South Korea Day 1 Arrival

We left on Saturday Sept. 7^th at 6:45 am to get to the bus station by 7 am to buy tickets to go to Taipei for our trip to South Korea. We waited for about an hour to get on a bus because they were so backed up with people. Instead of flying out of Inchon International Airport we flew out of Songshan International Airport (松山機場) and flew into Gimpo so it was fastest to take the bus. Once we got to Songshan Airport we meet with a person who gave us our flight information from the website we used to book our trip in Seoul. We couldn’t check our bags in right away so by the time we were done eating lunch it was time to check in and go through security and wait for our flight at 1:50 pm.

When we got into South Korea it was around 5 pm after we got our luggage then we needed to find the way to the hotel. But first we bought a wifi package for the amount of time we were in Korea and turns out it was really helpful at times. Then we took a taxi to our hotel because we didn’t have a T-card to ride the subway and we didn’t know where the closest subway stop was. It took about an hour to get to the hotel from the airport. Before we got to our hotel one of Lana’s friends (Jae Eun) that she met studying in Tunghai invited us over to her house for a traditional Korean style meal. We needed to drop off our luggage first and buy a T-card that worked on the subway.

Once we bought the T-card we needed directions to the nearest subway stop but the hotel we were staying at didn’t speak very good English. However when the people at the front desk were talking and we both recognized that they said something in Chinese so we told them we could speak Chinese so they explained how to get to the subway in Chinese instead of in English. I think both the workers were very surprised that we could speak in Chinese but that was how we communicated if we had any questions because neither of us understood Korean except for the very basics.

Once we got to her house her mom had food already on the table and there was about 10 dishes/ side dished that her mom had prepared for us which were really good. I also got to try Makgeolli which is a rice wine. After we were done eating Jae Eun’s mom really liked Korean history so we got to listen to traditional songs and she was explaining the meaning behind them but we needed translation. But I really like learning about a different culture so it was interesting. Since we had to take the subway back we needed to make sure it didn’t close so after we were done listening to her mom talk we headed back. When we left we were buy a part of Seoul that Lana remembered from her first time being in South Korea that had Mexican food, since arriving in Taiwan I haven’t had Mexican food so we stopped by a Taco Bell since we wouldn’t have time the other days. After eating tacos we headed back to the hotel to get ready for Sunday that was a full day of sightseeing.