13 hours. 13 hours in the air. So close to space but not quite there. 13 hours of confinement, even though the seats were freaking comfortable. Jang Mi was  Looking out the window, the sun was out but there was nothing below us but probably what was farmland.

 

    I do believe we were about 6 hours into our flight, but it was going to be a long and grueling 7 hours. I wanted off the plane because my claustrophobia was kicking in and my anxiety was through the roof. I think it was just because of my excitement.

 

    Earlier, the flight attendants served food and honestly, it was one of the driest foods I have ever had. But I couldn’t really complain because well I paid for it.

 

    Now they were passing out snacks for the 2nd time around. Mostly everyone was fast asleep when they passed by so they just skipped them.

 

    One of the flight attendants came over to me and Jang Mi since the both of us were wide awake.

 

    “What would you like?”

 

    “I’ll have water and some crackers,” I said. The flight attendant handed me both before looking at Jang Mi.

 

    “I’ll have the same as her,”

 

    “Alright. Enjoy,” she smiled before pushing the cart further down the aisle.

 

    As we ate the snacks, I decided to look out the window to see the scenery below. This time we were over water and I wondered if we were somewhere over Alaska on the same day or past the International Date Line above Russia in the next day.

 

    “Do you think we’re in the past or the future?” I asked Jang Mi as I turned towards her.

 

    She looked at me confused.

 

    “Are we still on Friday or are we on Saturday?”

 

    If you really thought about it, it was weird how this kind of flights worked. It was seriously starting to give me a headache the further I thought about it.

 

    “I don’t know,” she shrugged as she looked utterly confused.

 

    “Nevermind,” I sighed as I turned back to look out the window. 

 

    

Arrival to Incheon Airport

 

   “WE'RE HERE!” Mi Na exclaimed as she jumped up and down.

 

    “Cool it, we still need to go through immigration,” Yu Gyeong said as she rolled her eyes.

 

    “That’s going to be a pain in the ,” I muttered as I picked up my luggage and followed the steady stream of people going down the hallway. Some were rushing to go through immigration while others, like us, were taking their time even though I’m sure all of us wanted to bomb rush the whole place.

 

    “We wouldn’t know,” shrugged A Yeong.

 

    I kept forgetting that none of them have traveled out of the country before. I mentally face-palmed as we neared immigration. Of course, it was going to be packed. Of course, it was going to take like an hour or even 2 hours before we got to see freedom.

 

    “Well it's hell, especially going back to the U.S,” I sighed as I remembered the many times I had traveled out of the country with my family.

 

    Even as we figured out which line we had to get into the lines kept getting longer and longer.

 

    “Get your passports and visas out,” I told the girls as I pulled my own out.

 

    They followed my lead as we inched our way forwarded.

 

    “Do we need to go individually or as a group?” Mi Na asked.

 

    “We’re traveling together, aren’t we? So we go as a group,” I never had a problem whenever I traveled with co-workers and went as a group so I don’t see why we would have a problem now.

 

    “Alright, if you say so,”

 

    “But where are we even staying?” I asked as I mentally facepalmed because I totally forgot about that. I knew they were going to ask and I needed an answer.

 

    “Oh, I looked this place up on the plane. We can stay at this Airbnb,” Hyun Ok said as she pulled out her phone and went to search for whatever it was.

 

    “See,” she said as she showed me where we could be staying.

 

    “I actually already booked it and paid the security deposit. So it’s ours for a whole 2 weeks until we find a place,” Hyun Ok smiled content with her accomplishment.

 

    “Good job, but what’s the address?” I asked.

 

    “Oh, hold on,” she said she searched for the address.

 

    Once she found it, she gave me the address and I wrote it down so I could have it on hand when they would ask.

 

    The line was slowly inching its way forward. Some of the security guards were fast with the process while others were slow or some people were just having some really hard times getting their stuff together.

 

    After about 45 minutes or even more, it honestly felt like forever, we were finally next. We gathered our stuff and rushed over to the counter.

 

    “Hello good evening,” the guard said in English.

 

    “H-Hi,” I said nervously. It wasn’t because he was cute or anything, I was just anxious and wanted to get out of here. But he was cute, nonetheless.

 

    “Passports and visas ladies,” he told us.

 

    We handed him both documents as he went through each one individually and checked that our information matched on each one before stamping a page in our passports.

 

    “Where are you all staying? I need an address,”

 

    “We’re staying at an Airbnb. The address is Hongik University Stn. Hongdae, Seodaemun-gu,”

 

    “Okay,” he nodded his head before finishing up with the passports and typing something onto the computer.

 

 On he was finished with each one of our passports, he handed them all back. I grabbed them as he smiled at us.

 

    “Enjoy your trip ladies. Have a nice day,”

 

    “Awesome,” I whispered as we rushed out from the immigration checkpoint and followed the signs down to the luggage pick up.

