first time to Korea. They made her cards and in quite a few of them it said "Welcome to THE Korea." I guess this is an important place or I am a really bad English teacher. :) Nevertheless it was cute as can be, and became a joke that my Mom was coming to THE KOREA any minute now!

I left work a little early to go and meet her near a subway stop where the bus would drop her off. I was supposed to meet her in a little cafe because I was thinking originally that she would be there before me. As I walked there in the bitter negative 27 degrees Celsius weather (it was about negative 16 Fahrenheit)  with my eyes running because of the intense wind causing even my mascara to run down my face I thought, "This weather is going to make her hate Korea! I wish I was going back to NC weather instead of her coming here!"

I then waited.....and waited.....for about an hour as she did not show up in the cafe trying not to freak out and think of every possibility that could have gone wrong, as she entered a new Asian country for the first time without a tour guide. I tried to instead think of the amazing new pastry I was eating and how we could come back and eat one together another day. Soon my phone rang and it was my Mom explaining about the traffic, and all my worries went away. We were reunited soon after and I showed her a cute sign from one of my kids saying "Welcome to THE Korea" and she feeling special and excited! Dressed up like Eskimos we began dragging her suitcases to my apartment!

I felt like I was talking a mile a minute when she arrived because I had SO MUCH TO TELL HER! I felt like I was my sister....haha. We then went to go eat one of my favorite foods, Korean barbecue  and it was a very funny and entertaining evening. My friends loved her, and it seemed so natural to be together.....we could have been in NC for all I knew, minus all the Korean people around us! It was a great first night together in Seoul.