MRED Around the World student Michael Glauser writes about the tricky travel between South Korea and China: 

Today was a day unlike any other thus far–it was our first travel day as a group. After the usual excellent breakfast at the Seoul Ramada, we headed to Incheon to board our plane at the world’s best airport, ranked No. 1 for nine years running.

On our way to the airport we got a good view of Korea’s new development strategy: if there’s no land left, just reclaim the sea. Because much of the ocean is rather shallow around Korea, and because land is at such a premium, they simply hall in dirt to expand their real estate — quite genius actually!

At the airport, some of us caught up on work back home while others dined on “dinosaur dunkin’ donuts.”

After a rather smooth flight, we got a little nervous as Chinese customs didn’t seem to want to let us in the country. We had all of the customs agents confused as to what to do with us because we didn’t have visas (which are not required because we are staying for less than 72 hours). Luckily these agents’ supervisors knew what to do and we all made it through.

We met Amy, or amazing ISA agent, and took the Maglev super train at over 300 km per hour to our bus, which then took us the remainder of the way to our hotel in Shanghai.

Dinner on the town proved to be exciting as Joe Evans chomped on a duck head. The group activities ended after a stroll through a narrow winding market and our favorite Asian corn-pop ice cream tubes.

Evan and Mike (being the overachievers they always are) still had oodles of energy and utilized the hotel gym, and lthough the amount of weight each lifted differed drastically, we’re sure it will help them both impress the Shanghai Tinder crowds.