WOW! I can't believe 4.5 months in Korea is over. I enjoyed my time in Korea, but I am happy to be home. I left Korea on December 17th, a day after my last final. Right after I left, it snowed and Korea started to crack down on restrictions. I heard that restaurants weren't letting people in if you weren't vaccinated within the last 6 months, which would have posed a problem for many of us, as the majority of the population was vaccinated around April. We could have gotten boosters there, but something about getting vaccinated in a foreign country scares me.
Starting on December 6th, the US requires a negative COVID test to be taken within one day of departure. One day means that it can be taken at any time on the day before you leave. I took my test the day before I left at the Yonsei University Severance Hospital. There is a specific email to email if you are flying to Hawaii, which is found on the Severance Hospital website. You can pick up your results later in the day, but I went to pick it up the day after. I took Hawaiian Airlines flight HA460, which is a direct flight from Incheon to Honolulu. Last month, Hawaiian sent us an email saying that the flight time was being pushed up to 9:25PM. It's recommended to get to the airport 3 hours before your flight, but this would have been a challenge. Traffic starts to build up around 5PM, and it usually takes an hour to get to the airport from Gwanak-gu without traffic and probably around an hour and a half with traffic. I decided to be safe rather than sorry, so I left Gwanak-gu around 4:15 and arrived at the airport around 5:15. I used the Kakao Taxi app to get a ride to the airport, and it was 60,000 won. My taxi driver showed up within 5 minutes. There was no way I was going to take the subway to the airport because I had so much luggage with me. When I got to the airport, I had to wait around a bit because the Hawaiian Airlines counter did not open until 5:40. Luckily, there were lots of those carts to hold luggage for free. At the check in counter, I dropped off my luggage and they also checked my COVID test results. They also gave a CDC attestation to fill out. I went through security and immigration, where they collected my ARC. Since the flight was pretty late, a lot of the restaurants were closed. I ended up eating Paris Baguette, but I got fed on the plane about an hour after departure. We also got fed about an hour before landing.
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