I'm in Korea!

Alright!  I have officially been living in Seoul for two weeks now, so I guess it's time to start writing in my blog.  I've never had a blog before, or a diary or journal of any sort, really, so we'll see how this goes.  I'll try to update it regularly, and I'll try not to be boring.  And I'll try to include some pictures and links, I'm hoping embedding them here isn't too difficult.

I guess I'll start with my trip from Detroit to Seoul.  I flew out of Detroit early Saturday morning on April 24th, and I was up most of the night packing, of course.  I forgot a few things (my whiskey stones!), but nothing I needed right away, thankfully.  We left for the airport a bit later than planned, but there was no line at all for United, and I made it with plenty of time to spare.  From Detroit I flew to Chicago, then on to Seattle, then to Seoul.  Ninety minute layovers at both stops, not too bad.  From Seattle to Seoul I flew on Asiana Airlines, which was awesome.  They served us pretty good Korean food, gave us slippers and masks for sleeping, and nothing on the flight cost extra.  While serving drinks the United flight attendants spent half their time trying to swipe credit cards, but on Asiana everything was very efficient.  The seats were pretty comfortable, too.  There was a small tv for each seat, with maybe 20 American movies and 10 Asian movies to choose from.  I watched 2012 (not great), and everything else I'd seen or had no interest in.

After we landed in Seoul, I picked up my bags and headed towards the exit.  Immigration was very quick; they took the form I filled out on the plane and glanced at my passport, then sent me through.  Mr. Kim was waiting for me with a "Mr. Mejia" sign, and we went to his car to head in to the city.  Mr. Kim is about my age, but everyone calls him Mr. Kim for some reason.  All of the supervisors and directors at the school go by their first names, so I don't really get it.  He is really cool though, and we talked about Korean food and movies, and soccer of course.  The drive to our neighborhood took around an hour, traffic wasn't too bad on a Sunday evening.  The airport is actually located outside of Incheon, a city just west of Seoul.

For the first three nights I stayed in a Love Motel near our school.  In Korea most people live at home until they get married, so there are Love Motels around for young couples to go to for some alone time.  My room there had the least comfortable mattress I have ever slept on, it was basically a slab of concrete.  I adjusted to the time difference fairly quickly, but it was hard to sleep at all there.  I tried not to unpack much, because on day four I moved into my apartment, where I finally got some rest on a much nicer mattress.  My apartment is ridiculously tiny, but my stuff all fits in here I guess.  We live in a pretty wealthy area, so all of the teachers have small apartments, but mine is easily the smallest.  It's a 2 minute walk from the school, which is nice, especially in the morning.

That first night after I arrived, Eric came to meet me and we went to get some dinner with a couple of the other teachers.  The second day here was Monday, and after being introduced to the staff and the rest of the foreign teachers I went to observe classes with the teacher I was replacing.  Jared was very helpful, explaining how things work and how the different classes are run, but unfortunately I only had two days to observe.  Wednesday morning he flew back to Canada, and I was thrown to the wolves.  I'll talk more about my specific classes in another post, but the first few days teaching were interesting.  The kids were actually really helpful for the most part, reminding me to do everything at the right time, and explaining how things usually work.  I have a Korean helper teacher for parts of my morning classes, and Julia has been amazing.  She always makes sure the kids are ready for things on time, and has made my first couple weeks much more enjoyable.

The food has been amazing, and the Korean food is crazy cheap.  In Ann Arbor I had tried six or seven different Korean dishes, and it is remarkably similar to the real thing.  I've tried several new things as well, and overall I really like Korean food.  At school I just eat the lunch the school offers (it's less than $3 a day, about half of the teachers eat it), which is always rice, a bowl of soup, a portion of the day's meat dish and vegetable dish, and usually some kimchi.  I haven't liked everything, but it's been nice to get a lot of variety and try new things.  If anyone doesn't know, kimchi is Korea's traditional dish, served with almost every meal.  There are different varieties, but the most common is spiced fermented cabbage.  Here's the Wiki page if you want to read more about it and see some pictures.  At school I had a kimchi soup that was very good, called kimchi jjigae.  I'll make a post just about food soon, with some pictures I took of my favorite meals so far.

I haven't explored the city much yet, most of my free time has been spent unpacking, shopping for things for my apartment, and resting.  Teaching little kids is tiring work, even with small classes.  We went to Itaewon a few times, where there are tons of foreigners, and foreign restaurants.  That's where we go for trivia night on Thursdays after work, an English bar named 3 Alley Pub.  The other teachers have been going there for weeks, and it's pretty hard, but my second time going our team won!  The prize was three pitchers of beer, which we shared with two guys in their fifties who had traded some answers with us.  Hopefully we can do well again this week.  I'm hoping to explore Seoul and see the cultural and historical sites, and travel around Korea while I'm here too.  We've been busy planning trips to Japan and China already, but those are a few months away.

It's time for me to sleep now, but I'll try to get a few more posts up this week.  Miss you all!