The Longest Day Ever

Here's a (long) rundown of our travel day, if you're interested! I'll post some pictures later.

It started at 2:30 a.m. We wanted to be to the airport about 4, so everyone needed to get up (rise and shine!) so we could pack up the kids’ beds and all the stuff we’d gotten out the night before that hadn’t been put away yet. The children were surprisingly chipper for that hour of the morning. We started taking all our luggage down to the hotel lobby about 3:30 a.m. The shuttle driver was down there enjoying some coffee, and trying to be clever, asked us, “Wow, what, are you moving?” Why, yes!! I guess we had a lot of stuff.

We get everyone and everything on the shuttle, and off to the airport (about 10 minutes). We got there I think right at 4, but once all our stuff was on the curb we had to figure out how to get it inside. Dan made two trips, convincing some airport employee that there really was no other way than to leave our luggage unattended for 5 minutes while he retrieved his family and the rest of the luggage. Once we got inside, it was a ZOO! At 4:15 a.m.! After I was finally in the right line (3 lines later), we started to get nervous. There were signs posted everywhere that baggage checking ended 30 minutes before the flight, and it was getting close. Meanwhile, I’m freaking out because this is just the very start of our day, and it’s already hectic and rushed and um, not going smoothly. The guy walking around helping people was not helpful, he told us if we had been in line at 4, there was no one here at 4. Thanks! But we finally got our bags checked, with two minutes to spare, got through security and walked right onto the plane. A man walked by us while we were going through security and commented that we were brave to be flying with the 3 little kids. Imagine his reaction when we told him we were flying to Korea! He said, "Wow!" and kept muttering that to himself as he was getting through security. Wow. Wow. He couldn't believe it. Wow.

We fly to Atlanta. Kids are good. Baby eats and poops through her first outfit of the day.

Once in Atlanta, we had plenty of time to get to the gate, grab something quick to eat, make a potty run, and get on the plane. Then we settle in for the 15 hour flight to Seoul. Rayna and Tessa and I sat together, and Dan and Luke were across the aisle from us. Rayna and Luke switched off every once in a while so Dan could help them get comfy and take a nap. And the rules of the plane are the same as the rules of a long car trip – kids can watch as much t.v. as they want! There was a screen in front of each seat with some on demand movies and t.v. so the kids watched some movies, some t.v. and took a couple naps a piece. Rayna had fun with her “big girl” toys, a Cinderella toy with some dresses to put on her, and Luke with his Transformer toy. We got 2 meals and sort of a snacky meal. We had lots of snacks with us, supplied generously by some great friends! We didn’t get out our dvd player the entire time because of the movies available on the plane, so it was kind of nice not having to deal with that. The flight was pretty uneventful – except for Tessa pooping through 2 more outfits (that was all I had!). It just was soooo long. It’s hard to sit for that long and entertain a baby for that long (she got fed more than usual). It gets uncomfortable, and all of us were really tired. The kids did sleep some, and Dan and I slept a little bit. By the time we landed we were pretty beat.

Unfortunately it didn’t end there… once off the plane we navigated through Incheon Airport (really nice by the way), went through immigration, got our bags (all 10 made it!), and went through customs. None of these things took a very long time, the kids just didn’t understand why we kept having to wait in line again and again and again. I thought the people were really nice – there were airport employees standing around everywhere to help and answer questions. One Korean lady on the airport train thought Tessa was really cute and asked if she could take a picture of her. J

After customs, on through the airport with our 2 carts full of stuff and Dan carrying Tessa in her carseat while trying to push one of them! At the opposite end of the airport was the place to get on the bus to go to the base… We knew that one was supposed to leave at 4 p.m. Korea time, and it was about 3:55. We got through the line for tickets and ran outside to get on the bus. We filled up the rest of the seats with the 5 of us and our bags. I had to convince Luke that this was the very last thing we’d be riding on – the very last leg of our trip, I promise! After that long plane ride getting on a bus for another hour and a half did not sound like fun…

By this time Tessa was fast asleep in her seat, and Rayna slept on Dan’s lap too. Luke stayed awake for the bus ride and we looked around at our new surroundings. It was hard to see much since on the bus we could pretty much only see out the side window and not out the front very well. But lots of high rises, bridges, some hills, and lots of Hyundais on the road, and everything pretty green.

When we finally got to the base, it was about 6 p.m. Korea time, 4 a.m. Central time – which makes our time travelling about 25 hours. Craziness. We waited for our new friend Todd to come get us and kindly shuttle our things back to our apartment, which he was able to get set up for us ahead of time with a power of attorney. I started talking to his wife by email a while back, she is a friend of a friend we have in Texas, and she and her husband have been so helpful in answering our endless questions about Korea, about living on base, and then of course with housing. Todd got the keys to our apartment, had temporary furniture delivered, and even put a few groceries in the fridge and cupboard so we’d have something to eat right away. I can’t tell you how wonderful this all was, since staying in a hotel room with 3 small children is torturous! I’ll write more about the housing situation later…

Anyway, after the bus and after dropping our stuff, we ate at the BX food court, picked up a couple essentials at the BX, got home and got the kids to bed, and it was about 9 p.m. (7 a.m. central time – 29 hours after our 2 a.m. wakeup the previous day). Bed never felt so good! Unfortunately Tessa wanted to be up at 5 something the next morning, with Rayna not far behind her. We are still adjusting to the time change – but hopefully it won’t be too much longer dealing with that. Just lots of tiredness and not being able to stay awake in the afternoon when your body thinks it’s the middle of the night.

Now to figure out what to do with the kids today in our new cozy quarters, and everything wet outside since it rained all day yesterday - the first day we were here – and Dan had to walk all over base getting stuff done. His boots were still wet this morning! He made a trip to the commissary and rode one of the base taxis back since he had so much stuff. But everything is pretty much in walking distance, so I plan to drop a few pounds getting around!

Enough for now – more to come about our adventures in Korea!