We Made It To Korea!

Whoo-hoo! After an awesome time in Hawaii we set off to Korea on Korean Air. This was our first time flying an airplane of this size. As you can see in the photo below, the airplane has two stories. The top part was for business class and the lower was mainly economy. We were lucky enough to be upgraded to an exit row so we had quite a bit of leg room, thank goodness. Me being the nervous flyer that I am, I actually didn’t do too bad on this flight.

Korean Air is probably one of my favorite airlines after our experience with them. When we arrived on the plane we already had a blanket, pillow, eye mask, slippers, bottle of water, toothbrush and toothpaste in our seats. During our flight we were served a snack and two meals. My first meal was a Korean dish called Bibimbap. This is basically just warm rice with mixed vegetables and a type of meat. We had a yummy pepper paste we mixed in our dish, spicy but delicious. A raw or fried egg is usually on the dish as well but this one didn’t have one. 

For my second meal I had fish and potatoes, another yummy meal. This one is pretty much self explanatory. By the time our 10 hour flight landed in Seoul we were exhausted. We made our way through customs and were then greeted by our “sponsor” in Korea. He was awesome. He drove us to our hotel in Songtan (about 1.5 hours away) and provided us with groceries to help us get through the week. We pretty much went straight to bed when we got there…and then awoke at 3am like our sponsor said would happen. Oh, jet lag. 🙂

Friday we had some time to get settled in, car search, apartment search and explore our new home. The photo below is one of the shopping areas just outside of the Osan Air Base gates. They have a ton of restaurants and neat stores that I’m sure we will become very familiar with.One of our first Korean meals was Korean BBQ. We had to get some lessons on how to eat it but once we learned it was well worth it. We will definitely be stopping back by this place again.

While searching for a car we were told that Sunny Auto Sales had some options for us. We weren’t wanting to spend too much money on a vehicle since we will only be here a year and driving can be kind of crazy here. We settled for a 2001 Hyundai Grandeur. The whole process was pretty simple. We got a kick out of the sign at the store, “JUNK CAR”. Only in Korea…Because I will be mainly driving the car, Adam got this awesome scooter. ‘Merica!

Since Korea has so many people, they have to build “up”. The photo below is just a few of the many high rises throughout our area. We actually will be living in something very similar to this. I will be sure to post pics in my next blog post once we move in over the next few days. On Sunday Adam and I drove to Dongtan, Korea (about a 30 minute drive) to “practice” driving to a school I went and interviewed at today. I should know if I got the job by mid-week, fingers crossed. We decided to stop into a restaurant and grab sushi for lunch. Apparently they didn’t have sushi rolls but had sushi as in raw fish. We ordered something on the menu in Korean and got anchovies. I started to try one but gagged and had to stop. Luckily our main dish of fried fish was very tasty.

I’m hoping to get out and get more photos of the town soon once we get all settled in to our new place. We have been enjoying our time here so far (minus a panic attack or two) and can’t wait for the adventures to come. Be looking out for another blogpost by the end of the week! ~Elaine