Getting home

My last day in Korea was pretty lazy. That being said, it did kind of start off with a bang.

I got up and then helped Jin move my queen size mattress p to her apartment. I lived on the fourth floor and she lives on the seventh. Unfortunately for us, the mattress did not fit on the elevator so we had to haul it up the stairs. Woo! It was hot work! We got it to her place and realized we'd need one more person to actually get it into her loft. We woke up one of the other teachers in our building and got her to help us heft it up.

After that, it was just wait until 1pm to get out of there. My luggage was all packed and triple weighed. to make sure I hadn't gone over any of the weight limits. The poor dears. They are totally shot. I will probably need to get new luggage sometime. The plastic lining is pretty much gone now. They've had a good run. Rest in peace, pink luggage.


Getting through the airport was pretty breezy. There was a moment at immigration where I was concerned I had not properly extended my alien registration card (which I had done online) because he asked if I had the confirmation papers (of which there were none). However, after I answered his next question about when I would return with, "I won't be returning," it was okay. Phew! Crisis averted!

I had three hours in the airport and so I made my leisurely way through the airport. Along the way I spotted a free cultural event.



Heck yes! I got to sit down and paint a tile to hang up. It was a lot of fun to sit there and try to paint it pretty. My poor tile ended up really ugly and it will probably head to the garbage if it hasn't already. But it took up half an hour of time I would otherwise have spent sitting around the gate being bored.



The airplane ride was really great. It took a little over 10 hours to get from Seoul to San Francisco. I sat next to a very interesting girl who was on her way to start school in Boston. She had spent most of her teenage years living as an expat in China with her family. It was fun to talk with her. The movies were good, my book was great, and I ended up surprising myself with my high scores on the practice CBEST I took in preparation for my grad school entrance exam. Cool. The ten hours went by fairly quickly.

Jesi met me at the airport and we took the light rail back home. It was great to get home and only a little strange. The biggest change has been having TV again. And the grocery store. I love our grocery stores around here. They are awesome. :)