First week down.

I have now been in Korea for over a week.  My first few days were taken up by travel.  I had a 12 and a half hour flight followed by an hour train ride, and then again followed by another 3 hour train ride.  I didn't arrive at my apartment until 1am two days after my flight...  Getting picked up at the train station by my two directors was an experience in itself.  For one it is a married couple, the man doesn't speak one word of English, and the woman speaks very little English.  Once we loaded all my bags into the van, the first thing that was said to me was,  "we think you are very handsome, you are so tall."  I thought this was kind of a weird start at 1am to our employer - employee relationship. 


I finally arrived at my apartment where they kind of gave me a tour of the place and told me how everything worked, but I was so tired that the next day I was very confused about how to get hot water.  I had to turn on a thermostat, which is all in Korean, and also heats your floors which I found out later by standing in one place too long.  For my first two days I just walked around aimlessly around my area of the city.  Its a pretty cool area, I live only about 5 blocks from the ocean.  Unfortunately it is not a part of the ocean you would want to swim or go to the beach, there is a ship yard kind of near by and the water is a little dirty.  but there is a good beach about a 20 minute drive from here. 

My first week of teaching was very interesting to say the least.  I teach from 12:50-8:40pm  I teach 3 kindergarten classes first which only last 20 minutes.  then I have a break, then the rest of my classes are 30 minutes a piece, with breaks scattered throughout the day.  some classes speak almost no English at all, and others are decent.  The ones that speak none are very difficult to teach because they just sit there and stare at you and getting them to speak is a challenge.  But other than those few classes it is pretty good.  I am definitely worn out by the end of the day. 

The first weekend I went to an Irish pub and met a couple Russian guys who were a lot of fun.  They took me to this other bar which was not as awesome...  So here in Korea there are many bars which say "Western Bar" on the outside, which I kind of found out to be a sort of brothel for foreigners.  Once it got later in the night I noticed a lot of foreign guys getting frisky with the bar tenders, and then I quickly realized what was happening in the bar.  I quickly paid for my drinks and hightailed it out of there.  The next night some neighbors, who are German, noticed me just hanging out on my balcony and invited me to dinner with them.  They were extremely nice.  We had an awesome meal at this restaurant has the grill in the middle of the table and you get to cook right in front of you like its your own benni hannas, pretty awesome.  Afterward, they took me to a couple of bars that were not shady like the ones the Russians took me to, thankfully.  Then on Sunday, they took me to Tongdosa, which is the largest Buddhist Temple in all of Korea.  It was beautiful.  That was really a sight to see.

This weekend I went with a new friend, Josh who is from Indiana, to meet up with other English teachers.  We ended up going to a nori bong.  If you do not know what this is I feel sorry.  Nori bong is awesome, it is basically a room you rent and for your group and its a karaoke room! you get served food and drinks and do way too much karaoke.  It was a blast.  Afterward we went to a bar and met some new Korean friends and had a blast with them.   I also played some soccer with one of my little students which was kind of cool.

I will update the journey soon and hopefully get a camera soon to help share the craziness.