I should not be in Korea right now. I won’t even consider the practical and societal reasons why I never realistically thought I’d be living in an Asian country. Based on the events that happened on the day of my departure, I really shouldn’t have made it. But as stated in The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
I woke up at 5am to make it to my 8:12am flight from Detroit to Chicago. After all of the extremely last-minute things that I did during my last morning in America, we left at about 6:45. I made it to the check-in computer at 7:13 and the screen told me it was too late for me to check-in. I figured it wanted me to be there one hour early and I was only one minute late.
I talked to someone behind the counter and got my bags checked. I asked the lady if the problem was that I had to be there an hour before my departure time. She told me that I had to be there 2 hours early (because of my international flight) but since they weren’t busy, I was okay. I had assumed that since my first flight was domestic, I didn’t have to be there 2 hours early. This story could have ended right here!!!
I made it through security and to the gate with plenty of time to spare. Snow started falling in Chicago and my flight was delayed a bit. While I waited, I noticed on the screens at the other gates that all of the flights to Chicago after mine were cancelled!
When I called STA Travel to book my flight to Korea a few weeks ago, I was originally given a 10:55am flight to Chicago. I had gone to the University of Michigan with my sister later that day and stopped by the STA Travel office there to finalize everything. One of the agents there suggested that I take the earlier flight in case of delays. If it wasn’t for her, this story would have been over here!!!
We boarded the flight in Detroit and had to sit on the plane with the engines off for 30 minutes because of delays at Chicago. If I had kept that later flight and even if it wasn’t canceled, the delays would have caused me to miss my flight to Korea because my layover would’ve only been 45 minutes. Again, this story would have been over here!!!
During my flight to Korea, we stop in Tokyo to change planes. The flight to Tokyo was also delayed due to plane maintenance and we left at 1:15pm instead of noon. I overheard someone saying we would not make the flight to Seoul that night! But during the flight, the pilot announced that all of the connecting flights out of Tokyo would be held so we wouldn’t have to worry about missing out flights. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have made it to Korea until the next day (if I was lucky).
We landed in Tokyo about 15 minutes before my flight to Seoul was scheduled to take off. But that flight was delayed for an hour to ensure we all made it on.
All of the events that occurred during that really long day feeds my belief that this is something that is meant to happen for me and I am exactly where I am supposed to be in life. What do you think???
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Sounds like it was meant to be or at least you were extremely lucky and should have played the lotto before you left.
I am inspired by your ambition and courage to do something so different.
I hope everything is going well there.
Thanks Fred! I like to believe it was meant to be but it could’ve been the luckiest day of most people’s lives. But I think things like that happen when you do things completely out of the ordinary. When everything is out of your control and you’re at the mercy of so many other people, if you want it bad enough, somehow everything works out.