First day dissapointments, discoveries, and donuts.

HA! Even across the other side of the world I can still manage to find a weak wireless signal and gank it. American thriftiness!

I've only really been here for about a day, and yet I could probably write about 10 pages on it.

My flight in was kind of hectic due to the snow in Chicago and the sprint from gate to gate in SF to be the last person to board my plane to Seoul.

I got into Incheon Airport about 7, and finally to my side of the city at about 9. I had been traveling for about 36 hours at that point so I was exhausted. I just wanted to get into my nice new apartment. Unfortunately the only word of the last three which describes my place is "apartment". It's an apartment. That's basically the best review I can give of it. Apparently they're going through a severe housing crisis, so not only are the prices of apartments extremely high, they're also just flat not available. So this is what I get if I want to live in Seoul.

I was pretty well upset that first night. I was literally exhausted. I had just been kind of put in this place that looked like a dorm room, in an area of town which I wouldn't feel safe living in in Chicago. I was miserable. When I woke up around 6 the next morning I was in the bargaining stage of denial. I was ready to bolt back home if certain criterion weren't met that day.

Luckily they were.

Around 9:30 Roxanne(My boss) picked me up and also picked up another teacher. He(Alex) had just arrived Sunday night and lived just a hundred meters or so away from me. Finding someone in the same boat as me was a relief as well as knowing that I was the only teacher with a crummy apartment.

We arrived at the school shortly there after and had a meeting about the teaching plan for the next semester-which starts Monday. It went well and I don't think I'll have much of a problem doing the teaching. After we finished that we headed to the school where I'll actually be doing my teaching in. It's very clean and apparently has the best cafeteria food this side of the Han.

It was at that point too we caught up with our Korean, female, counter parts. There were 5 girls, I'll be working closely with two of them-both of whom were the more timid of the five-which has led to me forgetting their names. The other three though were very outgoing and inquisitive and sincerely pleasant.

After meeting up with them and taking a quick tour of the school some of the Korean teachers(the shy ones) left, but the rest of us went to lunch. It was my first Korean food experience.

Korean food is going to take a bit of an adjustment to get used to.

This restaurant was buffet style, and I essentially followed around one of the Korean women and just had whatever they had. Some of it was really good. Some of it was really bad. And boy does it have a...distinct smell. I fail to remember the names of the stuff I ate. It was mostly, well, to be honest I don't know what it was. I'll have to pay more attention the next time I eat. I did, however, get a crash course from Claire(the 2^nd grade Korean teacher) on chop stick use. A lesson from someone who’s used chop sticks their whole life and knows how to deal with simple children who cant grasp concepts made learning to use the chop sticks stupendously easy. I feel I could eat soup with them. It’s just a light bulb thing. You think you can’t figure it out and then BAM OHHH THAT’S HOW.

After that we went back to the office, which is and will henceforth be called BCM, which has free wireless internet, so like true first-wolders we all got on the superhighway and vegged out for a couple of hours.

At 5 another Westnern teacher(John), a Korean teacher(Lucy), and I went to Duncan Donuts for some coffee and a donut. In Seoul eating donuts for breakfast is considered weird. They’re much more a snack food. While we were eating, Lucy quizzed me on about a million things Western-from the Iraq war and the Bush administration to racism and western philosophy. I really enjoy answering her questions and I felt it gave me license to ask her questions as well. I’ve studied East Asian politics fairly extensively(which the past couple of days I’ve found the Koreans are both impressed with and appreciative of), but to be able to ask a Korean questions like “what are your biggest concerns about your government and way of life” is an awesome treat for me, that really solicited some answers I didn’t expect and some fairly new ideas to me. I just love cultural exchange.

Once we got back from that I sat around BCM for awhile again and then accompanied Alex to get a cup of coffee across the street at Krispy Kreme. I know getting a cup of coffee isn’t normally something to write about. But this was a major victory for the two of us. Managing to order a cup of coffee is actually quite difficult when there’s a language barrier, believe it or not. It didn’t take too long though(thanks in part because most Koreans know at least a little English…and that he and I are pretty good at just pointing at what we want).

A quick side note. The Krispy Kreme was the second time in the day I had ordered Green Tea. I had been looking forward to the green tea because it’s a favorite of mine back in the states. But uh, I guess what we drink isn’t true Asian green tea because what they serve over here taste NOTHING like American green tea. It’s overpowering. It’s a much thicker consistency. And it smells just a tad bit like raw squid.

Once back from KK, I was just in time to sit into a “free chat” class session John was teaching. This was 6 Korean adults who are quite good at English who come to practice speaking in English and learn about Western culture. My lord was this an amazing experience. I wish I could just teach these classes-I would do that for a career. I ended up feeling a little bad because I basically took the class over after about 20 minutes. John had played them “Life Styles of the Rich and the Famous” by Good Charlotte and they all had about 100 questions about pop culture from that. In an hour and a half we discussed the differences between crack and pot(what they called reefer), causes of suicide rates in Korean actresses, the color orange at U of I, the difference between pop and punk, and OJ Simpson. I loved it.

