The Korea Report, Part 1

I'm here! Yay!

Yeah, so, I've actually been here for almost 2 weeks, but hey.

I was supposed to be getting internet access at my apartment by the end of the first week, but I guess procedures just changed. Like, within the last week or something. So now, I have to have my ARC (Alien Registration Card) before they will let me sign up for internet access. But once I do, it's going to cost me $15 PER MONTH. No people - we're not talking dial-up. We're talking high speed internet. I wasn't planning on getting cable while I'm here, but then I found out it will set me back a mere $5/month. So how could I turn it down?

The sad thing is that it will take me another 3 weeks until I actually get internet and cable at home, so the blogs may be pretty infrequent until then.

So that's my excuse for keeping you in suspense for so long. Now here's my story, from the beginning.

On May 7, 1980, a wondrous thing occurred...

Just kidding, we won't go back that far. Hows about we start with the flight?

The baggage limitations said that I could check 2 bags of 50 lbs each. So one of my bags was 51 lbs and the other was about 68. I knew this ahead of time because I have a handy little bag weigher thingy. But I figured - I'm moving to another country for a year and it would be prohibitively expensive to ship stuff, so I'll just hope that they don't charge me to much if my bags were overweight.

They charged me $25. Score!

Then they gave me an aisle seat in the exit row. Double score!

So I got on the plane, settled in, and wasted time sleeping. I say "wasted time" because I later found out that they had personal movie players with a huge selection of movies, and I only had a chance to watch 2 before the plane landed.

My plane got in a little early, and I collected my bags and got through customs in about 45 minutes. Then I met up with a dude holding a sign with my name on it, and he took me to my apartment. He told me he didn't speak much English, then he called the director of my school and spoke with him for a minute. Then the director told me that the driver would drop me off at my apartment and the next day, one of the teachers from my school would come by my apartment at 12:30 to take me to school.

It was about an hour drive to my apartment, so we got there by about 7:30 pm. Not bad. He basically helped me take my bags up to my apartment, showed me how to unlock my door (with a code, not a key), shoved my bags into the entryway and hightailed it out of there. By this point I was starting to get hungry, but I hadn’t wanted to take up any of my packing space with food. Fortunately, the person who lived there before me left a bottle of orange juice in the fridge. Unfortunately, that was all I had to last me until Monday afternoon. I thought about trying to go out and get some food, but I didn’t even have any cash. So I drank some orange juice, spent a couple of hours unpacking my things and collapsed into bed at around 10:00.

Much to my surprise, I slept straight through until about 7:00 am! I have never adjusted to a time change that quickly before! So I spent some more time unpacking, drank some more orange juice, and got ready for work. At about 1:00, I started wondering if someone was really coming. I was starting to get tired, too, so I thought I would just lie down on my bed and rest while I waited for someone to show up.

My doorbell rang at about 2:00. One of the directors and another new teacher were there waiting for me. Joe didn’t actually work at our branch, he was just bringing us to the school. Veronica also flew in Sunday night.

So Joe took us to work, which was conveniently located across the street. Then we got a crash course in teaching so that we could start that day.

So much for getting a week of training.

Speaking of teaching, I have a class in about 10 minutes, so I guess this is the point where I leave you hanging...