First week or so

Hey everybody.  So I know it's been long in coming but here's my second blog update after about a week here in Korea.  I love it, I really do but it is so much different than anyplace I have ever been before.  I've learned that Seoul has the second biggest metropolitan area in the world, second only to Tokyo, and it is certainly crazy to live in such a large city.  It takes 45 minutes on the subway for me to get halfway to the middle of the city, halfway to the middle of the city, and I am by no means on the outskirts.  I was dumbstruck when we drove home from the airport at the immensity of it all.  Seoul is built around the Han River which runs through a valley of mountains right by the coast, so the city turns with the bends in the river.  As we rounded the first of these mountains we saw Seoul for the first time, and I was nonplussed, it was large, but not as big as I had imagined it.  I thought it was comparable to any another city, but then we rounded the first bend in the river, and there was Seoul . . . still.   "Ok," I thought, "this isn't small."  I saw city hall, 14 bridges, maybe 15-20 thirty story apartment buildings, but still I wouldn't have said it was gigantic.  7 bends in the river later and my mouth was agape and had been for some time.  Fifteen apartment buildings had become hundreds, dwarfed by hundreds of looming office buildings, fifty to sixty story behemoths jutting up from the shoreline of the Han.  I had probably counted thirty large bridges all packed with traffic, some had subway trains racing across every 3 minutes, never longer than that, and you could see in the windows of the train-cars that they were choc full too.  Still we drove on, for two hours (in traffic) we drove through the city and by the time we got to my new apartment we hadn't even made it all the way across, two thirds of the way.  It was something else, but by the time we got to my apartment I was to tired to reflect on it all.

My boss had picked me up from the airport at 630, but I wasn't the only one he picked up.  My new coworker Natalie was also waiting for me at the airport.  I felt bad, my flight had been delayed and they had been waiting for more than two hours but they were both very nice. When we got to the apartment Mr. Shin insisted that we go out to dinner so we exhaustedly obliged him.  He took us to Bennigans, now defunct in the US, but the monte cristos are still served just as delicious as ever here in Seoul.  It was weird, I had just been thrown into an entirely new setting and the first place we went to eat was a place I had known my whole life.  Everything was just about the same, except that everyone working there was Asian.  Imagine a Bennigans bedecked in Irish nick knacks run by people who can't even speak English and despite their attempts at Irish dress, wouldn't fit in anywhere on St. Patrick's Day.  Though I tried to stifle my mirth for fear of being rude to my new boss, I laughed out loud when we got there, it was just ridiculous.  That laugh was about the last thing I had the energy to do.  I ordered my food and ate 2 bites of it before wanting to go to sleep.  Natalie felt the same way so after picking at our food for about a half an hour we very politely asked Mr. Shin to take us home, I took the monte cristo with me.

The next day was a whirlwind of activity.  Mr. Shin has Natalie and I wake up early in to try and get our medical checks done at the hospital which we were unable to do for some weird immigration reason.  We got to see where we would work, found it was surprisingly nice, opened Bank accounts and had lunch with Chris, the first of our coworkers that we were to meet that day.  He showed us around our area, told us where to buy food, go out to eat, gave us a bunch of helpful hints on living in Seoul and he did all of this with bronchitis, two ear infections, and laryngitis.  He's a nice guy to say the least, but he eventually had to leave to go the doctor.  While Chris was showing us around we met Ben, another coworker who was also paying a visit to a local physician.  We met up with Ben later after Chris left and he took us to one of the absurdly large malls in the city, Yongsak, and helped us get cellphones.  We hung out with him for the rest of the day and into the night.  He showed us his new house, he had just moved from our apartment building, my room actually, to Itaewon a district in Seoul which is a 40 minute subway ride into the city, where we got our first taste of Korean television which carries amazing commercials according to Ben.  Amazing meaning American commercials on crack-cocaine dancing beneath a disco ball wearing only christmas tree lights, yea.  We later went out to the bars in Hongdae for a while with Ben and a few other friends of his, all very nice people, but made it an "early" night and went home around 1:30 after seeing several of our new friend's favorite places in the city.  It was a good night and all but I was glad to be back in my bed.

