I will start with our flight:
First, leaving Kansas, we were delayed about an hour as they defrosted our plane. I was pretty worried since we only had a 1.5 hour layover in San Francisco; however, we must have caught a significant tail wind because we still arrived on time to San Francisco. We navigated through the airport and got to our next flight without a hitch. Our flight to South Korea was delayed by thirty minutes, but we don't know why.
The flight to South Korea was awesome. About 15 minutes into the flight they came by with slippers for us all to wear around the plane. They fed us (Pretty good food) four times on the 12 hour flight. I watched "The Social Network", "Life as We Know It", and "The Legends" and played games on the touch screen monitor in front of me and enjoyed the flight. It went by quickly.
The fun began when we got off the plane. First we had to find the person who was picking us up. They were so gracious in giving us a cell phone number to reach him; however we had no idea how to use the phones. The pay phones required a credit card and mine was not going to work. We kept walking around looking for someone in hopes that the "Lost American" look on our faces would get our driver's attention, but it did not. We did find other lost americans with our group so we joined forces in hopes that the collective scent of fear would attract our contact and it worked. So we got on a bus and took a 2 hour bus ride to Cheonan. Now, think of every stereotype of the Asian Driver that you know and I will assure you they are all true. Jerking side to side, slamming on the brakes, and the occasional blaring of the horn made our 2 hour bus ride feel like a wooden roller coaster. Apparently the customary way to stop in South Korea is by slamming on the brakes, releasing, and then slamming on them again... repeating until you stop completely.
After arriving to the campus Terry, one of our administrators in the program, informed us that they were unable to get us our apartment so we will have to stay in the dorms for 2 weeks. We said, "OK" and skipped on to our new abode. The dorms were probably about as much as you would expect. Bunk beds, desks, and very dirty. The mattresses were more like sheets of plywood... actually we might have preferred plywood. The good news was we had a handicap accessible room, which meant we had really cool electric sliding doors for the bathroom...
So, to use the restroom you have to press the open button, go inside, and then press the close button. You then use the bathroom, press the inside open button and then go about your business. Before Lisa and I went to bed I used the bathroom and then closed the bathroom door and layed down. I woke up at 12:00AM needing to pee. I pressed the button, but nothing happened. I slammed the button... nothing happened. I tried pulling the door open and it slammed shut. I tried prying the door open, but it broke the metal hanger in two. I then assumed it must be a different button, so I pressed every button on the wall which turned off the heater and froze us out later but did not open the bathroom door. At this point I was about to pee on myself so I went into the hall and found a korean. I yelled to the man, "Hey, do you speak English?" In which he replied, "Yeah!" I then said, "Awesome, can you help me?" Which he then said, "Yeah!" I Began to tell him my problem, "My bathroom door is stuck and I can't open it..." He then repeated, "Yeah!" and walked away. That was when I realized ... he didn't really know English.
I could not hold it anymore, so I sneaked into one of the American dorm rooms and used their bathroom. Lisa also had to use the bathroom so she sneaked into someone elses bathroom and used it. A few hours later we woke up again. It was 4 AM and we had to use the bathroom. I took it upon myself to unscrew the control panel and hot wire the door. I played with it for about 5 minutes before the door came rolling open (This process was repeated again within 24 hours). It turns out, I pressed the close button on the inside to close the door. When you do that you disable the outside controls... woops!
The next day we spoke with our administrators and they moved us into our apartment and we love it. It is much more spacious than our dorm room and (now that we have cleaned) it is much cleaner as well. We have very nice tall windows that let sunlight in all day and it is great. Even though we had a rough start with the dorm room, Korea has been great. More stories will be coming soon...
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