Departure

This is my attempt to chronolog my journey here in Korea. Well here goes everything...

I started my South Korean adventure August 18th, 2010. I left my house in Springdale for the Tulsa airport where I encountered my first “Shaneluck” experience. As I visited with my parents, and my buddy Brett Arent; I headed to the security check-in where I suddenly saw tons of people shuffling my direction. The security area was being cleared by TSA, and they weren’t saying much. I only knew that I was going to be pressed for time, catching my plane. After waiting for word to get back to the security check, the checking area became flooded with people. I managed to make my flight and head to Los Angeles, California.

I arrived at LAX, and looked for my gate that apparently is TBIT; and nothing gave notion to what this acronym stood for. I look around for about 5mins, and I’m not too proud, so I asked a dude who looked legit. The man tells me it stands for Tom Bradley International Terminal. I am not familiar with this airport, but I discover that I have to go outside and find this new area. I overhear a father and son looking to take a similar bus, and follow them. I take a 10min ride to this TBIT, and am further overloaded with what to do. I see a dude in professional attire and he directs me to go upstairs to my airline/ International check in. This area was huuuuuge! I went to my airline counter, and they told me to come back in an hour (I’m wasn't to worried about time because I had to kill 5hours at this point). I walked around, and decided to get some Mcdonalds… thinking a good cheap meal is something my nerves could agree with. I headed back to my check in, and it was PACKED with people. It went fairly smooth, and I went through another security check and headed to my departure gate where I met a man named Aaron Clark who is head of a program called Asia Learn. He was fairly acquainted with most of Asia, so it was pretty cool meeting him, and learning a little bit more about Korea before I got there. He left for Thailand, and I decided to load up my Korean language disc which proved to be a worthless waste of hard drive space. I believe it was made in the 60’s and then scanned and put into PDF. I’m not exaggerating, I mean this literally.

I met a few other dudes who were in the military, and got onto my 777. That’s right, it’s not a type-o a 777!!! (huge plane). I saw a white dude near me (this is noteworthy due to the completely packed, completely Asian dominated flight). I met a guy named Chris, who happened to be from a town where 2 of my favorite bands are from (ABR/TOTA). We exchanged some info, and find out we’re both headed to the same city in Ulsan, South Korea to teach English. I should inform my audience of readers that at this point I had been going on only a few hours of sleep. I stayed awake long enough to get my meal (I opted for the Korean dish!), and I fell asleep until the next morning! That’s right; I didn’t get up and walk around to make sure I didn’t get blood clots. I fell asleep… The seat next to me was empty so I made sure to extend my body to it. It was a joyous flight. I decided to get the American breakfast after seeing the spicy Korean dish in the seats ahead of me.

I arrived in Incheon, South Korea August 20th, and learned about my new +14hour time difference. I am now in the future! Just ask me how it is. I navigated my way around the airport and waited 30mins for my baggage to arrive. Chris and I decided to stick together, and we had to travel to Seoul to catch our next flight. We were told to take the train, so we began our journey looking for this train, and being targeted by aggressive taxi drivers that we had to wave off and ignore. The train was about $2. The taxi would have been about $20, if not more. We met some other fellow teachers and our group became larger and larger. We had a pretty hilarious time getting everything figured out, but we managed. We all stuck together and made it to Seoul. At the Seoul airport we had a pretty nice worker help us check our bags, and help us to the correct departure gate. At this point we all began meeting each other, learning everyone’s brief backgrounds, and rejuvenated a little bit. Everyone from this group was headed to the same destination, and we were all working for the same place Ulsan MOE (Ulsan Ministry of Education). We flew for about 1 hour and landed in Ulsan, where we were greeted by extremely nice MOE workers holding welcome signs. I was feeling pretty good at this point, and was ready to take this journey head on. And so it began…