May 29th, 2012
So some of you may now know that I am currently jetsetting off to South Korea. After the strangest 6 months of my life culminated into the most bizarre May on the record, I have accepted a position as a public school ESL teacher in Miryang, or "secret sunshine."
Similar to my position in Turkey, I will be spending my days living ethnically ambiguous in a country with a homogenous facebook-obsessed population and a tumultuos past history.
Also, I may not have completely thought this one through.
The good news is that I have not (yet) been kidnapped and sold into the sex slave industry, surviving on the only hope that Liam Neison will come save me...
I arrived in Busan and was met by my petite British recruiter Alistair, who is fabulously English. He took me to my hotel where I was to meet him the following day at 9am sharp. I fell asleep after a 26 hour journey to the Korean home shopping network.
In the morning, Alistair, myself, and 2 other teachers rallied together to go to the education office where we were to meet our Korean co-teachers, or rather, my new built in best friend. His name is "Danny", he barely speaks english, and he wears a vest. Needless to say, the odds were in my favor in this one.
Danny took my paperwork and instructed me that we will be going to get my health check. We rolled out of the education office bumpin to flo-ridas "low" and discussed our mutual liking of drinking, dancing and shopping. The health check was....interesting, as I had to pee in a Dixie cup and then get weight, height, eyes, ears, etc checked in front of an audience of people who were also waiting for their check. To clear things up, I didn't pee in the dixie cup in front of everyone....
My historically small veins were massacred during my "blood correction" which involved 5 minutes of being multiply stabbed by a syringe (wait until you see my Bruise!).
After assuring the doctor I had no diseases, Danny and I left on route to Busan where I would get my alien registration card. We talked in the car of many things: hometowns, music, dating life, sports. I even explained to him the meaning of "piece of me" by Brittany Spears.
Finally it was time to bring me to my new home, which is situated in Miryang, a small city completely surrounded by mountains and cut in half by a large river. We stopped at the side of the road to pick up a seemingly random Korean girl, who i then found out was "Lizzy", another English teacher at one of the 3 schools I will be teaching at. They were both very kind, helping me move in and promising we would all party soon, but I had to get some sleep first.
I woke up at 3:30 am Korean time and unpacked all of my stuff in my new bachelorette pad. After getting ready, I began what I like to call "the Korean hunger games."
In many of the larger cities, English signage is quite prevalent. In Miryang,the only sign I have found thus far is for a restaurant called "chicken for my family" and because my family is halfway around the world, I decided to skip this one.
Many of the restaurants seemed closed and/or guaranteed to give me food poisoning. I wandered my way into an open door with clean tables and immediately realized that I had absolutely no command over even the basic of Korean phrases. So instead, I smiled, motioned that I wanted food, sat down and hoped for the best.
The nice korean man prepared some sort of cold noodle dish, even showing me how to eat it, and laughed at the stupid American as she fumbled with the chopsticks until he brought me a fork. I "kamsahamnida"ed him as I continued on my journey of city exploration.
Solid first 48 hours.
So some of you may now know that I am currently jetsetting off to South Korea. After the strangest 6 months of my life culminated into the most bizarre May on the record, I have accepted a position as a public school ESL teacher in Miryang, or "secret sunshine."
Similar to my position in Turkey, I will be spending my days living ethnically ambiguous in a country with a homogenous facebook-obsessed population and a tumultuos past history.
Also, I may not have completely thought this one through.
The good news is that I have not (yet) been kidnapped and sold into the sex slave industry, surviving on the only hope that Liam Neison will come save me...
I arrived in Busan and was met by my petite British recruiter Alistair, who is fabulously English. He took me to my hotel where I was to meet him the following day at 9am sharp. I fell asleep after a 26 hour journey to the Korean home shopping network.
In the morning, Alistair, myself, and 2 other teachers rallied together to go to the education office where we were to meet our Korean co-teachers, or rather, my new built in best friend. His name is "Danny", he barely speaks english, and he wears a vest. Needless to say, the odds were in my favor in this one.
Danny took my paperwork and instructed me that we will be going to get my health check. We rolled out of the education office bumpin to flo-ridas "low" and discussed our mutual liking of drinking, dancing and shopping. The health check was....interesting, as I had to pee in a Dixie cup and then get weight, height, eyes, ears, etc checked in front of an audience of people who were also waiting for their check. To clear things up, I didn't pee in the dixie cup in front of everyone....
My historically small veins were massacred during my "blood correction" which involved 5 minutes of being multiply stabbed by a syringe (wait until you see my Bruise!).
After assuring the doctor I had no diseases, Danny and I left on route to Busan where I would get my alien registration card. We talked in the car of many things: hometowns, music, dating life, sports. I even explained to him the meaning of "piece of me" by Brittany Spears.
Finally it was time to bring me to my new home, which is situated in Miryang, a small city completely surrounded by mountains and cut in half by a large river. We stopped at the side of the road to pick up a seemingly random Korean girl, who i then found out was "Lizzy", another English teacher at one of the 3 schools I will be teaching at. They were both very kind, helping me move in and promising we would all party soon, but I had to get some sleep first.
I woke up at 3:30 am Korean time and unpacked all of my stuff in my new bachelorette pad. After getting ready, I began what I like to call "the Korean hunger games."
In many of the larger cities, English signage is quite prevalent. In Miryang,the only sign I have found thus far is for a restaurant called "chicken for my family" and because my family is halfway around the world, I decided to skip this one.
Many of the restaurants seemed closed and/or guaranteed to give me food poisoning. I wandered my way into an open door with clean tables and immediately realized that I had absolutely no command over even the basic of Korean phrases. So instead, I smiled, motioned that I wanted food, sat down and hoped for the best.
The nice korean man prepared some sort of cold noodle dish, even showing me how to eat it, and laughed at the stupid American as she fumbled with the chopsticks until he brought me a fork. I "kamsahamnida"ed him as I continued on my journey of city exploration.
Solid first 48 hours.
