We've Arrived!

It is 7:30 AM on Sunday in Korea. Heather and I arrived at 5:40 PM Saturday in Korea which was 3:40 AM EST in North Carolina. Needless to say it was a LONG trip. We went to bed early last night but woke up before 5:00am ready to go!

5:00 am in RDU ready to go!

For us the trip started at 4:30 AM on Friday in North Carolina when I missed the alarm and we had to rush out the door since our friend Anthony was waiting to take us to the airport. (GREAT friend to be up that early!) Once at RDU we find out that Heather has a confirmed seat on the flight to Chicago but I do not. After going through the process of attempting to get people to give up their seats I was standing at the gate with the plane fully loaded (Heather included) and the woman at the ticket counter ensuring me that I would be on the plane since I have an international connection in Chicago. The solution? They bumped a passenger who was already on the plane! The passenger was not irate over it but I can imagine how annoying that must have been. The flight to Chicago left about 45 minutes late since they were de-icing the plane.

In Chicago we arrived and had to walk quite a ways then take a tram over to the international terminal. Once there, we checked in with Korean Air and then waited for our flight.

Chicago at O'Hare

The flight from Chicago to Korea is 13 hours plus lots of time sitting on the tarmac (not as bad as we thought). Oddly enough it went over Canada, Alaska, part of Russia and down to Korea. During the flight Heather looked out the window and was able to see the polar ice caps all around. It was beautiful! She watched a lot of movies but was ready to get off the plane after six hours (she was surprised when I told her there was seven hours left).

It was also daylight for us the entire trip. The sun came up for us in Raleigh at 7 AM EST and we did not see night again until after 6 PM in Korea on Saturday. So that was basically 22 straight hours of daylight for us. The flight was very good. The service staff was outstanding, very polite and they feed you constantly or so it seemed. I sampled some Korean food on the flight and it was good. Every seat is equipped with a small monitor you can use to view a wide selection of movies, music and play games. We tried to sleep some but that was difficult and we didn't end up getting very much.

Once we arrived in Korea moving past immigration and custom was quite easy. We exchanged some currency. At the current rates $1 is equal to 1129 won.

Heather thinks it looks like Monopoly money

Afterwards we got tickets for the bus to take us to the hotel. While waiting for the bus we had an older Japanese man ask "Can I talk to you?" He asked us where we were from and it turns out he was a retired naval captain. We had a great conversation with him.

The bus ride took a little over an hour and was good. They have a lot of amazing bridges which were neat to see on the drive. Seoul is a lot like New York City with the buildings and traffic. At the same time our hotel room has a view of the mountains beyond the city. The people are extremely polite, even the man who came this morning to troubleshoot our laptop's inability to connect to the local internet connection.

We will be venturing out today (Sunday) to sightsee and then on Monday we will go a meet Ephram and his foster family. Pray that goes well and also praise to God for our safe arrival and also for allowing Heather's mom to come to NC and watch the kids. She barely made it out of Maryland before a massive snowstorm hit and had she left any later she would have not been able to come leaving us in an awful pinch.

We will update more later. Thank you for all the prayers as we are excited about our adventure!