my journey to korea jan '21
Hello~ I am writing to you all from my quarantine room at Korea University's Sejong Campus! I have officially made it to South Korea! I wanted to write out in a blog post specifically on my journey to here - mostly because it was quite a stressful and interesting experience.
step 0: packing and covid-19 testing
It took me a few days to pack, not gunna lie. My packing area looked like a disaster zone for a few days, and miraculously all disappeared into my carriers perfectly! I ended up packing enough to survive me not only the quarantine period, but also my whole Fulbright award year. That being said, I maxed out just about every bag I was allowed. I flew through Delta where I could have two 50-lb checked in bags as well as a carry-on and personal item with no weight restrictions!
One stressful aspect of my pre-departure process popped up on Monday, 01/04/21 ... five days before my flight. The ROK government issued out a new order that states anyone arriving to Korea 01/07/21 or later MUST have a PCR COVID-19 test administered within 72 hours of departure, and receive a negative result on said test... I had taken half of my afternoon the night before scheduling a COVID-19 test, but only antigen tests are guaranteed to give results in that timeframe. All PCR testing centers say they can only give results after a minimum 3 business days after the lab receives the test sample.
I had to reconfigure my testing plans given the new information, and was quite overwhelmed... I honestly didn't know if I was going to be able to go to Korea once I received the "EMERGENCY UPDATE" from Fulbright Korea that Monday. I did my best calling all free COVID-19 community testing centers in all surrounding counties from where I lived with my family.
The one that was open (and only open, mind you) on Mondays was actually my "local community testing center" in Adams County. The reason why I have that in quotes is because the closest "local" center was 45 minutes driving one way along highways... Not so local, but it had to do. It didn't require appointments, was a free PCR test, and served as a test run for COVID-19 test result return timelines. I also ordered a mail in take-home test online on Monday... Unfortunately, that test was $120 opposed to $0 from community centers.
I also researched all other counties and the days/times they were open. There were a few that would be open on Wednesday and Thursday, in my 72-hour window. All of which were a minimum of 1 hour and 15 minutes away from my home. I made a game plan to go to Jackson County's community testing center in Black River Falls on Wednesday as soon as they opened. I also chose this specific center because Wazee Lake, known as one of the clearest lakes in Wisconsin, was nearby! It was on my bucket list for places to see in Wisconsin, and it seemed like the perfect way to decompress and destress after I got my test. (If you wanna see my Wazee Lake pictures, check out my January 2021 pics post!)
I was able to receive my result from the Adams County collection center and lab on 01/05/2021 - about 24 hours after initially taking the test. I also found out that after receiving the result notification, I had to call the COVID-19 Test Results Hotline to request an official lab report that airports accept. Nonetheless, I became more hopeful that I would be able to go to Korea...
The fastest test results would've came from my at-home collection kit... but by Tuesday 01/05/2021, I still haven't received any word from the company... I tried contacting the company, but I found out after calling multiple times (and finally reaching someone while on my way to Black River Falls on 01/06/2021) that there was a glitch in their system and my at home collection was not sent out at all...
That was my back-up plan incase the Black River Falls test didn't come back as quickly as Adams County's did... The $120 was to be refunded back to me (thank god) because I wouldn't have been able to get the test results before my flight if I waited for them to retry shipping it to me. And so, I waited for my one and only option to return results...
As time neared my initial departure to Chicagoland, I got even more anxious. I was fully packed, but I needed to receive the initial results for the Black River Falls test by 5pm, 01/08/2021. If I didn't get it before that time, then I couldn't call the hotline to request the official lab report during their hours of operation. I called the COVID-19 Test Results Hotline a few times on 01/07/2021 to keep checking in about my results... I luckily got a notification 01/07/2021 at 10pm, the night before I needed to go to Chicagoland, saying I got a negative result!
step 1: driving to chicagoland and o'hare airport
On 01/08/2021, I woke up early to call the COVID-19 Test Results Hotline and officially requested my lab report to be sent to me. My ticket to Korea was to be making it to my email inbox by the evening!!
