Greetings from Korea!

So...I've been in Korea for 5.5 months. Surprise!

I don't know why I haven't written in so long. My guess is that I'd fallen out of the habit long ago and it's hard to pick it back up again. This is my valiant attempt. Let's rewind a bit.

September.

My grandmother moved in with my mom so it was great to spend time with her again, even though it meant moving to the couch. My other grandmother lost the long battle with cancer and I went to her funeral on my 30th birthday. Not fun. Two good things came from that depressing time. One is that I was able to spend good time with my family and all of my niece and nephews. The other thing is that I interviewed for and was offered a job in South Korea that I turned down because I was overwhelmed by the sad week. Thankfully I had a great recruiter (how often does that ever happen) who begged me to reconsider and worked with the school to change a few things in the contract. Fast forward a bit and here I am, living the expat life again in a foreign country!

End of October.

When I first arrived in Korea, I was shocked because there were Koreans everywhere! Duh, right? Don't act like you wouldn't be thinking the same thing! Please understand that I came from a city that was pretty diverse so I was used to seeing people from all over the world. Even when I lived in New Zealand and there was a little less diversity in my city, I still saw many different types of people. When I arrived at the airport in Korea, it was like a different world. It caught me off guard! After trying to make myself look presentable in the bathroom, I just followed the masses and the signs which blessedly had English under the Korean, and made my way to an airport shuttle, and then through a long customs line. Oh! Did I mention that my airplane was like 2 hours late due to a delay we had in L.A.? My recruiter had someone waiting for me with a sign. He looked like he had been there for a while. Oops! Anyway, he didn't speak English and I was tired and nervous so there were many phone calls he made back to his office and to my director. Then he bought a shuttle bus ticket, and put me on a bus to Cheonan with a bus driver who was clearly swearing in Korean because he had to deal with a foreigner. At least that's what I imagined. He actually yelled at everyone so...yikes! The ride was pretty smooth after that.

I arrived at the Cheonan bus station 2 hours later and my director's husband picked me up. He knew only a few words in English. (Side note: I later found out that he got high scores in English at his university, but he never learned conversational English. This is the dilemma of the Korean education system.) So he drove me to the main school to meet some other people. I was extremely aware that I should have worked harder on looking presentable. It was also after midnight and I was quite jet-lagged. Finally, they took me to my apartment and showed me how to turn on a few things. The directors husband bought some fruit, water and snacks so that I would have breakfast, then I was left to marvel at what is my cute little apartment. I was dreading that it would be old and dirty, but it was new and clean and even had an enclosed porch where I could hang my laundry. There was also a nice flat screen TV with cable and internet. Yesssss!

The next day (Saturday), the director, her husband, and a head teacher picked me up at noon and took me back to the school to fill out paperwork and to tell me that I would be teaching at the Asan school. I seriously didn't know which of the 3 schools until that moment. Then they took me out to lunch at a buffet because they didn't know if I would like Korean food. They know now. :) So, part of the conversation was awkward because everyone was speaking Korean and I was just sitting there embarrassed and confused while everyone in the restaurant was staring at me. Then they asked me about myself and it came out that I didn't drink alcohol, which then led to them asking me if I was a Christian (yes, if you're wondering :) ), which then led to a (hopefully jokingly) discussion about how I should date the (much older) head teacher at the table? What? 

Next we went to LotteMart (think of a fancier super Target) and they bought household items for me since my cupboards were empty. I also bought some groceries to live off of for the week, including rice, which led to them to buy a fancy rice cooker for my apartment. I was just going to cook rice in a pot like at home, but thanks! Finally they took me home and I collapsed on my bed from exhaustion. I later called my sister on skype and we were giddy because we were in the same country and time zone again.

On Sunday I slept, then spent hours unpacking and trying to talk myself in to going outside because I was scared that I would get lost, or worse, have to talk to someone. I finally ventured out to the 7-11, a 30 second walk away. There were a couple of westerners sitting at the tables outside  of the store. That confused me for a second. I went in, bought banana milk and mouthwash, and rushed out, almost crashing into another westerner walking into the store. Now, let me just say that in my 5.5 months of living here I have never seen that many westerners in that store or outside of it. It must have just been that day. Okay, so after coming home and realizing that 7-11 didn't count as venturing out, I left again. This time my goal was to find the huge Galleria department store which was right next to where I live. So I walked down some streets and, of course, turned the opposite direction from where the store was and walked down to a circular bridge thing. I enjoyed it up there. Then I went back home, seeing the huge Galleria building as I walked back. 

Okay. That's enough for this post. Next time I'll talk about my first week at school. Below I have added two videos that I took on my first walk out of my apartment. I've also begun F.Y.I.s again like I did in New Zealand.

F.Y.I. Korea #1 Fast Food is Not So Fast

There are many fast food restaurants in Korea like Lotteria, McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Popeye's, etc. I don't go very often, but in the building where I work there is a Lotteria. It's like Mcdonalds. The only thing I like there is their Spicy Chicken Sandwich. The workers have cute uniforms and are very polite. In America you can order something in a drive through and keep going in under 5 minutes. In Korea, there aren't many drive throughs (I have yet to see one but they are rumored to exist somewhere) so expect to wait 7-15 minutes for your order. For the most part, they make your sandwich after you order. They don't just have a bunch sitting under the heater for a long time, getting old and cold. Everything comes out hot...I mean really hot like they just took it out of the oven/fryer hot, which they most likely did. It's great! I can do the 5 minute walk back to my school and still burn my tongue on my sandwich. :)