So on Friday morning we were on the bus and ready to go at 5am. Surprisingly, everyone was on time for this deadline. We arrived at the airport where we were supposed to check ourselves in, but there were issues with that, and they made a whole separate partition to sign in the group of 35. I just happened to be the first in line, so I went up there when they were ready. She said that somehow we were in groups, by alphabetical order, so for the first time, the end of the alphabet got to be first! Me, Zury, Jacqueline, Ezra, and James. R, S, S, V, W (not in that order). It's a good thing we got to the airport REALLY early, cause there would have been a lot of panic otherwise. Our flight didn't leave until 9am.
Actually, even our flight while everyone was on it, was a bit delayed by some storms in Cleveland. We got to San Francisco about a half hour late, and had to run to catch our flight to Korea which was set to leave in 40 minutes. Everyone made it on ok, but even that one was a little bit delayed. A delayed cross-country plane is no fun, a delayed cross-Pacific plane.... 12 hours in the air.... lets just say we were all really happy to arrive in Incheon. I think a slept a total of two hours somewhere along the whole flight. When we arrived, they all checked our temperature to make sure that we weren't bringing Swine Flu in. It was this thermometor that they put against our neck and it electronically read our temperature. I never saw that kind before.
Our in-country advisors came to meet us, and we got on the bus to go to Kyunghee University. The bus ride was a lot faster than I expected, especially since there was evening traffic and rain. Oh yeah, did I mention we came just in time for monsoon season? It should last til about mid-July, but I expected this since I was here two summers ago. But anyways, the bus ride was only about 1 hour and 15 mins, I think? After that, half of us went to go put our luggage away and go eat dinner, and the other half unpacked and just crashed. I decided I was in no position to go out because I was so tired at this point.
I got my stuff unpacked and called my family to let them know that I was still okay. After that, I tried to put my surge protector into the wall, and forgot that if it has 3 prongs, when I press the on switch, bad things happen. Needless to say, our power went out. Jacqueline (who is my roommate!) was in the shower, and I went down to the bottom floor to get the security guard to help us. I brought Meredith along, thinking our combined Korean would help us explain the situation. It didn't because she didn't say two words, and I had to do all of the talking. Everyone stared at her hoping she would be of help because she looked Korean, but that was clearly not the case. I went into the convenience store on the first floor of the dorm, and tried to find someone who could translate the word "electricity" for me because I forgot it. I eventually found two girls who had a dictionary and helped me. Thinking back, I probably should have brought my own down to talk to him. Eventually, he sort of understood what I said, and he came up and turned the power in the room back on. I thanked him and he went back downstairs.
After that, I took a shower and just crashed. Our shower is a bit weird because our whole bathroom is part of the shower. It's kind of confusing, and the faucet and shower head are on one lever that if we forget to switch back after a shower, we might go to wash our hands one day and end up a little more wet than we intended. I think for the most part we have everything figured out. The air conditioning doesn't work, and it is so humid outside. But I did make friends with the RA last night. I spoke to her mostly in Korean, which made me happy cause her English wasn't that good. She'd be a good person to practice with. So the RA told us the best way to get air circulation is to keep the door open at night. I dunno yet if we'll be doing that...
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