Embarking on trip to Korea

Ann, left, and her sisters Lauren, center, and Ellen feed ducks at a pond near their house in the suburbs of Texas. They'll soon be leaving the warm weather for a chilly spring in Korea. / Courtesy of Jane Han

By Jane Han

That time of the year is finally upon me.

The time where I have to embark on a grueling 15-hour daytime flight with my three kids to reunite with family and friends back in the motherland ― Korea.

Most of my mom friends here in the U.S. countdown to going home out of excitement, but I'm counting down out of dreadfulness.

I miss family and friends; but I don't know what it is.

Maybe it's the inconvenience of living out of luggage for two to three months; maybe it's because I'll be away from my husband, my biggest supporter; or maybe it's because I just have too many little people with me.

Probably all of these reasons and more combined make it very ― very ― painful for me to leave home.

But regardless of how I generally feel about trips, we made the decision to go on this one because my father will be celebrating his 70th birthday, a pretty major milestone we should most certainly be a part of, and my one and only sister will be giving birth to twins in April.

Pretty good reasons, right?

It's been close to two years since we were last in Korea.

Lauren was just born in Seoul and her twin sisters were less than two-years-old.

Now, Lauren is two and Ellen and Ann are almost four.

This puts us at a whole new and different bracket in terms of in-flight difficulty.

While we don't have to worry about crying infant-age babies anymore, we have both toddler and post-toddler funsters, who are not only capable of still crying like an infant-age child, but also incapable of sitting still for, oh, one minute.

I recall my recent eight-hour flight from Hawaii in July.

The first couple hours went by like a breeze.

I was equipped with sticker books, coloring books, Play-Doh and snacks of all kinds, but it's the last three to four hours that really felt brutal.

That was an eight-hour flight and our upcoming one is almost double the time, so good luck to me and my husband.

I've been looking at some sticker books and coloring books yet again, but I don't know, they all feel so old and boring now. I wonder how the girls will feel.

I need something unusual, something shockingly original.

Ideas are welcome. I have exactly one week left before departure.

Besides preparing for the flight, which feels so monumentally challenging that it's keeping me from thinking beyond that, I'm trying to plan out my almost three-month stay in Korea.

Yes, it's long. It's a quarter of a year so I really feel the need to make our time there equally fun and productive.

I originally explored the possibility of sending the kids off to preschool.

Since they don't have to deal with language barrier, I'm almost certain that they'll love school in Korea.

But despite how tempting it is, I'll most likely avoid that option because of Ellen's peanut allergy.

I've heard from other parents who have had a poor experience with preschools in Korea handling food allergies, especially potentially fatal ones like peanut.

So how would I keep the three little monsters occupied?

I have a feeling touring kids cafes is going to get tiring pretty early on.

Hence I'm trying to research some Korean language ``hagwon,'' or private academies, for children or art schools where they can spend one or two hours a day, make friends and get some sort of Korean school experience.

I haven't gotten a chance to dig in much yet so don't have any information to share. But I'm sure I'll find some interesting things, which I'll write about at a later time.

Meanwhile, Ellen and Ann will be prematurely discontinuing their semester here next week due to the trip.

Ann says she'll miss school and her teachers, but Ellen is all smiles. She's just glad to get out of the building full of people speaking English.

The next couple weeks is going to be yet another big transition for the girls.

We're eager, anxious and excited all at once as we prepare for our big trip ahead.

Stay tuned for our adventure!