Leap Of Faith

Here we go again I thought as I anxiously boarded the plane for South Korea. It felt like just yesterday that we were on the plane flying to Venezuela for the first time. Venezuela always felt like such a distant country until South Korea. We were about to fly a whopping 14 hours! On top of all of this we were set to start our new lives during one of the worst pandemics the world has seen but we were ready for our leap of faith.

Our first views of the ROK ( I will use this abbreviation from now on which stands for Republic Of Korea) was an eerily empty airport as we went through customs. Our next two weeks would consist of quarantine and lots of Q-tips shoved up our noses. It was very hard to get our bearings while stuck in quarantine, even with a view from our apartment on the 23rd floor. I spent many hours just looking out the window at all the tall apartment buildings and mountains in the distance trying to figure out which way was east. Prior to living in the ROK we had always lived on a lake to the east of us making it easy to determine where we were.

The two weeks passed by and we were eventually able to leave our apartment. We quickly realized just how strict the ROK was being with not a single person maskless and groups of 4 being the max you could gather in. We were treated to authentic Korean food right away that day at a little hole in the wall restaurant. I had bulgogi and Maddie had bibimbap.

We were quickly whisked away to our school KIS (Korea International School) where we explored it before hiking home with the director of the school. The hike home was a bit hard after being stuck in quarantine for two weeks but also because Koreans do not believe in switchbacks. Every time the trail came to a hill or mountain it just went straight up and over. The hike was lovely and filled with many beautiful views. It was the perfect end to our first day out of quarantine and definitely justified the leap of faith we took.