The Stuff of Nightmares
The past few nights I've been having dreams about going to China, mostly involving problems with visas and getting to the airport on time. Of course, whenever I travel internationally, you'd think I have OCD--I always end up checking things 10 times before we go.
Little did I know, that OCD totally saved us this time!
For the past two months, I've been thinking that we leave on Wednesday and get back on Sunday. Today I went to print the itinerary, which didn't have any days on it, just dates, and I noticed we leave on October 3rd. All good. Then I happened to look at my watch to see the time and I noticed that the date said the 2nd. I wasn't even thinking about it consciously, but my brain knew something was off. A few minutes later I looked at the itinerary again, and then my watch again. I double-checked the calendar on the computer, and then a hard copy of the calendar. TUESDAY is the 3rd, not Wednesday! All this time, I'd been looking at the dates for the 4-day tour instead of our 5-day tour.
We'd already bought our bus tickets because it's Chuseok, the biggest holiday of the year and an incredibly busy travel time (think of Thanksgiving in the U.S.--in fact, it's a harvest holiday as well). The time we'd wanted for Wednesday was sold out, so we'd bought some for a bus that left 15 minutes later. We didn't have a lot of leeway because we had to be at the airport between 7 and 7:30 a.m., and the first bus leaves at 4 a.m., and it takes about 3 hours to get there from Daejeon!
Joel was in the middle of teaching class, so I barged in, totally panicked, and I took over his class while he went to the bus station, which luckily is right by our school (and apartment). Even more luckily, we managed to get seats on the 4:18 bus.
When we got home, I did find an email from the travel agent about the itinerary, so it's not like we would've been totally screwed. We would've had to go up tonight, though, because the airport bus station closes by the time we get home, and it would've been a lot more money with the hotel added on. Still. For a few moments I felt the horror that usually only happens in my dreams--what if I hadn't noticed??
So, we're leaving dark and early tomorrow morning and we get back on Saturday. It's unlikely I'll be posting here, but who knows. In the meantime, if you go here, you can see our itinerary.
And for the parents and grandparents--traveling in China is perfectly safe, and we're even going on a tour group, so everything's taken care of for us. So don't worry, OK?
Zaijian! (Mandarin for goodbye)
Little did I know, that OCD totally saved us this time!
For the past two months, I've been thinking that we leave on Wednesday and get back on Sunday. Today I went to print the itinerary, which didn't have any days on it, just dates, and I noticed we leave on October 3rd. All good. Then I happened to look at my watch to see the time and I noticed that the date said the 2nd. I wasn't even thinking about it consciously, but my brain knew something was off. A few minutes later I looked at the itinerary again, and then my watch again. I double-checked the calendar on the computer, and then a hard copy of the calendar. TUESDAY is the 3rd, not Wednesday! All this time, I'd been looking at the dates for the 4-day tour instead of our 5-day tour.
We'd already bought our bus tickets because it's Chuseok, the biggest holiday of the year and an incredibly busy travel time (think of Thanksgiving in the U.S.--in fact, it's a harvest holiday as well). The time we'd wanted for Wednesday was sold out, so we'd bought some for a bus that left 15 minutes later. We didn't have a lot of leeway because we had to be at the airport between 7 and 7:30 a.m., and the first bus leaves at 4 a.m., and it takes about 3 hours to get there from Daejeon!
Joel was in the middle of teaching class, so I barged in, totally panicked, and I took over his class while he went to the bus station, which luckily is right by our school (and apartment). Even more luckily, we managed to get seats on the 4:18 bus.
When we got home, I did find an email from the travel agent about the itinerary, so it's not like we would've been totally screwed. We would've had to go up tonight, though, because the airport bus station closes by the time we get home, and it would've been a lot more money with the hotel added on. Still. For a few moments I felt the horror that usually only happens in my dreams--what if I hadn't noticed??
So, we're leaving dark and early tomorrow morning and we get back on Saturday. It's unlikely I'll be posting here, but who knows. In the meantime, if you go here, you can see our itinerary.
And for the parents and grandparents--traveling in China is perfectly safe, and we're even going on a tour group, so everything's taken care of for us. So don't worry, OK?
Zaijian! (Mandarin for goodbye)
posted by AJ at 7:10 AM
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