I said goodbye to my brother at his school during lunch hour, packed up my car with all of my luggage, and after an hour, I said goodbye to my dad and my puppy. It was really hard to say the least.
I drove down with my mom three hours down south to Chicagoland area to say goodbye with family one more time. I used my aunt's printer to print last minute needed documents (including the cursed COVID test) and ate one last meal with loved ones. We decided to stay overnight with my aunt the night before my flight because we didn't think we would survive the journey to the airport if we drove straight from Wisconsin starting at 1am.
We ended up waking up on 01/09/2021 at 3:30am to get on the road by 4am. My friend Devin joined us on our drive to O'Hare and helped me with my bags inside the airport. I was the one that drove to the airport, so it was kind of a surreal experience to get out of the driver's seat and go inside the airport.
When we arrived, I said one long goodbye to my mom and went inside with Devin to get my tickets.
step 2: chicago to detroit
I checked in the night before, but still had to check in at Delta's kiosks, get luggage tags, weigh my check-ins and get my boarding passes printed.
One of my check-ins rounded up to 51lbs and the other to 56lbs... It's safe to say that I immediately had stress boost through the roof. I had to open up my overweight bag, move 1lb into the other, and say goodbye to three more pounds of items. Thank god the Delta guy was so kind and patient with me and thank god Devin was still there with me to take my Sensodyne toothpastes I bought in bulk.
Devin and I said our goodbyes and off I went to security... where I took up 6 whole security trays. As I unloaded my tech bag, the security guy was in awe... He tried to tell me that I really don't have to unload all of my tech items after the fourth tray was being unloaded into, and even later said, "I ain't never seen a tech bag - not one like that anyways." Needless to say, I knew I was going to make a speciticle out of myself when packing.
Right after I passed through security, I went over to my gate. I immediately met up with a fellow Fulbrighter, and not long after, another Fulbrighter joined us! We talked all about what life was like in Korea to the third Fulbrighter since this would be her first time there. We waited a few more hours before being allowed to board our plane.
step 3: flight to detroit
The plane ride was really good overall! The shortest plane ride I've taken yet. I had issues trying to get my overly stuffed pink donut carry-on into the compartment above my head, so I gave up and sat it on the seat next to me. Since they blocked off a whole column of seats, this was so easy to do.
As the flight attendant walked by and saw my bag on the seat next to me, he asked,"And what is going on here?" He lowkey scolded me for acting like a buffoon, but I explained to him that I tried to stow it away, but couldn't. Luckily, he helped me out and shoved it into the compartment.
As we took off, the sunrise began. We broke through the clouds and the view couldn't have been more magical. I was taking picture after picture, not even realizing that the view on the other side of the plane was even more miraculous. After many failed attempts at trying to capture it from my side, a kind girl offered to take photos and videos for me from her seat! They didn't work out totally well, but she did end up texting her photos and videos to me~!
I read a chapter or two of my current read, "The Tao of Pooh," and ended up sleeping for maybe 30 minutes before our descent into Detroit.
step 4: detroit airport
Once we arrived to Detroit, I said goodbye to the girl that took the sunrise pictures, as well as a girl that tried helping me with my donut bag. It was funny to be chit-chatting with strangers while my two Fulbright cohort members got off the plane. Really nice too, because I was lowkey worrying about being lonely on my journey.
My Fulbright group of three made our way to our gate. We chit chatted for another hour or two, bought some snacks and refreshments, and even found more Fulbrighters! Together, we sat together and worked on our documentation. There were so many more forms we had to fill out including another agreement to quarantine, a health declaration, and a travel record declaration as well as complete another temperature check.
It was during this time that I found out that I had not received an email from Fulbright Korea about important information about our flight, what information to include on what forms, and where to go once we land in Incheon. Big oof, but thank god I had the whole group to help!
step 5: flight to incheon
About seven of us total made our way onto a very empty plane. All of the other Fulbrighters were in the same area of the first section of economy seats. I changed my seat, which would've had me right with them, the night before to the second section of economy seating. I was really thankful to switch too, because the second section was the rear part of the plane and more or less deserted compared to the first section.
