South Korea at Last

I am officially in South Korea!!!

I woke up bright and early Sunday, October 10th to be at the airport by 5:30 am.  From there I flew to San Francisco, which is about a 3 hour flight.  I had a longer than anticipated layover and just hung out there from 9ish to 2:05 when my flight from San Fran to Seoul departed.  That was a 12 hour ordeal!  The only thing that made the time go by so quickly was that they had every episode of the last half of Glee's first season!  So I was loving my life until that was over and I realized I still had hours ahead of me... I was on Syngapore airlines which was such an interesting experience!  I've never seen female flight attendants wearing dresses and having tons of makeup on before.  And the food was an experience in and of itself.  And I think I slept for maybe an hour.  It was just so difficult to do so!


When I finally landed in Seoul and after going through customs, I finally walked through the doors to the outside world!  I met my recruiter, Pam Ji, who then bought me a ticket on a bus to get from Seoul to Cheongju, just shy of a 3 hour bus ride.  She said that a teacher from my school would meet me in Cheongju and then drive me to where I was going to live in Boeun.  Another lovely thing Pam told me was some horror story about an English teacher in a different city who was just beaten up and almost raped.  I wouldn't call Pam a sensitive person.  Not the best story to tell a newly arrived English teacher.

So when the bus finally arrived in Boeun and there was no one there I think that was the moment I became the most anxious.  Imagine me trying to cart around two massive suitcases, one small suitcase, and a very full backpack to find a good place to sit and wait while people keep staring at me and walking right by.  It was weird.

Finally Jenny, a native Korean English teacher arrived!  She picked me up in her Hyundai and drove me to a motel in Cheongju where I was to stay for the night.  In the morning she then drove me to Boeun.  I got barely any sleep that night because I was so freaked out that I was going to sleep through when I had to wake up because I didn't have an alarm clock to wake me up that I think I woke up every half hour.

 The motel I stayed at

Finally in the morning I arrived in Boeun!  Jenny took me to my apartment, which is surprisingly larger than I was expecting!  I have a kitchen, bathroom, 2 areas that are like sun rooms, a small bedroom, and a larger bedroom/living area.  I guess calling the "shower" in my bathroom a shower is a little bit of an exaggeration and I have a feeling that's going to be one of the harder things to get used to!  And I do not have enough storage for all my stuff, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.  There's a TV, couch, microwave, bed, stove, fridge/freezer, and so much more.  So far I'm loving it!  My neighbours are all teachers just a different schools throughout Boeun.  I'm excited to get to know them more as well. 

 This is my apartment from the street.  There are four in this building and mine is on the top floor on the right.

 Entry way

 Just inside the entry way, looking into the apartment.  To the right is the kitchen.  The door you see that is dark on the right is to a bedroom, straight ahead is the kitchen, and to the left is the master bedroom/living area.

 Kitchen.  I think the tile is very cute!  You can see I have a little stove for cooking and the fridge has a good little freezer which already has meat and bread in it!

 The "guest" bedroom, more so my storage area.  Probably the least exciting room right now.

 Bathroom

 That is the right side of the bathroom, looking in from the doorway.  That is technically my "shower", which is definitely going to take getting used to!

 The largest room, master bedroom/living area.  This is it from one end.  You can see I am at the moment simply lining my shoes up on the floor... haha.  Not the best organization but I'll figure something out eventually.  And that big white thing in the corner is the air conditioner.  In desperate need of decorations!

 View from the other end.  This is much nicer to look at!  I have a larger TV here than I did in Canada!  No service yet, but it's there.  And I bought pillows (last night I just stuffed sweat shirts and stuff into the pillowcases).  The couch is more functional than comfortable.  I'm going to have to buy some pillows and a blanket for it to make it a little nicer.

 My desk!  Thanks to Mika, Maren, Cari, Kezia, Bente, etc for the cards and stuff.  It's my very minimal decor so far.  And I have my Bible and InStyle magazine... priorities!  And I did buy an alarm clock so I can sleep peacefully.  If you can see in the right corner I'm hoping to make friends to play Rook!!!

 My closet!  All my clothing is organized already!  Mom you raised me right...

