On Sunday, I departed Korea after a wonderful year of priceless, changing experiences. My final days were full of stress and love as I tied all the loose ends with Froebel and said goodbye to my kids, co-workers and my friends. The very last day with Elgar class, we had a pajama party! Complete with pillow fights, snacks and of course, a movie! It was so gr
eat to be able to spend the entire last day with them, not to say I didn’t love the other classes I taught as well, but as their homeroom teacher I spent much more time getting to know them. After our afternoon of “Finding Nemo,” it was time to say goodbye. Each kid came over to give me one last hug and halfway through, as you can imagine, I started to tear up. “Teacher, why crying?” they asked me. And somehow I managed to choke out that it was because I would miss them so much and that I was SO proud of them. I’ve told them before that I would be going home to the States but I’m not sure they fully understood what that meant. Monica made me a very nice card that said “Meghan Teacher. Go To America and leave happy.” And also Monica told the other kids in the class that I was going home because I missed my mommy (not altogether untrue, of course! Haha).
So anyway, while I was hugging them all one last time, a few tears managed to escape from the corners of my eyes as much as I tried to keep them in. Before I knew it, Monica had gone over and gotten some tissue and came up after I hugged the last one. She came over and started dabbing the tears off my face with the tissue. It was probably the sweetest thing I’d ever experienced.
As they lined up to go home, I told them that if they were ever in the US they should call me (hehe) and then Monica said “but Teacher, I don’t have your number!” (she’s a smart cookie if you haven’t picked up on it yet!) and so I told her that Debbie Teacher (my co teacher) would give it to her mom and she could call me anytime. And so I did –so that maybe someday, Monica will give me a ring J
Fast forward to Saturday night. Rachel and I agreed that for my last dinner, we’d go out to a galbi restaurant by her new apartment that looked good. It had some of the BEST kimchi I’ve had in Korea and also some of the best galbi too. Not a bad way to end my year I have to say! Also, the server there gave us some free pepsi and a heart sucker. Oh, how I’ll miss getting free stuff in Asia! Afterwards we headed back and it was time to get my birthday present from Rach. She made me two K-Pop CD’s with music from the past year (asa!) and a video with pictures by month of our year being crazy together across the world from home. As we watched it, I had several moments (as she mentioned as well) of thinking “wow...I REALLY did this.” Sunday was the big day. Rach and I headed out to try to get my 3 bags to the airport bus through the massive maze of the subway station Kyodae. As the bus approached I realized I would have to say goodbye to my partner in crime, the person who’s known me the best the past year, and one of my truly best friends (for over a decade and counting!). I’m really proud of her for staying in Korea and I know she’s grown so much this past year...I’ve seen it! So I wished her luck and got on the bus, and took in the last landscape of Korea before arriving at Incheon international airport to begin another adventure- Holland!
I arrived at the airport over 2 hours early...thankfully because the line to check in was the longest I’ve ever been in, I’m quite sure. After waiting for what seemed like forever, I finally get up to check in and the clerk realized my foreign registration card had expired a week before. Froebel told me that this wasn’t going to be an issue, so when she told me I had to go see the immigration office, I was quite perturbed. Turns out they only needed to put some stamp or sticker in my passport and all was well and I went back to check in my bags.
Now, when we came to Korea from the states we were allowed to bring over 2 suitcases of 50 lbs each. Going to Holland, I was only allowed one bag of about 45 lbs. So after being in Korea for a year, I had to shed basically half of my weight. She checked in my bags no problem and so I went through security and all that jazz. Made it to my gate in which what should have been JUST in time, however, people were still in line boarding (which was good...until I arrived in Beijing...late).
After landing in Beijing I went to transfer, and the people looked at my ticket and immediately got on their walkie-talkies. I never even checked the time since my layover wasn’t cutting it close. The lady came back and simply said “that plane already took off.” Um...what?! “Oh ok, well is there any way I could get on the next flight out?” thinking calmly because it wasn’t really the end of the world if I were delayed a couple hours or so. “The next flight leaves tomorrow at 2:40pm.” Hahaha ohhhh wow. My first thought was “where the heck am I going to sleep?!”but thankfully, they airport arranged accommodations for me and even gave me meal tickets to eat at the hotel for free.