The flight was one of the most comfortable flights I have ever had just because I could lay down fully across the three seats in my sub-row. If not for wearing a brand new N-94 mask, I would've been in heaven! The mask straps were digging into the backs of my ears so bad that I had to use hair as a cushion.
I watched a few hours of a Korean drama I had downloaded, "Strongest Delivery Man," and tried my hardest to sleep. There was one or two crying toddlers on the flight that would not give up crying. Since my section of the plane had less people, the parents thought it would be better to bring the fussy kid to my section... Thank you for not letting me sleep, kid!
Instead, I watched episodes of my drama on and off, journaled, read the Tao of Pooh, listened to music, and took pictures of the beautiful landscape below.
I also ate the meals and thought it was so, so nice of the flight attendants to be walking around with drinks pretty frequently. I had my hands cracking from all the hand sanitizer and winter weather, and a nice flight attendant even brought me a business / first class bag full of travel sized items hoping lotion was in there. It wasn't, but there was a vaseline like lip balm there that I used to remedy my cracking hands.
I tried sleeping once more before landing. My strategy was as follows: ear plugs in and over-ear headphones playing rain sounds I had downloaded on Youtube on high. It totally worked.. but I was unfortunately woken up after an hour by the last meal of our flight.
After eating our last meal, I got all of my stuff prepared for landing. I wrapped the provided blanket and pillow nicely together and just thought to strap it down so that it would make it easier for me not to spill it on the ground. One of the flight attendants was walking around collecting any last minute trash items and thought it was such a cute thing to do. She even brought other flight attendants around to see it and took a picture of it for herself XD
step 6: incheon airport
Unfortunately, I don't have any photos from this leg of the journey - I took more videos that you can check out in the "my journey to korea" video~!
We landed and I got all of my things on. I tried my best toughing it out with my hoodie and ski jacket on while getting through the airport, but five minutes of waiting in the customs line was enough to make me sweat like crazy. I tried stripping back down to not die of heat exhaustion, but I guess the short time in all those layers was enough to make my temperature too high for the Incheon airport to feel comfortable letting me pass.
When the first check-in's thermometer read 37.5 degrees celsius, we both were like 0.o From what I heard later on, 37.5 is the cut off between being let through and not being let through. The worker gave me a badge on a lanyard and I was ushered off to a secondary check station. I wasn't alone though, thankfully. There were other Fulbrighters pulled aside to wait a little more to hopefully read less than 37.5 degrees.
I was getting really anxious though because my temperature would not go lower than 37.4 degrees after 10 minutes. I stripped down to the bare minimum, got a fan from a fellow Fulbrighter, and was trying everything in my power to cool down. But all the hours of listening to dramas and music on the plane and getting all worked up didn't help the in-ear thermometer to read lower.
After a while, they decided that since I am through a program, have a quarantining facility set aside for me, and my temperature was maybe reaching 37.3 degrees, that I am good enough to pass through. I did get a different colored document though saying that my temperature was on the higher end while entering the country, but I had all the documentation done properly.
I met back up with my cohort group and reached the Quarantine Application Downloading station. There, airport officials helped us set up our symptom reporting app used only during our quarantine. There was a 6-digit code that we had to have inputted by these staff members, and I laughed when I saw that the code was "CORONA."
We then headed off to another station to check our visas once more and exchange our badges in for another. We got our luggages easily and passed through customs in lightning speed. Outside of customs is the international arrivals gate. There, we had been corralled by a security checkpoint.
I am not exactly sure for what reason they have that checkpoint in place, but we had to wait for our program liaison to pick up the phone to instruct the security man that we were a part of Fulbright. Once the security man understood which program we were a part of, he lead us to the other side of the arrivals terminal to meet our program managers.
Interestingly enough, it was also the airport COVID-19 testing area. Our program managers gave us each a packet of documents to fill out and instructed us that plans have changed. We were supposed to all get COVID tested the following day in Sejong, but the new mandate requires all of us to get tested the same day of arriving. Luckily, we were not getting tested at the airport.