 

    “I was holding my breath,” Jang Mi breathed as we walked down the long hallway of the airport and made our down the escalators.

 

    “Well, we’re almost home free,” I smiled as I picked up the pace to the luggage pick up.

 

    Once we got the area to pick up our bags, we looked for where they had our bags. We check the monitors for each arrival and finally located our flight.

 

    There were a lot of people from the flight as they gathered around the conveyor belt as luggage slowly passed us all.

 

    “There’s mine!” A Yeong exclaimed as she pushed her way through people to get her suitcase. She dragged her suitcase off the conveyor belt before checking it for any signs of damage. She shrugged before pulling the handle up to roll it over to us.

 

     "I"ll watch the stuff, go and find your suitcases," she said as she dropped her backpack to the floor. The rest of us looked at each other before taking off our own backpacks and setting them on the floor next to hers. We all shuffled over to the conveyor belt to see if we could spot out suitcases.

 

     "What does yours look like again?" Jang Mi asked me as she searched for hers.

 

     "It has a blue ribbon on it. It's a hard black suitcase with Calvin Klein on it," I said as I tried spotting it. My carry on and backpack matched the large suitcase. Although it was a pretty penny for all three items, I honestly loved it because it was Calvin Klein.

 

     "Found mine!" Mi Na exclaimed as she excused herself through the crowd to get to her suitcase. She too dragged it off the conveyor belt before making her way back towards A Yeong.

 

    “Hey I can’t find mine,” Yu Gyeong said as she paced up and down the conveyor belt. There were less and less people by it and after a few more minutes it stopped as staff went to line up luggage that wasn’t claimed.

 

    “Maybe it’s over there,” I pointed as we all went over there.

 

     "I'm going to go get two carts," A Yeong said as she went over to grab two carts while the rest of us went to see if we could find Yu Gyeong’s bag.

 

    “Do you see it?” Jang Mi asked as she searched the rows of luggage.

 

    “Nooo!” Yu Gyeong whined as we continued to search. I decided to go over to the counter to see if maybe they could track it down.

 

    “Excuse me,” I said as I went over. It was honestly weird speaking Korean to someone that wasn’t family but I was going to have to get used to it. The lady behind the counter looked up as I approached.

 

    “How can I help you?” she asked.

 

    “My friend can’t find her bag and I wanted to make sure it arrived,” I said.

 

    “What flight?”

 

    I told her the flight number and Yu Gyeong’s information.

 

    “It arrived at Incheon. Is it not out there?” she asked.

 

    “No,”

 

    “Maybe someone grabbed it by accident. If they do return it then we will give you a call,”

 

    “Oh, we don’t have a Korean phone number,”

 

    She looked at me like I was a lost case, but smiled.

 

    “We can send you an email or something,”

 

    “Oh that works,” I said as I wrote down mine and Yu Gyeong’s email on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

 

    “We’ll keep in contact,” she said.

 

    Sighing heavily, I left the counter and tried to figure out how I was going to break it to Yu Gyeong.

 

    “So what did she say?”

 

    “It arrived, but she said that maybe someone picked it up by accident,” I said slowly as I looked over to Yu Gyeong.

 

    “ALL MY STUFF WAS IN THERE!” she exclaimed as she grabbed me by my shoulders and shook my soul out of my body.

 

    “Calm down, hopefully, who ever took it will either return it to the airport and they'll call me. Remember I wrote my number on there,”

 

    “But we don’t even have service here,” Mi Na pointed out.

 

    “You guys don’t. I do,” I smiled evilly as I showed them my phone and the full bars it had.

 

    “What the hell?” A Yeong said as she pulled out her own phone but she had zero service.

 

    “How come you have service and we don’t?” Hyun OK said as she also checked her phone along with everyone.

 

    “Because I have T-Mobile. It’s included in my plan. I have full data and text like normal. But I get charged for getting phone calls or making phone calls unless it’s over Wi-Fi. But in this case, it’s important. So it doesn’t matter that I’m probably going to get charged,” I explained to them as they looked at me.

 

    “Well you’re going to let me us your phone for the Internet,” Hyun Ok said as she tried to take my phone.

 

    “No, you're not. First, why don’t we go to the Airbnb and try to figure what we’re going to do?” I said as I looked over to Yu Gyeong who looked like she was going to go on a rampage any second.

 

    “Alright,” Yu Gyeong said as she placed her backpack on the cart.

 

     "I'm going to get another one," Hyun Ok said as she fast walked over to the carts and pulled one.

 

     I didn't even realize how much stuff we were even traveling with. Once we got our stuff situated onto all three carts, Mi Na, A Yeong and I pushed the carts out of the luggage pick up area down the hallway towards the exit of