So these first few days have been amazing, chaotic, confusing, overwhelming, and hilarious. I love everything here, even the things that I find strange I still love. However, I find myself wishing all of my friends were here with me all the time, not because I am lonely, (because this is actually the first night I have spent on my own in my apartment) but because every time I see something funny, I want to make a sarcastic comment but there is no captive audience to use my wit on (for Hanne).
I guess the best way to update everyone on what has happened so far is start from the beginning. The journey here was probably the hardest part of the move for me. I hate flying. I hate airports. I hate being near large amounts of people. I hate loud noises. And I hate babies. So air travel is my own personal hell. I am always shvitzing that my bags will be lost or stolen and the plane will go down in flames. None of this happened of course. The worst obstacle I endured was on my second flight (of three) which was 12.5 hours from Minneapolis to Tokyo. I actually had an empty seat next to me, quite lovely, but on the other side of me was a Vietnamese family with 2 children under the age of 4. Ya. The children didn't want to sleep when everyone else was (though they were more than happy to sleep through the meal times so their mother would have disrupt everyone during sleep time to get the flight attendants to bring them food). They also disrupted sleep time by allowing their children to watch DVDs on a DVD player without headphones. So I got to listen to Ratatouille the entire way to Tokyo. There are lots of scenes with crashing dishes in that movie.
Anyway, besides that, and my bags being outrageously overweight, (which I paid for financially and physically) it was a pretty uneventful trip to my new home 8,000 miles away. I was picked up by my boss, Daniel, who had a sign for me. He drove me to my new apartment in his car, which had tweety bird seat covers, again, an example of a time I would have loved to have some of my mates with me to enjoy that.
My new apartment is awesome in substance, size, and location. I live in Dognae....and I think there are a couple of other more specific location names, but Dognae is the most important for this purpose. It has a plethora of old bath houses and spas, facials here I come, apparently you don't have to get naked for those like you do for everything else in the bath houses. It also used to be the old center of Busan and is only a 10 minute walk for the main center of the city with loads of shopping and nightlife and it is only a 5 minute walk from school, very convenient.
Here are some photos of my new place on the 6th floor of the building:
The next day, the other foreign teacher, who lives below me, came to pick me up for my first day of work. I was observing her teach because I was going to be taking over her classes soon. The first class was adorable, they were at a beginner level, so about 5/6 years old. However, one of the girls had a cell phone that went off and it was then explained to me the Korean children get phones as young as 3….oy. I really enjoyed watching the classes and it will be helpful to be familiar with the kids before I start. Later that night the other 2 foreign teachers took me out to dinner at a restaurant called T3. We ordered broths, 1 seafood and 1 beef, and cooked vegetables and seafood/beef in them. It was really good and I tried octopus for the first time. When I say octopus, I mean we plopped a proper full on octopus in the water. It didn't have much taste and was kind of chewy.
The next day I got up early for my health check at the hospital which is a requirement to get an alien card here. We took a cab to the hospital and it was only like $2.00. Definitely going to be using cabs a lot here. I was really impressed with the Korean hospital. It was huge, no wait time, and cheap. The health check was simple and painless, except for the needle they stuck in my arm. But we go on. My supervisor, Jenny, took me around a bit afterward and we eventually schlepped ourselves back to school just in time for the first class. This is also when I was informed I would be taking over teaching on my own the next day. So that was a fun addition to the needle in the arm. The first class I observed this day was the cutest ever! They were the very first level and around 4/5 years old. One girl told me I had big eyes and then proceeded to draw a picture of me with big curly hair. She drew me quite thin as well....thanks for that.
~Sarah
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