I lost Saturday, but gained a husband, I'm happy :)

I AM FiNALLY IN KOREA!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, it was a long trip...and I'll recap my little international adventure for you! I started out in Nashville leaving for DC at 8:45am on United. It happened to be a little puddle jumper plane-okay maybe not that small...but smallest I've ever been on. We had to walk out on the tarmac and up the stairs to get in the plane...about 50 people total! And then the pilot tells us there's rough weather in DC so in case we can't make it in, we'll land in Richmond, refuel, and try circling again. REALLY?? Why tell us that before we've even left Nashville, there was no need...must have been a rookie!


I had about an hour layover in DC, but by the time I got to the correct terminal they were loading the plane for my flight! I walked on this massive Boeing 777 plane with seats 9 across and I thought well, wow, you really do have a lot more room on these international flights...this won't be too bad at all. Until I realized this was first class. I then walked back to MY seat and realized they didn't really care that it was an international flight...I had no more room than the puddle jumper! BUT, I did have a window!

DC to Tokyo was 13 hours...13 long hours. My Ambien didn't work quite like I expected...I dozed...but definitely didn't sleep! I watched a few movies, they had screens in each of the headrests with a different movie repeating on each channel. And probably my favorite part of the flight was the map channel they had that mapped the progress of the plane and it showed in real time where we were and what we were flying over. It also told how many miles we traveled, how many to go, our ground speed and the temperature. It was between -70 to -80 degrees the whole trip up in the air that high. I never realized there was that drastic temperature difference!



So after 13 hours, restless legs, and crappy food I was finally in Tokyo, only to sit for an hour on the plane while the Quarantine Officials from the government boarded the plane in full protective gear: hat, goggles, mask, suit, and gloves with their thermal body temperature cameras in hand to screen each of us for a temperature! They walked up and down the aisles pointing it at everyone and it showed excess body temperature. Well one person on our flight had a cough with a doctors note saying it was asthma, but we had to sit while they swabbed her mouth and waited for the results to come back! We had a health quarantine questionaire we had to fill out and give them while they were on our plane. We then had masks they gave us to wear while de-planing and boarding our next flight. They are not kidding over there!!!

My next flight was from Tokyo to Seoul, South Korea. Tokyo airport was relatively easy to find my way around. There was enough English and pictures to figure out where I was going. This flight was only 2 hours...no problem!!! Seoul was very similar with their precautions they are taking for swine flu....wait...I'm sorry...H1N1 :) We had a quarantine questionaire we had to fill out and as we deplaned we had to turn it in and they took each of our temperatures in our ear before we were allowed in the airport!



I finally made it here and Taylor was waiting when I got through customs!!! It was so so so so great to see him finally! We took a Korean bus down to Songton where we took a cab to the main gate of base. It took about an hour and a half total because it had two other stops along the way. It was 8pm Saturday May 2 Korean time when I arrived...about 10pm when we got to base and grabbed some food and headed to his homely abode. Taylor's place is great...I mean small, yes, but very livable. I say that because I'm here a month...I know spending a year here would make it much more cramped. It is one room with a little kitchen area, and yes, each wall is lined with a piece of furniture with a couch sitting in the middle, but hey, it works. And his room was spotless when I got here. Including bathroom cleaned and bed made...which is huge for Taylor. Those things are never high priority for him, so it was a nice surprise. And I am so happy to be here!! From my house to Taylor's room it was a little over 26 hours!!



It is now Sunday morning. We got in Saturday night and went to bed around midnight, but for some reason I was up bright and early this morning at 6:30! Taylor usually goes into work at 4am, but told them he'd be in later so he didn't go until 9:30 this morning...so why was I up at 6:30 after over 24 hours of travel and little sleep? I'm not really sure. Maybe because it's not my own bed? I don't know, but I had breakfast and did some reading til Taylor woke up. I'm now hanging out in his room while he's at work today. I think I'm going to wander around base in a little bit just to see what's out there. He has Monday and Tuesday off work...so that will be nice.



Anyway, there's my story, I'll update again later. Oh and when I first got on blogger here all the information is in Korean!! Luckily I remembered which button was the sign in one! Once I signed in, everything switched to English. Weird.



I'm posting pictures on the post after this...which will actually show up first because of the way blogger is set up...but whatever...they go with this post!