Greetings from Korea!
I left Denver at 8:00 Sunday morning and flew to San Francisco (2+ hours - wow are my arms tired! Ba dum ching!) where I connected with a flight to Incheon International Airport (11 hours) arriving a total of 15 hours after I left, at which point it was somehow 2:30 Monday afternoon and the sun hadn't even set for me yet. I was met by a cab driver who left me on a bench in the airport to pick up another teacher who was going to share my ride. I was fine with that because I was able to get a tall cold can of beer at a 7-11 in the airport and free wifi to catch up on some email and the news. The ride sharing didn't ultimately work out because the other teacher arrived with a wife and 9 checked bags so we couldn't all fit in the same van but that was okay and eventually another cab driver arrived to pick me up and take me to the school, where I finally arrived a little after 6 in the evening. I only had time to drop my bags in my room and take a quick shower to rinse the prodigious sweat off myself (because indoors there is
sometimes AC but outdoors is a sticky mess at the moment) before I was taken out to dinner, along with the aforementioned other couple who had just arrived, by our assigned "lifestyle mentor", Eric. Eric has been in S. Korea 6 years, having started teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) at a school in Seoul and come to CDS 2 years ago. So his Korean is serviceable and more importantly he has lots of tips about how to get around and get along without being too ugly an American. (One interesting tip: when giving or receiving something, it's rude not to use two hands!)
We took a taxi to downtown Cheongna (I now understand that's the name of the city I'm in, which, like Songdo - the super-modern city just to the south of here - is part of the Incheon district, all located in the greater Seoul metropolitan area) which is only about 2-3 miles away and walked briefly along and across the canal under all the colorful lighted signs to a place that served chicken (basically just hot wings) and beer and proceeded to have some of each while getting to know each other a bit and hearing about the school and Korea from Eric. After that we made a quick shopping pass through Home Plus (one of the large department store chains that sell food and lots of other stuff, like a Super Target) for some starter groceries. I got a grapefruit, some eggs, some chicken, some broccoli, an onion, some spinach, and some rice wine (so far unopened).
Then finally it was back to my new home to unpack the boxes I'd mailed myself (Owen: all three were equally well demolished but somehow the contents seemed all to be there) and the boxes delivered from The Arrival Store as well as the two bags I'd checked and my carry-on. That seemed to take forever but it must have gone pretty quick because somehow I finally fell into my bed just after midnight local time after I blew the breaker to the outlets in my room (which I didn't realize at the time) by trying to plug a 110 V power strip into the plug adapter I'd inserted into a 220 V outlet.
The next day was Tuesday (yesterday) and in the morning I spent some more time unpacking (putting shirts and pants on hangers, for instance, and finding someone to reset the circuit breaker for my room, and finally figuring out how to recharge my devices, and going over to the main office where I could use the school wifi and get a cup of coffee) before offering to take Eric (my lifestyle mentor, who conveniently lives directly across the hall from me) out to lunch and for another pass through Home Plus to try to pick up some of the stuff I realized I was going to be needing. Below is the list I'd made and have been working on:
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| Shopping list |
After we got back from that I collapsed for a while on my bed (which is quite comfortable) until 5:00 when I helped Eric carry a bunch of stuff down to the common area on the first floor of our building because he was having a "garage sale" to get rid of a bunch of extra stuff he didn't want anymore. I picked up a small fan and a couple sets of computer speakers (one of which has bluetooth). Then back to the room for more collapsing. In fact, I was so beat I didn't even have dinner, just finished washing all the new dishes and cookware I'd unpacked and set my alarm for 7:45 and got in bed and went to sleep until I woke up naturally at 6 o'clock this morning and started listening to All Things Considered live from the afternoon before on KCFR over the web on my new bluetooth JBL GO speaker. Pretty slick!
During that time I also made myself some coffee. I had bought a small coffee maker the day before (being unable to find a french press at Home Plus) and what I thought was ground coffee (being unable to find whole beans so far) but turned out to be instant coffee. No problem though, I just put the instant coffee in the coffee-maker carafe and let the hot water run through the empty filter into the carafe and voila! Instant coffee the hard way. I also stir-fried some of the chicken strips I'd gotten the first night with some broccoli and onions and spinach and had a little bit of that for breakfast. The rest is in the refrigerator.
Then I took some pictures of my room and view for the fans at home. See below.
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| My kitchen - duh! |
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| Bed and dresser |
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| Desk |
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| Closeup of desk, where I'm sitting right right now! |
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| Fridge and closets leading to door to hall. Bathroom is on left just before you get to the door. |
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| View out my window. Middle and High School building is on right, "First Program" (elementary school) building is in the distance on the left. |
Then I jumped in the shower and got dressed for my 30 second commute to our first day of orientation. I'll spare you the details of that (much like orientation at my previous schools) but it included a tour of the campus during which I took the following picture looking toward Cheongna from the top floor of the First Program building (the building on the left in the picture above, looking in the same direction as the picture above, in other words away from my room).
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| View toward downtown Cheongna (away from the rest of the school, across the golf course) from top floor of First Program building. |
And also this picture from the same building looking back at my building:
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| My room (#210) is on the second floor of the building in the middle. You can see my windows, the third set from the right side of the building, so the first set from the right which is completely visible (4 windows). Yep, I'm right in the middle of all the action, baby! The shorter building partially obscuring my building is actually part of my building and is the swimming pool and workout room. The tall reddish building on the left is the HS wing of the school. The MS wing of the school (where my classroom is) is out of the frame to the left. The brownish building on the right side of the picture is the girls' dorm. The boys' dorm is a separate identical building on the other side of the girls' dorm from here. |
Well I guess that's all the news that's fit to print for now. I should be working on my "Assignments" (the super-detailed syllabi which are part of the "Dalton Plan" and which are supposed to spell out every learning objective and every individual assignment along with grading rubrics and the agenda for each class for the whole term) but that's daunting so I think I'll go to bed. We got served a nice lunch during the day today and I found out they offer a meal plan where I can get 5 dinners a week for $4 per. I think I'll do that just to save the shopping/cooking/cleaning time. Trash and laundry are issues here I'll have to tell you about later. I like cooking but I guess I can indulge in that on the weekends. The sun has gone down now and it's getting dark outside and I've still got my AC cranked to the max and I'm starting to shiver so I guess I'll go to bed and fall asleep listening to Morning Edition. They're going to take us on a shopping trip after tomorrow's orientation so maybe I can find some real coffee and a clothes drying rack (dum dum dum... that's foreshadowing!) Best to all and to all a good night.
