Travel Story pt 1
On January 4, 2021 by Keturah HaferkampTraveling during 2020 required LOTS of prayers. We are so grateful for the committed individuals who 1. knew we were taking a trip fraught with challenges and 2. who prayed for our health, safety and endurance! God bless you!
These next few posts contain the travel story–just a recounting of some of our experiences.
InCOVID: ORD security
We started at O’hare International Airport (ORD) around 8am on a Sunday in mid-November. At baggage check the attendant asked if we would like to have separate rows each to ourselves. “The flight is very empty,” she explained. We could have more room to rest. We said yes!
InCOVID: all aboard
- KoreanAir is awesome
- Not until we were about 4 hours into the flight did we realize we left a banana in the kitchen trash can! That would be smelly later.
- Our flight had about 12 passengers total. It was very tranquil and socially distanced.
InCOVID: Immigration temperature screening
We landed around 4pm after 14 hours of flying. There was the never-ending checking of temperatures and paperwork. My (K) temperature was too high at 37.5 degrees and so I was sent to wait in a special area where personnel buzzed around saying things and taking my temperature several more times before deciding that I was just overheated from carrying several kilos of luggage whilst swiftly walking through airport lines and security screens.
Crisis averted. I was able to rejoin my family and continue through to the next part of the immigration process.
InCOVID: Immigration Self-Quarantine Safety Protection app
Several young workers asked us questions and helped us to upload a government-sponsored app to our phones. The app served as a tracking device and a daily COVID monitor for temperatures and symptom-checks. Each day, twice a day, we were responsible to take our temperatures using government issued thermometers, record them on the app, and indicate any symptoms we were experiencing. This happened every morning and every evening for 14 days.