Class ended at 10. We packed up and left BCM. The next day was a holiday so John wanted to meet up with a couple of the other teachers I had not met and go see a movie. I was pretty tired, but the fact that I could not yet navigate my way home with out John helped me decide that I was, in fact, going to go to the movie. We saw “music and lyrics” with Korean subtitles. It was ok. More interesting that the movie though was the huge 8 story department store, Lotte*Low-Tay*, the cinema was on top of. It’s kind of like a Korean Marshal Fields. And on the top story is a cinema and café. Very cool place.

AND THAT WAS JUST THE FIRST DAY

As I sit here writing right now it’s about 6pm Thursday(3AM CST). Like I said earlier, today was a holiday so Alex and I decided to make our way into downtown. It actually wasn’t that hard. We had a map and a subway layout, and that’s really all we needed.

We went into Seoul station which is like Union station in Chicago or St. Louis…times about 5. As soon as we got out of the station we had our map out looking and an older gentlemen in a business suite came up to us and asked if we needed help. His English was a little rough, but he actually did do a very good job pointing us in the right direction. That wasn’t the only time in the day we were approached by Koreans who knew a spec of Engish when it appeared we needed help. I seriously appreciate and enjoy Koreans so far. Polite and Inquisitive. My kind of people.

We thought since it was a holiday there would probably be something of interest going on at City Hall. We kind of ended up taking the very long way to get there-our map of Seoul was very rudimentary. But we really weren’t in any hurry to get anywhere, and we’ve got a bearing for the Seoul stations part of downtown now.

–I should mention that Seoul is so large it actually has 2 downtown areas(one on each side of the river), both of which are about twice the size of Chicago’s downtown.-

We found a little café on a back street just north of City Hall while we were wandering around that had reasonable prices and English on the menu so we sat down there for lunch. Good food, and again, the staff went out of their way to help us place our order. It seems the downtown area is much more understanding of English than Sanngye(my part of town “Sang-gyay”), which I guess makes sense.

We finely stumbled upon city hall shortly there after. We checked out Deoksugung(D-oak-Sue-Goong) palace which was just across the street from the city hall plaza. It was interesting if a little boring, but made us both feel more cultural. It’s kind of hard for me to appreciate old Asian palaces like that I guess because that style of architecture is used for like tea gardens and Chinese buffets in the states-so it’s not like its something I haven’t seen. I’ll still check out the larger palaces to the north sometime in the future Im sure.

The scene at City Hall wasn’t quite as bustling as we had been lead to believe so we got back on the sublines and navigated our way to a little district known as Itaewon(E-Tay-Wan) next. Itaewon is where you find the most westerners in the city-which actually turned out to be true. This by no means meant there were a large number of westerners. Just, more. I had seen about 4 in the day prior to getting to Itaewon. In Itaewon I would say about 1 in 100 people were Western. There were also a lot more western stores and the Koreans working in the area spoke English pretty well. We walked up and down checking out the store fronts(which were incredibly expensive-ripping off the tourist), and prospecting potential bars to go to. Itaewon is supposedly known for its shopping in the daylight, and its Western nightlife in the night. There were a couple of places that looked promising, though I doubt they’ll be in our price range for regular visits. We went into a little French bakery there for some coffee, but of special interest were their desserts. Koreans can cook some damn fine sweets. The cakes were amazing looking, filled with fresh fruits and perfectly placed icing sculptures. And you could have one for only 12,000 won!(12 bucks). I was full at the time, but I’ll be buying one at some point.

We headed home after that. It was about a 30 minute sub ride, but Alex and I ended up having a really in depth discussion about the political problems of America and South Africa (where he’s from). It was another great learning experience for me, as I know very little of South African politics or economics, but he was a journalist and economics major-so he’s a very well informed source. Very bright guy too. I’m sure we’ll have a lot more interesting conversations.

So that’s brought us up to date. I know this post was awfully detailed, but the first few days here everything is an adventure. It’s kind of fun trying to figure out ways around the language. (We’re going to have a tough time finding dinner tonight in Nowon-which has very little English), but we’ll manage.

This entry has gotten rather long. I know there’s a lot of other things I haven’t discussed, and perhaps I will in the next entry(which hopefully should be a little shorter on the story telling), but if you have any questions-I love to answer, so please ask. It’ll also let me know that people are reading this. Im an insecure man. I need that assurance.

Not sure what I’ll be doing tomorrow or this weekend, but whatever it is I’m sure it’ll be an adventure. A CLEVenture.(I am the king of cheese)

BTW: Here’s a pic of what it looks like out my apartment door. Both for informative purposes, and to rub it in just a little bit(despite the crumminess of the inside of the place)