The Second Half will be Busy!

 I'm working hard to plan the second half of our trip to Korea. The first 10 days we will be in Seoul. Seoul is a busy city with lots to see and do, but we will be at the same location for 10 days in a row. Pretty chill. The last time I visited Korea I was blindsided by the intensity of the jet lag. I knew it would be rough. It was gobs harder than I anticipated. On our second trip we used Skype to communicate with Jordan who was 3 at the time. He was staying with my parents while we traveled to get Aiden. I missed him so much! We called him every day at about 7:30 a.m. Michigan time. Despite my love for that sweet boy and my desire to hear everything he had to say, my biggest memory of those Skype calls was that I could barely keep my eyes open. I was unbelievably tired. 

On this trip we have the luxury of spending 3 weeks in Korea instead of 6 days. I'm going to take full advantage and keep us all hunkered down in one city for 10 days so that we can allow our bodies plenty of time to acclimate to the time change. After those 10 days are up, there will be no rest for the weary. We will be busy!

No reservations or tickets have been officially purchased yet. But pricing and availability has all been checked and seems doable. So this is what we are planning right now.

First we will take the bullet train to Gwangju (or Kwangju- I've seen it spelled both ways) to spend some time in Luke's birth city.  Three days later we hope to take a flight to Jeju Island. The flights are quite cheap and are only 55 minutes in length. It's almost the same price as taking a ferry which would be 2 1/2 hours in length. We can take a one way flight to Jeju Island where we hope to stay for 4 nights. The island looks beautiful and has a very similar geographic feel to Hawaii. It is also the setting of the book The Island of the Sea Women, a book I loved! I'm excited to see and learn more about the Haenyeo or "Women of the Sea." Search it up if you want to know what I'm talking about. After four days soaking in the beauty of the island, we hope to take another one way flight to the city of Busan. Busan is a beautiful, touristy coastal city. Three days later we will take the bullet train back to Seoul where we will spend one night before flying back home. You thought I might have been exaggerating when I said the second half will be busy. But now you see I'm right!

All of these plans take a lot of coordinating between public transportation schedules, airline schedules, lodging, on and on. I don't fancy myself a big vacation planner, but I may be changing my ways! There is no choice but to plan a bit if we hope to squeeze all of this in.

Thirty four more days, people!

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