The hard part is over. After many many hours of travel, we have arrived in Korea and are enjoying some time with good friends. The trip wasn't without incident though. Here's the scoop:
The first leg of our journey was from Pittsburgh to Chicago. That wasn't too bad, only a little over an hour, and Micaiah did pretty well. A little antsy, but not fussy. She enjoyed looking out the window.
The people around us enjoyed making faces at her and seeing her smile. There was a family behind us who I could have sworn were Korean by the looks of them, so I said "Anyanghaseo," which means hello in Korean. They just stared blankly at me. After listening to them talk later on, I'm pretty sure they were Japanese. Oops.
After arriving in Chicago, we had to find the international wing of the airport which was pretty confusing in and of itself. On top of that, Micaiah blew out her diaper so Jess had to change that while I stood in line to get our tickets for the next plane ride. We had to go through security again, and they did a full body scan on me. Not only that, but they went through half of my stuff twice and it took a really long time. By the time we got to our gate, it was already boarding. We got ushered to the front of the line because we had a baby.
It's great having Micaiah because we could request a bassinet seat. We got to sit in bulkhead seats. Next to us was a Filipino-Chinese woman with a 9 month old boy.
Micaiah took a few naps for a couple hours at a time. It was nice to have the bassinet so we could have our arms free.
We really didn't get any sleep on the plane. Jess dozed off for half an hour, so I tried to snap a picture of her but the flash woke her up before it took. Lookin good, Jess! She looks in this picture like we both felt after getting off the plane.
The stewardesses loved Micaiah, this one in particular. She came to our seat every 10 minutes and just talked to Micaiah- Jess and I were pretty much chopped liver. She asked if she could walk her around and we were just fine with that.
Toward the end of the flight, it was the middle of the night in Pennsylvania time, but only early afternoon in Korea time. We wanted Micaiah to be awake, so I tried to walk her around. It is nearly impossible to keep a baby awake when they want to sleep. She won.
Before we boarded the plane, we checked our stroller at the gate. At the time, they asked if we also wanted to check one of our carry-ons at no charge. We were fine with that, so they took it. When we got off the plane, the stroller was there, but not the carry on. A guy led us to a kiosk where we had to stand in line for 30 minutes to tell them our bag was missing. We were getting pretty frustrated at this point because our friends, Howard and Terri Rich, were waiting outside to pick us up. Finally we got to see a service attendant, and they told us our bags were with all the other checked bags. Why the guy that led us to the desk didn't tell us that in the first place, I don't know.
So we went to the baggage claim, and by that time our baggage carousel wasn't listed on the boards anymore. So I had to ask someone where our baggage was. The carousel it was on had stopped moving, and some guys were taking the left over bags off of the line. We had 2 blue suitcases and 1 black suitcase, along with the blue carry on that we checked at the gate. When I got to the luggage, I saw our 2 blue suitcases, a black suitcase, and our carry on all together sitting separated from the other luggage, so I grabbed them, put them on a cart and hustled out of customs to meet our friends.
When we got back to our friends apartment, we realized that we had forgotten Micaiah's checked bag. We've never checked a bag for her before, and we were in a hurry, so it had completely slipped our minds. I called the airport and asked about the bag. They told me they had not just one of our bags there, but two. I didn't know what they were talking about, so I called Jess. She then went and looked at our bags to see if she could figure it out. Here's what happened- the black bag wasn't ours. In my rush, I didn't even get a good look at the bag. I just grabbed it because it was black and in a bunch with all of our other bags. So now some poor guy in Vietnam is without his luggage because of me. Ahh, I felt like such an idiot. We had the airport deliver our bags for a charge, and sent the other bag back with them. Finally, everything was right.
When we got back to the apartment, we went straight out again to get some Chinese food. If you've ever eaten Chinese in a country other than America, you'll see that American Chinese food is actually more like Chinese fast food. This is what I got at the restaurant. Can't remember what it's called, but it's a soup with tons of seafood in it. And yep, I ate it all up, octopus and all.
