We are here! & First look at our apartment

Hi everyone!

We are safe and sound in Sejong, South Korea! It is September 2. We are currently working on putting together the footage from our plane adventure, but in the meantime here are some pictures from the first 36 hours! (:

I won't spoil too much about the plane ride (since the video will cover most of that), but it was a really great experience! Twelve hours has never gone by so quickly. We had a bunch of movies to choose from, we could also listen to music or watch TV shows, and if we were tired of all that we could just watch the plane icon slowly cross the ocean in a Google-Earth-type interface:

We had just a little bit of turbulence going over Japan

We ended up watching Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2, the new Mummy movie, and the Fate of the Furious. We had two full meals and a few snacks, plus an endless supply of water and orange juice. The extra 4 inches that we got for upgrading our seats worked out great! 

When we got off the plane we went through customs, grabbed our bags from baggage claim, and went through import declarations. It was very relaxed and easy. 

After all of that, we found a map which directed us to bus terminal 9D. We purchased two tickets to Sejong, which came out to be about 42,000 W (~$40), and waited for our bus to arrive. We had about an hour of waiting, but it was interesting to watch the buses come and go like clock-work. We found a vending machine and bought a bottle of water for 1,000 W. 

On the bus to Sejong

Man. By the time we got on the bus we had been awake for ~20 hours.. We weren't able to sleep at all on the plane (we really weren't that tired.) But once we got on the bus, the sun was going down, it was a struggle to keep our eyes open. I think I fell asleep for like an hour. It was a 2 hour bus ride to Sejong from the Seoul Incheon airport.

When we arrived at the Sejong bus terminal, we were greeted by Andy & Henry, who drove us to our apartment. They helped take our bags up to our apartment on the 8th floor of a building called "the Rich." The first few floors of the building, like most buildings we have seen around here, are commercial.

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Our Sejong Apartment

We took some pictures the next morning:

Panorama of the living space

Kitchen/washing machine

Semi-empty fridge

(shout-out to Lauren: the teachers we replaced left us some Soju Fresh)

Living room and balcony

View from the balcony

Panorama of bedroom

Bathroom

Our apartment is really close to the main river that flows through Sejong and the bridge that crosses it. The apartment is actually on a main road.

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View from the third floor of our building

We have had breakfast at a couple different cafes right in our building. There are actually like.. four different coffee shops within 2 minutes of leaving our elevator. Koreans love coffee, which is great with me. Sam even tried some (:

9B cafe, coffee and deserts. Vanilla latte with a milk tea bun (filled with red bean and cream), plus a chocolate biscuit cake which kind of tasted like chocolate shortbread but less buttery and not very sweet.

Label of the milk tea bun.

Really awesome Argiope spider living near our trash bins ((:

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Thanks everyone for reading and for being patient with our postings and uploads! We are still adjusting and figuring out every aspect of being here.. but so far, so good! (:

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Coming soon: Yesterday was our first day of work. Our next post will be about the school, kids, curriculum, and more!

Also coming soon: Video of our plane trip from SFO --> ICN



♥ Zoë