We all filled out documents and received a water bottle and a sandwich that we were able to eat either outside the airport before boarding our bus, or after getting COVID tested. Unfortunately, we had so many documents to fill out and were instructed to grab one personal item to take with us to the government quarantining/testing center.
It was a rush honestly. I filled out ARC forms, a third consent to quarantine form, another health condition report form, and more. We tagged all of our luggages and tried our best to have energy for the next leg of the journey.
step 7: covid-19 testing facility
We discarded our huge carry-ons with the bus drivers and boarded our busses with our personal items. This journey would take about an hour to and hour and a half to the Korean government quarantining facility. We honestly did not know exactly where we were going, but we were instructed my our program managers once more that we were to tell the facility workers that we *CANNOT* and *WILL NOT* stay overnight.
That being said, we left Incheon and headed down south. We passed many high-rise apartment buildings and random Christmas light installations until approaching the Ramada Hotel in Yongin, South Korea. Arriving there was really surreal... All workers wore hazmat suits, face shields, masks, and latex gloves. Everything on them was covered or protected.
We were instructed to exit the bus only a few at a time and to place all personal items on the ground to be sprayed down with a sanitizing solution. We then were instructed to form a line to receive a hefty amount of hand sanitizer and latex gloves to wear before we were able to get our now sanitized personal items and enter the building.
When we entered into the main lobby, we were met with multiple rows of tables and chairs, each with documents to fill out and a pen to utilize. Again, all personal items were kept alongside a wall while we were instructed on how to fill out all the documents.
Since I sat at front end of first row, I talked with the man in charge of our testing and so on (acting manager so to say, later known as "my favorite guy"). He was shocked we were all a part of the same cohort. I guess this hotel does not usually face bigger groups like this. We did tell him though that there was only 20-something of us currently there, but there will be a second bus that will arrive with the others in the next hour. Once he heard that, he really got shocked.
We were instructed to come up four at a time with all our required documents to be scanned and registered. After the first few of us started to get our documents processed, my favorite guy was on the phone sounding worried. He then told us at the front that we might have to stay overnight... I was telling him that we are not, that we are here only for getting tested and that we have a quarantine facility waiting for us in Sejong. This seemed like a problem.
After more people were getting processed, he talked with the hotel owner on the phone about getting us processed. He then tried to announce to us that he was instructed to have us all stay the night by the hotel owner. Since it was so late and that there are so many of us, he technically cannot get us all tested and let us all leave. And, from what we were instructed to say my our program's management, I told him, "I am sorry. We were told by our program that we can not stay the night. So, no."
You can see everyone thought my statement was a bit comical compared to the stressful underlying changes of circumstances. Even my favorite guy laughed, but he said anxiously that it wasn't up to him. I got up to the front desks along with another Fulbrighter to try and figure out what is happening to us all. We would only be able to stay the night if our program cleared it. After he attempted to contact our management for 5-10 minutes without any response, someone finally answered his calls. After a short phone conversation, he said that our program representative is okay with us staying the night.
And so, he had me deliver the announcement to my cohort got us all key cards to our rooms for the night within 15 minutes. Before being sent on our merry way up to our hotel rooms, we were gifted sandwiches by my favorite guy and instructed that our tests will be starting at 9pm, breakfast will be at 7am, and buses will be waiting for us after checkout at 11am. As the elevator door was closing, I waved to my favorite guy and said, "goodnight~!" - to which he and some of my elevator friends laughed.
My room was exactly like a hotel room, with one queen bed, one twin, a small desk, a TV, a bathroom, and a small nook for a mini-fridge and coffee pot. I called with friends until I took the COVID-19 test to tell them all of the craziness I have experienced thus far. I do have to say, finally taking the mask off longer than a few minutes to eat or drink was heaven.
My COVID-19 test experience was horrific, but it is because it was the really thorough exam. The test facilitator came to my room and conducted the test at my room's doorway. I was first instructed to put my mask below my chin so that both my nose and mouth are accessible. The mouth swab was first, and then hell began. A long q-tip was to be deep inside my nasal canal - so deep that I experienced pain like nothing ever before. I felt as though the q-tip was literally going into my brain. I felt so much by so many nerve endings that I never knew I had.
