International Date Line What??

For those of you who have traveled outside the US, you may have experienced the question from friends and relatives: "What time is it there?"

Ed and I thought we had figured it out; that was until two days ago when all out panic occurred (okay only on my end).
Let me start from the beginning. All summer long we've been telling people that Yeosu (South Korea in general) is 12 hours ahead. We were certain.

We received our travel itinerary a few weeks ago. We both looked it over (quickly I might add) and saw no problems. We have our six hour lay over in New York, then off to South Korea on a 14 1/2 hour plane flight, take another plane down to Gwangju and bam! We are there a mere 40 hours later. We leave on Friday and get there Saturday night. No problem, right? Right.

Rewind to two days ago. We started getting emails from Canadian Connections about last minute details, like who is going to pick us up from the airport, how to exchange money, etc. Well, Ed takes out our travel itinerary and looks at it closely this time. He realized that it shows us leaving JFK on Friday at 2:00 pm and arriving in Seoul at 5:30 pm. But wait. 5:30 pm on Friday??? That would mean we would be staying in Seoul for a whole day before our next flight to Gwangju. We could take a bus (or several for that matter) and get down there before our next flight even took off. This didn't make sense to either of us. Could we have been wrong with the time zone thing?

Enter panic mode (okay not so much panic as general confusion and lots of questions that ran along the line of "How does this time thing work?").


Well several hours later (including phone calls, internet serches and an extensive world map drawn on a paper plate) we figured out the answer: The International Date Line. That mystical line that only exists on school globes. The line that is the backside of the Prime Meridian. The answer to our "How does this happen?" question. Ahhh the International Date Line. Okay now it makes sense. (kind of). I knew it was there all along. I just momentarily forgot (kind of).

Either way, 12 hours ahead or behind or sideways, I know that I get to Gwangju on Saturday. That's good enough for me.

One Month to go

Well we have one month before we head off to Yeosu, South Korea. Nothing much to report other than I have not learned much Korean and Ed has. At least one of us will be able to communicate!

Relaxing in VT for the summer. I expect the rest of the month to pass by pretty quickly...and the next thing I will know, I'll be on a plane for thirty hours to Korea (okay at least traveling for thirty hours or so...the actual plane ride is only 15 hours).

P.S. for all you Nutters that may read this...congratulations on becoming an A school! We worked hard and our efforts have paid off!