 My washing machine in one of the "sun rooms"... very lucky to have it!  And you can see me too... haha...

 View from the other end of the kitchen.  I secretly (I guess now not so secretly) love that my microwave is red!  Looks so snazzy!

I went to the grocery store with Jenny on yesterday and got some groceries and other supplies (like hangers and toilet paper).  It's really nice that I have lunch at the school in the cafeteria.  That is good for saving money, that's for sure!  Though the food is a little strange to me, for the most part I really like it.  Then I just have something small for supper like soup or egg and toast.  Today for lunch we had rice with carrots, bean sprouts, cooked egg, and octopus!  Like with the little suction cups on them and everything!  It was very spicy and very good!  Also seaweed soup and kimchi.  I'm trying to get used to the kimchi...

Today has been an interesting day.  I went to the doctor to have the medical exam.  I need a certificate (or something like that) from the doctor so I can get my alien ID card as well as pay a reentry fee so I can go in and out of the country.  The doctor was definitely a strange experience.  That's a place where the language barrier is nerve wracking!  They checked my height, weight, eye sight, blood, xrayed my upper body, blood pressure, and urine.  Apparently my eye sight is very good.  That's nice to hear!

So far the people in my school have been so great!  I met the other foreign (as in American) teacher today, a woman named Angela.  She is going to be such a great teaching resource for me!  Teaching has been fun, though I'm still quite tired from traveling so I'm not as energetic as I would like to be.  Jenny and I are going to be co-teaching until December, so that gives me time to figure things out, get the hang of lesson plans, and check out some of the resources.  The English resource room is great!  They kids can watch movies, play games, read books all in English.  Today we did things like learn M, N, and O.  So I say "M, m, mouse!" and the kids repeat.  I can definitely handle that!  The school has around 500 students apparently, and I teach in the English centre.  It's Boeun's English centre so once a week a different school from a neighbouring village will come in with their students and we teach them English as well.  The rooms are fascinating!  There's an "Invention Room" and "Broadcast Room" and "Creativity Room".  I'm so interested to soak up all the teaching philosophies in this school.  Also they play classical music in the bathrooms.  Korea is definitely fascinating!

 My classroom, view from the doorway

 Just left inside the doorway.  My desk!

 Back of classrom

 Front of classroom.  The big TV is for PPT and other videos I may show.

 In the hallway, the windows into my classroom.

 I like the name of my classroom!  Life room.  Fitting I guess.

 This is the English resource room.  To the left are monitors set up for the kids to watch movies with Korean subtitles to help them learn English.  On the right are books for the kids to read and resource books.  That's one of my students!

 Dahe!  She is so lovely!  And is responsible for resourcing the English centre

 Supplies

 SamSan English Center.  That's the doorway into our hallway wing.

 View from the school into the playing field and toward the city.

 I think it's so interesting the playing field is sandy!  Kids having fun!

 Outside view of the school.  It's fairly large I think... many stories.

 They place a high value on cleanliness and there are sinks with soap everywhere!

 This is the view from the back door of the school.  If you look just beyond the blue roof building there is a green roof that you can barely see.  That's my apartment!

 View of the school from the back

 View of the school from the other side of the field.

 Two of my students I ran into when I was shopping for pillows for my bed.  They were watching me take pictures of so many other things and kept following me saying something I did not understand.  Finally I figured out they wanted me to take a picture of them!  Happy to oblige!  They are so cute!

There are probably a million things that I could add to this!  I'm just trying to soak everything in around me and keep smiling!  I think the hardest part is not having a single conversation with someone who actually knows me but thank God for the internet and for things like Skype, Facebook, email etc... keeps me connected and not missing people as much as I would.

If you would like my address for any reason (hint hint... I like cards haha) just ask away!  It's kind of a complicated addess but I'm happy to share it!  Oh, and I had to remove my nose ring.  I know at this moment my dad is happy... haha...

That's probably more than enough for now!  Probably the longest blog post I will ever write!!  I hope most of that made sense.  I'm of course going to share more as things happen... or as I remember what has already happened!  The first few days anywhere new are always a little overwhelming I think.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers!!!