Not going to lie, I felt violated and cried. Halfway through the scraping on my left side, I pulled back and stifled a sob to recollect myself. You can see the test administrator hated seeing people in pain, but she had a job to do. She then tried to do my right side, and I tried to hold on as long as possible, finally pulling away again to hold onto the wall and really try not to cry. I apologized through tears, and didn't know if that was enough. I think she felt as though the test collection was thorough enough to say, "You're all done," and off she went. I closed the door and cried.
I tired to let myself have a little cry session while blowing my nose to help me feel more normal, but I could hear some cried coming from the hallway as well. Unanimously, the whole cohort agreed that the COVID-19 tests in the US are nothing compared to these...
People in the group chat started passing out and trying to catch up on some sleep after our crazy day. There was also talks about our second group that was supposed to come right after us had major complications at the airport similar to mine. We were all glad we made it at least this far of the journey and wanted to take it easy until our trip starts again the following day.
I wanted to decompress and take advantage of the small bathtub in my room. It's quite rare for Korean homes or apartments to have a bathtub, and I felt like it was the best treat I could give myself at the moment. Plus, washing up is sooooo needed after such a long journey.
I was, at most, ten minutes into my bath until someone in the groupchat said something along the lines of, "Guys, I just got a phone call to my room phone saying we have to pack up and leave?" WHAT? I thought we had no choice but to stay the night? What about all the people sleeping? What about me right now in the bath? Like, "right now" right now?
Some more people reported getting similar calls. I decided to get my butt out of the bath, dry up really quick, and make sure all of my stuff was packed. I wolfed down half of the sandwich the hotel gave us because I knew we weren't going to be able to eat anytime soon now...
Not five minutes after receiving the message, we started getting the hotel staff knock on our doors. This was meant to wake us up as well as get us OUT of our rooms. My favorite guy was the one that knocked on my door, and when I opened it up, I said, "good morning~!" and asked him what was happening. He laughed at my now running joke and said that it was an emergency - we have to leave now. He said our program's buses have arrived and we get to leave now. He did a sweep of my room and then had me leave the keycard in the room.
More and more of my cohort poured out into the hall and waited in the elevator area. Once everyone was more or less woken up and out of their rooms, we began going down to the lobby. Sure enough, our buses were outside. We said our thanks you's and our goodbye's to the hotel staff, and boarded our buses to go to Sejong.
step 8: off to sejong
On the road again ~
I passed out of a little bit of the trip and woke up as we neared Sejong city. The bus driver had an interesting driving technique as we entered Korea University's Sejong campus. Not only did he make the wrong turn and barely cleared a three point turn in a huge bus, but he tried repositioning the bus over and over again outside of our quarantine dorm.
I thought it was comical at first, but by the third attempt of adjusting and jolting us around, I was ready to get off that bus. We were met by the Fulbright 2020 Orientation Coordination Team at the dorm entrance and told to get out the filled out ARC documents we received in Incheon, all of our passport photos, our passport, and other documents we have already filled out.
We then were ushered through the dorm entrance gate to get one more temperature read, then on an elevator to our respective rooms. My room number is 5409, the last room to the end of the hallway on the fourth floor. Luckily, I was able to meet my next door neighbor on the elevator ride up.
As I stepped into my new room for the next two weeks, I was so, so relieved. Finally, the journey was over as of 12:15am 01/11/2021. I called my parents to finally say, "I've made it," and told them bits and pieces of my journey. After about 20 minutes, I received both of my main carriers from Taylor, my OCT Chief Officer and changed into comfortable clothes.
Not too long after, I climbed up the ladder of my bunk bed and said goodnight. The next day was a free day where I would get more settled, and the following would be the start of Fulbright's 2020-2021 ETA Orientation.
For information about my quarantine dorm and what the 2020 ETA Orientation looks like, stay tuned~!
The following statements, thoughts and information presented are my own and do not represent the U.S. Department of State or its Fulbright Program.
