Sunday, January 17, 2010

Matt's travel

Matt is officially in Korea. He left Saturday morning on a flight from Wichita Falls to Dallas at 630. There was some miscommunication that caused him to arrive at the airport only 40 minutes before the flight but luckily there wasn't a problem with that. It was a pretty small airport.

The layover between the first two flights was so small (45 minutes to begin with, a late flight and early boarding) that he didn't get to get food or call. He had to go outside of security once he landed in SeaTac because he had to have the second leg of his ticket printed. Getting the second bording pass and going through security again meant that he didn't get food until nearly 2-more and he'd been up already for 12 hours. But he got lunch, boarded the flight and then turned off his phone :(

His last flight was 12 hours long. He had trouble sleeping but luckily they fed him two full meals and two pretty substantial snacks. He complained that most of the drinks were alcoholic so he drank water and orange juice- the only other two options.

Once he landed he said there were people specifically hired to help military members navigate through the airport and get where they needed to be. So he got his luggage, bought his bus tickets and was off on the first bus ride to Osan. Once in Osan he got to email and say he was safe but didn't have much time, his second bus was arriving soon. The first bus ride was only about an hour but the second was about 4 hours. Once he arrived in Kunsan he was informed that all the billiting (hotels) on base was full and he had to take a taxi to Gunsan (20 minutes away). Poor guy. At this point he'd been traveling for almost 36 hours and was exhausted from not sleeping hardly at all (he doesn't generally sleep on airplanes and the 12 hour flight was no exception).

He emailed again this evening (tomorrow morning for him) to let me know how the trip went. He said the computer he was on had letters both in English and in Korean and he hopes the internet will work with his computer there.

His job will start soon and I'll tell you all about what he gets to do when I get more information!

2 comments:

Montefusco Family said...

Glad to know he got there safe & I hope the year flies by for the both of you.
I'm here if you wanna whine, I'll just whine back ;)
A fair trade. LOL

Crystal and Billy said...

Thanks for the update. Glad he made it safely! I hope he gets some rest soon.