Plane Tickets

 The plane tickets have been purchased! We will be in South Korea for a full 3 weeks. To me it feels like a long time to be away from home. But in reality, it's significantly shorter than we had originally planned. Several years back Luke had shared his desire to move to Korea for 3 years allowing our family to be completely immersed in the culture and language of the country. Then it moved down to one year, followed by 3 months, and now 3 weeks. While the idea of living in Korea for an extended period of time sounded exciting and adventurous, there were just too many obstacles. If I pulled the boys out of their charter school to move to Korea, there was no guarantee they would get back into that school upon our return. If I left my job, there was no system in place that would allow me to resume my position when I returned. Each summer something seemed to come up that made an extended trip impossible. So now here we are. Looking ahead to what can only be described as a vacation, not an extended stay.

Even so, a 3 week trip will afford us the opportunity to travel around the country of South Korea. And it will allow us the time to adjust to the time change so that we can enjoy our travel. The jet lag from Michigan to Korea is brutal. They are 14 hours ahead of us, so it is literally day there when it is night here. The last two times we traveled there it took us almost the entire trip to adjust to the time change and then we had to come back home again.

Buying international plane tickets for a family of 4 is not an easy task. Well, maybe it would be easy if we had unlimited funds to draw from, but that is not our situation. I'm a schoolteacher after all. I'm not exactly rolling in the dough. I tried so many different options in order to find the cheapest yet most convenient route. Chicago to Seoul with a layover in Turkey. Detroit to Seoul. Detroit to Tokyo and then a separate reservation from Tokyo to Seoul. Chicago to Los Angeles with a separate booking from LA to Seoul. Booking through Travelocity. Booking through Chase Travel. Booking directly through the airline. I wrote each option down on a yellow sticky note along with the price and the number of hours spent traveling. Is it better to save some money yet have a more grueling trip with a layover? Is it worth paying more money to be able to choose our seats ahead of time? Is it worth spending a night or two in Tokyo even though that means spending less time in Korea? 

We weighed all the options. We eventually settled on an option that wasn't the cheapest, but was doable, and gave us the least grueling travel schedule. We are flying out of O'Hare on Korean Air (the best airline out there in my humble opinion!) and landing in Seoul Incheon Airport. No layovers. No plane changes. No nights in a different country. One flight to Korea and one flight back. One long 14 hour flight. I booked directly through Korean Air because that seemed the cheapest option that also allowed us to choose our seats. Seat placement is important on such a long flight! We will all be sitting next to each other- 3 seats across including one window and one aisle seat, and then the fourth seat directly across the aisle. So only one poor soul will be stuck in the middle seat. I'm guessing it will be me. Korean Air has bassinets for babies. I chose seats that were several rows away from the bassinets in case of crying babies. Although if there is a very crabby baby aboard, we will probably hear it no matter where we sit! I'm eager to see the bassinets again. Our dear Jordan slept in one 15 years ago when we traveled home with him.

Now the first major step in planning is complete. There is still much left to do, but a departure date is set. Let the countdown begin!