So much has happened since then but it still seems like yesterday.  Natalie and I had another night on the town on Saturday with Andrew, who had just arrived, and his friend Ben, or Gu as Andrew insisted on calling him.  Yet again it was a good time.  Sunday I prepped for work and went out to eat with several of Andrew's friends that live here still, then came home and went to bed early.  I was hoping to get a good night's rest for my upcoming work day but I was not so lucky 10 hours, 6 of them sleepless, later I got up and went to work.  I had had very little in the way of orientation on Friday but was nonetheless thrust right into the thick of things with 5 different classes of kids.  Two of the classes consist of 4 year olds, one is 5 year olds and two are 6 year olds, but all surprisingly speak a fair amount of english.  Despite my charge's english experience it was a very long day.  

I taught eight 40 minute classes from 9:40 until 6:30 and was beat by the end of the day.  The kids have so much energy!  The classes don't have more than 8 kids in them but commanding all of the students attention and keeping them from speaking Korean is nearly impossible.  The main rule at the school is of course no Korean, "Hanguk NO" one of my kids always shouts when I have to remind them, emphasizing the no by crossing his arms in the shape of an X, but they talk in "hanguk" whenever they think they can get away with it.  You have to be very strict about it and punish them when they do it, but disciplining the kids is a little tricky.  The only thing that seems to work is giving the kids Yellow tickets or sending them to my boss.  Unfortunately I wasn't given tickets to hand out until this morning (Thu) so I had to make do with the threat of Yellow tickets, which works not at all.  I refused to take kids to Jessica teacher (they call us all by our first names followed by teacher) on the first day, I didn't want to look like I was unable to control my classes, but without yellow tickets it's almost as if I'm a scorpion without a stinger, the kids can mess with me all they want without any care in the world.  I did a lot of shouting, and tried to keep them active but for the most part the little demons had their way with me.  

Fortunately, my last three classes all had tests scheduled for monday so I was able to relax a little bit.  I had to read some of the questions but the tests for the most part are up to the students, easy right?  Well yea but it being my first day and all I managed to mess that up a little bit too.  My first test went off without a hitch, no problems at all, the children had questions, but I'm an English major, an English language test written for five year olds is like breathing, I didn't have to think at all.  The second class started well enough, I handed out the test and did the first oral part, but after I had read the first oral part another student came in.  I figured he was just late, so I gave Jason the test and had him get started.  After everyone had finished I asked them about themselves, had them tell me, their names again, their favorite animals, and asked how long they'd been going to ECC.  Well come to find out it's Jason's first day.  I felt like an idiot, but oh well, I apologized, but Jason is a good natured kid, he smiled and said it was fine.

In my last test the opposite happened, a girl told me she had been absent for a while, so I didn't give her the test.  I asked a round later and found she'd miss one day.  The test had covered four chapters . . . I AM an idiot, I had to laugh about it.  This girl though I'm watching her now, fool me once.  That was the end of my first day I had weathered the first storm and it turned out all right.  I'm working on day four now, tomorrow's friday and I think I can make it, we'll see though, maybe I'll crack . . . no.

My coworkers are great they've helped Natalie and I a lot and even though they come off pretty jaded about the whole thing they're good at what they do.  I wore one of my ties on the first day, and when I met one of the other guys who works there he commented on it; "You wearing a tie, huh?" Yep. "Good for you, now the only place you can go is down."  We laughed about it, but I think I'll continue to wear my ties, I mean, they look damn good on me.  There's Jade, Ben, John, Skylar, Liz, Chris, Angie, Jennifer, Joy, Eunice, and several others.  Tuesday night we went out with a few of them for an older teacher's going away party and had an absolute blast, I'll detail that in my next post though, this one is already far to long.  Miss everyone, but I'm having a great time, hope everything back home is good