So I took a shuttle over to the airport hotel, checked in and sat down on the bed. It was about 4:30 in the afternoon, Beijing time. What now? Determined not to waste a free night in China (especially considering that usually US citizens have to pay for an entry visa for about $135), I hopped on a bus to go see a few things that WEREN’T in Beijing the last time I was there...the Olympic buildings! I made it there (after the bus driver stopped the bus cold and searched for me to tell me that this was my stop, haha) and it was really humbling to be in the presence of history like that, especially because it was so recent and I watched most of it happen in summer of ’08. The weather was awful (snow/rain) and it was freezing. I was very unprepared for the weather but I took some cool pictures and took it all in before finding a cab back to my hotel.
The next day I woke up and got ready to deal with the airport all over again. I could have never been prepared for what was going to happen next!
I went to check in my luggage and apparently in Korea, they let the weight of my bags slide...hardcore. My bag was 50kgs and I was only allowed to check in 20. I knew if my bag was overweight I might be charged a fee (expecting like $50 or something) but no. Turns out that it was so many Chinese RMB per kilo....and translated to USD it would cost me $1,500. WHAT?! Look at me! Does it LOOK like I have that kind of money?! Haha oh my gosh. I was upset because if my plane had been on time the day before, my baggage would have been transferred plane to plane in Beijing no problem. Now I was faced with two options: 1) pay a ridiculous amt of money OR 2) get rid of over HALF my stuff. Near tears b/c of the last couple days of airport fiascos (I JUST WANNA GO TO HOLLAND WHY IS THIS SO HARD?! Lol) I sat my bags down and tried to figure out what I would be throwing in the trash.
This is where nice Dutch man comes in. He asked the check in people if I could have his extra weight because he only had a light bag. They agreed. I was still grossly overweight. So he says “bring your bags over here...I have an idea!”So we brought my bags to the side and he looks at me and says “ok...they never weigh your hand luggage so transfer everything heavy into your carry on and all the light stuff in your big bag.”Hmm he could be onto something. So all said and done, after about 20 minutes and him carrying some of my clothes in his carry on, haha, we go back to the check in people. I put my bag on the scale waiting for judgement. We SUCCESSFULLY shaved 30 kgs off my big bag. The people were so impressed we pulled it off they didn’t charge for the 1 or 2 kgs it was overweight and I was able to get ALL my stuff on the plane free of charge. Un. Freaking. Believable.
So after we checked in, the Dutch man and I got some some coffee and he told me why he was in China (for business) and we talked about his family and my experience in Korea and why I was going to visit Holland. If it weren’t for him, I’m really not sure what I would have done. Shown up to Frank in tears maybe haha I don’t know.
The flight went by quite fast considering it was 10.5 hours (thank you Heroes) and once we landed I reordered my baggage and thanked the man about a hundred times for saving me from utter disaster. When I walked through the doors and Frank saw how much stuff I had he was just floored. “How did you get all that stuff over here when you can only take 20kgs?!” and then I introduced him to my friend Doug. Frank knows adventure often finds me and so he just started laughing when I told him the whole story...but I doubt he was altogether surprised :P
It was SO great to see him at the airport. I hadn’t seen him for about 2.5 months, but once I ran up to hug him, it didn’t seem like that long at all. We drove about 20 minutes to his hometown of Waddinxveen and I went in to meet his family. They are all super nice and I’m very thankful to have such a warm family to stay with these next two weeks. His mom gave us some dinner when we got back called andijviestampot. It was REALLY good. I think I’m going to like Dutch food!
Frank is in the middle of moving to his own apartment in a nearby city Rotterdam (where he goes to school) and so we will be going back and forth between his house and his apartment. So far I’ve sat in on one of his university classes in Dutch (Business Information Management...fun stuff :P ) and it was really interesting because the slides for the lecture were in English, but the lecture itself was in Dutch. About half of his classes are taught in English, and half in Dutch. Bilinguals are so cool. I need to get back to studying Spanish – I’m sick of being only able to speak one language!!! I was also able to meet a few of his friends so far and they are also really nice and welcoming. Frank said that they were all pretty curious about the American girl he met in Korea J
Last night we went to a town nearby named Gouda (like the cheese). He showed me around some historical sights and this area really struck me as “Holland” as I’d pictured it – just the little shops all next to each other with a square in the middle with a beautiful old church in the middle. I even saw my first windmill! We at some waffles that originated in the area called stroopwafels - they are thing and crispy with a kind of caramel syrup in the middle. And I found a cheese shop and bought some Gouda cheese from Gouda (yes this is where it originated!) so that was fun.
Well that’s all for now, clearly I’ll keep you posted on our other adventures. It’s really great to be here and I’m very lucky to be having such a fantastic experience here, living with a Dutch family and making friends with some young Dutch people. I can’t wait to see what the next week and a half will bring!
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