Dear Reader,

We have arrived. We landed in Seoul, South Korea on July 25th at around 4 pm SK time. It was an 11-hour flight, we left Seattle at 1 pm Saturday, Aug. 24th, we traveled for a little more than 24 hours?

I’m writing this entry 20 days into landing here. We’ve been through a 14-day quarantine and started training here at Daegu Gyeongbuk English Village, just finished our “5th” day of training.

The flight was like any other flight you’ve experienced, we flew Korean Air for the first time, other than a few key differences: Korean spoken first, we had the middle row (4 seats) all to ourselves due to COVID-19, the flight attendants wore medical gowns, gloves, and masks, free slippers to wear on the flight – this was my favorite part of the Korean Air experience and a moment that started to slowly initiate me into Korean culture.

We land in Seoul, deboard the plane, and make our way to Customs/Arrivals along with everyone else landing into Korea – Koreans and foreigners. The line was long and took 1 hour to get to the front. We then started our first experience of landing abroad in a country that takes a virus seriously, we encountered numerous check-points of getting out of the Seoul airport and to our quarantine dormitory. 

1.      Self-Quarantine App check-point.

2.      After installing the app we moved to a desk where staff checks our self-quarantine app & PCR test we took in the Seattle airport.

3.      Passport check station, took a photo of ourselves, fingerprints, and again checking our paperwork.

4.      We make our way out of the airport and to the bus section to be placed in a waiting area for a bus going to the KTX (major train station) to travel down to Daegu.

5.      From the waiting area, we walk to the bus when ready, receive a sticker on our arm showing we’ve gone through all the proper precautions to get on the bus.

6.      Bus to the KTX train station.

7.      Follow others down the elevators to the train station, fumble our way into purchasing a train ticket to our Don-Daegu station.

8.      Walk over to a table where they check our temperature and PCR tests again, they log into our self-quarantine app before getting on the train, we finally used Google Translate to help ease this interaction.

9.     A government worker walks us down to the train platform (we guess: to make sure everyone is spread out the train?) He waits with us until we board the train.

10.   We arrive in Daegu and as we get off the train we have another attendant approach us and ask us where we are going, a lovely Korean flight attendant who spoke English and Korean helped us through this interaction.

11.   We walk over to the taxi station to meet our school staff member, Shinhye, who was supposed to drive us to DGEV.

12.   We interact with more government employees under a tent at the taxi location, in which they take off our backpacks and spray all our luggage with a disinfectant.

13.   Our school staff member Shinhye cannot drive us to DGEV, a government-approved taxi can only take us to DGEV. So, we hop into the approved taxi, in which the driver then has all the windows down, lights on in the inside of the car, and moves up the front passenger seat all the way up. We are not sure why he did this, we assume covid fear. I slept a bit on this drive. 

14.   We arrive at Daegu Gyeongbuk English Village and get shuffled into our dorm building, up to the 5th floor via elevator, to our dorm rooms 551 & 550. Separate rooms for quarantine.

And this point we pass out in our dorms (midnight) and wake up in the morning to explore our small quarantine dorm rooms in fresh daylight and a shower. 

Quarantine

I continue to have issues with my phone and WIFI getting dropped, which means Don Young Park messages me on KaKaoTalk and says “the government called, Alyssa, please connect your phone.”

We check into our self-quarantine app twice every day: once in the morning and once in the afternoon with a temperature check and yes/no questions about symptoms. If your phone doesn’t move for a while you get a government message asking you to move your phone, to make sure you haven’t left it in your room and are out exploring.

We snuck into each other’s rooms (we had a form of approval from Don & Brian), we read books, we worked out in whatever forms we could, we showered, we ate three meals a day provided by the school, dropped at our door every day with a polite knock. We watched two seasons of The Newsroom, we ate chocolate and pizza dropped off by staff, and we took photos from our balcony. A highlight was experiencing thunderstorms for the first time in a long time (the PNW does not have thunderstorms.)

14 days passed and we were set free after our last and final PCR test. 

Check out the Daegu Gyeongbuk English Village website, to get an idea of where the heck we are.