After the mix-up with the flights dad, Kal and I left for Toronto on around 2:30am Thursday morning. My flight to Chicago was delayed because of a snowstorm and we sat on the runway for about an hour before finally taking off. The pilot said something about all other flights being cancelled, but because we were already on the plane we had the go-ahead to take off. I was a little nervous about making my connecting flight in Chicago, but no fear, it was dalayed too (of course)!. So, after 6 hours at O-Hare I was finally on my way to Korea. It was weird taking off and saying goodbye to North America for 8 months, but I was definitely excited to get to my new home. The flight was pretty uneventful, I thought 14 hours of sitting would feel a lot longer. I slept for about 7 hours and watched a couple of movies, and we were there in no time.
When I got to Incheon airport the 'porter guy' was nowhere to be found, but he showed up after about 15 minutes so I didn't worry too much. Apparently they usually show up with video cameras so that they can show videos of all the teachers arriving at the school's New Years party, but I'm definitely not upset that there were no cameras for me. After 24 hours of travelling I'm sure I wasn't a pretty sight.
So, the 'porter guy' brought me out to a 'shuttle guy', and as Charles promised it took about an hour and a half to get to Bundang. I slept for some of it, but was dazzled by the neon lights, crazy drivers and honking horns.. and surprised to see how much English there really is on all of the signs. Kind of like driving around in Richmond.
I got to Bundang around midnight Seoul time, and Charles was there to meet me and bring me up to my apartment. He also called Wennie, the teacher who I had been in touch with, who had stayed in to welcome me. She has been a lifesaver! She took me out to dinner (where she ordered the only dish she knows and I ended up eating ham) and to a corner store to get groceries. I decided to buy a bottle of the infamous Soju to give it a try ($1 for the size of a beer bottle but it's 20% alcohol) and I'm not going to lie it's pretty disgusting. I'm assured I'll get used to it. So, I went home, unpacked and went to bed around 4am.. and woke up at 10am Saturday. My body must have been in shock or something, because we all know I can normally sleep for 12 hours easily.
Here are some pictures... as you can see I'm in desperate need of some furniture for the living room. I think the beds are usually downstairs, but I like it in the loft, even though when I'm sitting up in bed my head is about 2 inches from the ceiling. The bathroom is the first door on the right in the picture with the entrance, and the bed is like I said in the loft at the top of the stairs. I have a beautiful view of concrete outside my window. Actually it could make for some creepy/good people watching, but it can get pretty dark in here and I can't even tell if it's sunny out. Ah well, that's what you'd expect in a tiny country of 50 million people.
Saturday I met up with Winnie and Jin, the Korean counsellor at our school. We did some more grocery shopping and walked around for a bit. Here are my two observations:
1. There ridiculously cheap shoes and purses everywhere. Bad, bad news. And the shoes fit me.
2. The average Korean man is not two feet shorter than me, but in fact eye to eye or a little taller. I'm not a giant here!!
Saturday night was the party at Wennie's and I was lucky to make lots of new friends. Some of us ended up going out after to... ummm... ok well I have no idea where we went. But it was into Seoul somewhere, about a 40 minute drive. It's a huge bar district with lots of foreigners and very very drunk people. The bars are open until 5am, and shots of tequila are only around $2.50. Enough said. Then on the drive home the taxi driver was a 'gas and break, gas and break' type of driver and I'm surprised I didn't puke all over everyone. That would make me sick even if I hadn't been drinking.
I got home around 5am Sunday morning and pretty much slept until 1am Monday morning. Not good. Feeling hungover in Korea is not a good thing when there's nothing to do but lie around feeling sorry for yourself. I could have watched one of the few tv stations, but I have no couch so I would have been lying on the floor, and trying to pull my mattress down from the loft would have been the death of me. I've also decided that drinking a whole lot your first weekend in a foreign country is not a good idea. You know how when you're hungover you feel gross and sad? Yeah, it's that much worse when you're on your own. Needless to say, I finally had a breakdown and thoughts of "what in the sh*t am I doing here?!?" I was a mess. Thanks to Brian for helping to pull me together on msn before I had to leave for work. After I woke up at 1am I was up all night and only managed to sleep for around an hour before I left for work this morning. But, I feel better now and know I won't be drinking that much for a while. It's not worth it! Even though it is really, really cheap. Hahaha.
On to today! I was exhausted, and my training was from 10am - 8pm, but it was a good day. Our campus is the smallest of all the chains so it looks more like an office than a school. Actually, it is an office, with 6 small classrooms. And it's less than a 5 minute walk from where I live. I watched some classes this evening, and I don't think it's going to be too bad. The curriculum is set and it seems like it's going to be more repetitive than anything. You follow the same schedule with each class (attendance and homework check, reading and comprehension, grammar), but with different textbooks. The kids are fairly well behaved, they're just all exhausted because they're already been in school all day. And, our campus doesn't use video cameras in the classrooms like the others do so that's a good thing.
I have some lessons to prep for tonight (and some reading to do for my own courses at UBC) so I'm going to cut this short... but I hope this gives you an idea of how things are going here!
I miss everyone!
Love
Ashley
