Airport Adventures and Day 1 in Korea

Okay, so after Abby and Andrea dropped me off at the Atlanta airport and helped me take out stuff from all of my bags because they were all a pound or two overweight, I finally made it to my flight......4 hours early. I budgeted a lot of time to check my bags and to get through customs and find my terminal because Atlanta is such a huge airport but I guess it was just an especially good day/time to be at the airport because I flew through everything.

I had some time to explore the airport and find things such as:

I sucker as large as my head

Quite possibly the best/worst shirt I have ever seen in my life (it says 50 States of Cray).

But the views were amazing.

I flew from Atlanta to Toronto, Canada and I had a ONE HOUR LAYOVER. I was nervous about this short layover, but the fact that we arrived 20 minutes later than expected meant that I only had 40 minutes to get off the of the plane, get my bags, go through customs again, check my bags again, go through tsa again, and find my terminal.

My plane was scheduled to be flying out at 12:55 am and I made it to the terminal at 12:45 am. I thought I had missed it but by the grace of God, the plane had been delayed due to mechanical issues.

So then I flew from Toronto to Vancouver which went pretty smoothly.

  

That was until we landed. I had a 12+ hour layover so I was considering getting a hotel for the night, but because it was like 2 am, I had no Canadian money or way to call an airport, or get to an airport since I couldn't call a taxi, and some giant soccer thing was happening in town so all of the hotels were booked up I decided just to stay in the airport overnight. 

It wasn't terrible; I just sat in the food court area which a bunch of other kids my age, layed on a bench, enjoyed the free WiFi and watched Netflix. Some calls from my family made it bearable as well (Thanks, Dee Dee!). 

So, after the longest layover ever, I finally got to my terminal andddddddd my flight was delayed indefinitely. Awesomeeeeeee. 

I finally took off around 5 pm EST and was exhausted and disgusting. A fight with a Chinese lady and some questionable airplane food later, I finally made it to Korea :) It was 5:30 pm here but it would have been 4:30 am EST. And I did not sleep on the flight at all. 

Navigating customs and getting through everything in Incheon Airport was so much easier compared to what I had to get through in the United States and Canada! Just in and out. 

I found the guy with my name on his sign and tried to get some money out of an international ATM, but none of them worked for me. I would later find out it was because there was a limit as to how much I could take out at one time, but I did not know that at the time. 

So, I entered Korea penniless, exhausted, and gross and was brought up to the place that would become my apartment to meet my boss and coworker immediately. (I will post pictures of my apartment when it is all settled in. Right now I don't have any furniture in here besides a giant desk, a chair that looks like a homeless person threw it out, a bed, and some storage stuff for clothes and shoes.) 

My boss and coworker showed me how everything worked in my apartment since everything is in Korean and then took me to dinner. I was really appreciative because I was really hungry and since I had no money, couldn't buy food for myself. After some Vietnamese food, I came home and unpacked half of my stuff and went to bed. Day one in Korea, complete.