[Part 1] 1. Arrival in Korea

I think I'm in denial. I can't believe that I'm really back in Korea and that I'm going to be away from my family for so long.

I was supposed to arrive in Korea between 27-29 Aug and I had requested to leave on the 29th because my mum's birthday was on 27th and I didn't want to leave on that night. 

In the end, if I had left on the 28th at 1.10am, I would have arrived in Busan as scheduled. 

Thanks to the typhoon, my flight got retimed all the way to 6.30am and only took off at around 7.15am because the plane had to be prepared for the flight to Incheon. 

Hence, my farewell with my family wasn't at the immigration door but at Starbucks with me sitting on the chair and watching them walk away. Again, I didn't hug them because I knew the floodgates would open the moment I did that and I would be crying in public, which I didn't want since Starbucks was pretty crowded then. Ok, as I type this, I'm starting to tear. Guess reality is slowly sinking in. Isolating and detaching one's feelings is so difficult :( 

Thank goodness for J who came just as my parents were leaving!

J “window” shopping for beddings -.-

The minute I opened the handmade envelope and read the handwritten letter from my brother, I lost control and cried for awhile. It was the first time I received a letter from him. I hate farewells, of course, who doesn’t? It requires so much mental power to convince oneself that it's only temporary. Everyone has to stay safe and healthy till we meet again!  

So sweet of him!

As for the next few hours that I spent with J before I cleared immigration at 5am is something I won't put on this blog, given that this blog is public. But those hours spent together were beautiful and memorable and something I'll think about often when I feel lonely. A beautiful memory to provide me with the strength to continue and persevere in this LDR. Till we meet again! 

I was really lucky on this flight. I don't remember flying alone but maybe I did when I went to Yonsei for immersion. Anyway, my hand carry luggage was really heavy (definitely more than 10kg) and the air stewardess had a hard time helping me to lift it up into the overhead cabin compartment. A few Korean guys who were seated near me helped us, in particular, the middle-aged man who sat across the aisle from me. Even though the flight was only 6 hours long, it felt like eternity given that I was at the airport by 12 midnight and I only reached Incheon at at almost 3pm (Korean time) because my plane had to circle around for 20 mins as we were no. 7 in the queue to use the runway and then we had to wait for about 10 minutes before our gate was available. 

I was resigned to the fact that I would be struggling with my hand luggage again when we were finally allowed to disembark so I just sat in my seat when everyone else had stood up and started taking their stuff down, hoping that everyone behind me would leave ASAP so that I could finally drag my luggage down without hindering anyone or even embarrassing myself. But to my surprise, the minute everyone started standing up, the Korean guy who sat across the aisle from me got out of his seat, opened MY cabin compartment and took my luggage down for me and placed it in the aisle so that I could get out before others behind us. I was so touched and surprised, after a long night and flight that I kept thanking him profusely. It was awkward walking in front of him on the aerobridge and he saved me by walking up to my side and started talking to me. He had heard me speaking in a mixture of Korean and English to the air stewardess earlier when she had helped me with my hand carry so he was quite curious about me. He’s actually back in Korea for a 2-week holiday and works in the Korean food industry in Singapore. He said he’ll treat me to a good Korean meal when I’m back in Singapore but that will be…some time later? :( 

The good thing about taking Korean Air, rather than SIA, was that the immigration queue for foreigners was relatively shorter since majority of the passengers were Koreans. Or maybe my flight was the only one that arrived at that timing? Anyway, I was so noob :( I wasn’t given any forms on the plane and only discovered that I had to submit an arrival card when I was 2 persons away from the start of the queue -.- So I had to get the card from a counter some distance away before rejoining the queue which thankfully, wasn’t too long. Breezed through the luggage collection because my luggage was right in front of me when I reached the belt but AGAIN, I didn’t know that I had to submit a customs declaration form, which I wasn’t given on the plane. So I had to get out of the exit queue to fill up the form and it was there that I met the nice Korean guy again whose eyes popped when he saw my huge check-in luggage. He wanted to help me with my luggage but I reassured him that I would be fine on my own and that someone would be picking me up outside the gate. 

But when I got out of the gate, I didn’t see anyone holding any placard with my name or anything -.- So I hung around the area, switched on my phone to contact a university staff but couldn’t get any service. *I realised later on that I was supposed to switch on my 3G -.-* Tried to connect to the internet and then, a guy suddenly called out my name. He’s a senior from Silla University, in the same scholarship program as me, and had been in the airport since Sunday, all thanks to the typhoon which screwed the whole arrival schedule, to pick us up. I deposited my money in my Kookmin Bank account which is still open, got biscuits for lunch at 4pm and waited with the other girls in my program for others to arrive before we took the 6.30pm limousine bus from the airport to the bus terminal in Busan. 

The university paid for our bus fare which was very expensive. Going to Seoul from Busan definitely won’t be cheap :( The seats were very spacious though, business class bus seats? The journey was very smooth and fast, taking us to the bus terminal in 4.5 hours, instead of the scheduled 5 hours, with a 15 minutes toilet break in between. 

Tired

While it was good that we arrived early, we were too early and had to wait for about 20 minutes in the bus terminal before the university’s shuttle bus driver came to pick us up. Since we hadn’t eaten our dinner, he dropped by 김밥전국 to buy the 7 of us a roll of kimbab each. So nice of him! At 12.30am, we finally reached Global Town, our dormitory at Silla University. What a long day! We were given our room keys and I also bought a blanket set (pillow, comforter and bedsheet) for 30,000원 since I didn’t have any luggage space to bring along my own set. I managed to drag everything up and finally met my room mate :) 

Unpacked and all before I decided to have my dinner and sleep at 3am.