Day 14 & 15: Missed Flight (almost) and New Friends

Day 14

I took another rest day on Tuesday because I just wasn't feeling up to exploring. I figured that I still had two days left before I had to leave Seoul so it was ok to not move. At about 6 pm that night I randomly decided to double check my flight time for Thursday. Ends up that my flight was Wednesday (tomorrow) rather than Thursday and I needed to be checked out of my room by 11 am the next day. My room was a disaster, I hadn't gone exploring on my last day, and I needed to do laundry. I have no idea why I had it set in my mind that I was leaving Thursday, but I'm glad I double-checked!

The night consisted of me speed cleaning, doing laundry, and attempting to pack. When I left Canada my suitcase weighed almost 23 kg and that was with me wearing layers of clothes on the plane. My Jeju flight ticket allowed a maximum of 20 kg for luggage so my challenge was to pack all the same things back in to my suitcase along with the extra stuff I had purchased so far and somehow make the suitcase weigh less. It was a lot of me holding things in my hand and trying to weigh them to find what items were the heaviest. I ended up with all my makeup (which I haven't worn once since I got here and should not have packed), my laptop, and (what I think are) my heaviest pair of shoes in my carry-on along with as many small items that I could stuff in the corners as possible. Then I had to do laundry and hope all my clothes were dry by 11 am the next morning because wet clothes definitely weren't going to help the weight.

I went upstairs to the lobby to start doing laundry and someone was already using it so I checked with her to see when she would be done. This started a conversation about how we were the only other people we had seen up here that had actually talked to each other haha. The girl was from Alberta and she was finishing her 5th year at the University of Alberta. She has travelled all over Asia and is currently going to school in Seoul this term. She was super nice and also a k-pop fan (although she likes girl groups more than boy groups so we're opposite). We continued to chat and then exchanged our Kakao Talk information so we could go out for food once I got back from Jeju. She has travelled all over and it was so interesting to hear about the places she had been to. She had also been studying Chinese for her entire undergrad degree and said it was one of the most challenging languages to learn. Instead of an alphabet they just have tons of different characters for things. So instead of learning a set number of letters and being able to build words from those, she has to learn the characters for everything (for example: the character for house).

After finishing my laundry I went back to my room, set a bajillion alarms, and then went to sleep.

The alleyway leading up to my hostel and the entrance:

(October 9, 2018)

---

Day 15

The next day I had to wake up way earlier than I was used to. For the past week or so I have been naturally waking up at 8 am but then I screw it up by going back to sleep until at least 11 or 12. This time I had to wake up at 9 and actually stay awake. I checked out and was allowed to lock my luggage on one of the railings on my floor until later in the afternoon. My flight wasn't until 7 pm and the airport was only half an hour away so I had a lot of time to kill. I didn't want to go wandering around because I had my backpack plus a super heavy carry-on bag and it's starting to get a lot colder. I decided to just sit and relax at my favourite cafe. I caught up on a few blog posts, ate lots of bread, and drank lots of tea and the time flew by.

I had dinner at around 4:30 because there weren't many options at the airport the last time I was there (I was flying out of the same airport that I went to when I flew to Busan). I went to my favourite restaurant which was just around the corner from my hostel. I found it on my second night here and they make really yummy bibimbap so I have been there about four times this week I think. When I got there tonight I walked in and the lady looked up and asked 'bibimbap?' and I realized that maybe I had gone there too often, but it's fine!

The restaurant that I ate at too often.

I stocked up on cash before I left because I wasn't sure if the convenience store near my place in Jeju would have the ATM machine that works with my foreign card. Then I grabbed my luggage and began dragging it to the subway station. My GPS took me through a really cute path to get to the subway stop and it had escalators which was great (no way am I doing stairs with this suitcase). The area that I entered was very clean and nice and there were pretty murals on the wall.

I remembered to go through the right turn gate thing when I got to the subway and I made it to the airport without any problems. My fourth time flying in the last 2 weeks!

Passing over the Han River again on the subway to the airport

My suitcase only weighed 20.5 kg this time! Just enough that I didn't have to pay extra. Clearly I am a genius when it comes to packing and hand-weighing-comparisons (kidding). My flight was delayed 20 minutes because of some kind of communications problem and all I could think about was that the last drama I watched started off with the main characters family getting on a plane to Jeju and then it crashes and they all die. So I was clearly thinking very positive thoughts before the flight...

We made it there without crashing! One of Steven's (someone who helped me a lot when I was planning my trip... thank you Steven!) friends met me at the airport and drove me to my bus stop. It was nice to have someone waiting there and he answered a couple (read: many) questions while we were driving.

I was super excited to be in Jeju, but then I got on the bus and the bus driver yelled at me (I was sitting in a bad spot so it was my fault, but not a good way to start the trip). I made it to my airbnb and I was not in a happy mood so I checked into my room and just wanted to go to bed. The room was super nice and bright and the bed was the most comfortable one that I've had so far. There were a couple people in the living room when I came in and I thought they were the hosts so I decided to go over and just say hi quickly.

I am only staying at the airbnb for one night. It is on the city side of Jeju near the airport. The airbnb I am staying at for the week is on the other side of the island in the countryside. Since I landed late in the evening I thought it would be better to stay somewhere close and then travel the rest of the way in the morning.

My room for the night

I went out to the living room and met the family who were eating. It was a mom and her daughter and son who were 25 and 29, respectively. I quickly found out that they weren't the hosts, just a family that was staying in Jeju at the house for a couple of days. They were from a city near Seoul and it was their last night.

They were all super excited to meet a foreigner! The son had worked in Canada for a couple years and wanted to show his English to the rest of his family and they hadn't met any other foreigners yet who had talked to them. They ended up feeding me tons of food including ramen, yummy rice cakes, octopus (not my favourite but cool to try!), and lots of clementines. We started drinking soju and makgeoli and spent several hours talking. It was such an awesome way to end the day and it was super cool to actually speak to locals. I have met (casually talked to) several foreigners so far here, but no Koreans!

They were all super excited to talk to me and it was really fun. I also found out that I know more Korean than I thought. The daughter couldn't speak much English but she could understand most of it. She would say stuff in Korean and then her brother would translate as much as he could. There were lots of things that she would say that I understood and was able to reply to without a translation! Every time I understood her or she understood something I said we started to give each other high-fives. She saw my phone case and we bonded over BTS and k-pop and I found out that she is friends with two k-pop stars (Red Velvet's Seulgi and UP10TION's Kun), which was super cool!

Another person who was Korean came to join us while we were drinking and he was a 26 year old hair stylist from Busan here on a church retreat. He had really good English and had lived in Australia for awhile. He stayed to talk for a bit and then went to bed. Myself, the son, and daughter eventually left the airbnb to wander around because we were being too loud inside and it was 11 pm (I keep calling them daughter and son because I don't remember their names, which is terrible). We walked to a convenience store nearby and they kept buying me all these snacks that they wanted me to try! On the way back I randomly asked about what one of the signs meant and the girl got super excited that I could read Korean. The rest of the walk home she pointed at every single sign and asked me to read it. She also said my pronunciation was really good, which made me very happy. They later taught me how to say numbers in Korean, which has been so incredibly helpful. I knew how to count up to 10 but I didn't know how to say numbers past that.

When we got back it was almost 1 am and I needed to be up early the next morning so we all went to bed. I'm so happy I was able to meet such lovely people!

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(October 10, 2018)